Wasim's Challenge Read online

  They said it was because of the school journey. It would be too dangerous to try so many activities with no energy, especially at this time of year, when the sun was out for so long. Of course, if he were older, then there would be no question, but Wasim was not quite ready. He could fast next year. Faizhan had smirked again.

  Wasim remembered that smirk and sat with the rest of his school at the long table stretching all the way down the old Victorian hall.

  The noise was deafening. There must have been five other school parties there and they didn’t seem to have had the behaviour and manners warnings that Mr Abbot was shouting to remind Wasim’s class of.

  The children had to take it in turns to collect a tray and go up to the smiling servers at the hatch. Wasim waited.

  “OK, Charles, Wasim, Ellis, Sadie and Donna, up you go. No pushing, and don’t forget knives and forks.”

  Charles and Ellis were up and off as if it were the Olympic final, but Wasim took his time and even let Donna and Sadie in front of him, while his mind and stomach raced.

  And it was a race, a race against his parched throat, and the smells that meant he could almost taste the sizzling pizza and home fried chips being piled onto plates, until even Charles had to tell them to stop.

  It was a race to ignore the creasing pain shooting across his stomach, and to resist getting the drink that would stop his tongue feeling as if it had swollen up into a monster-sized slug.

  It could be easy. All he had to do was put out his tray, say “thanks” and then tuck in. The pain would all be gone and he’d be ready to win this adventure game that Dom had been going on about. Mmmm. . . Easy.

  “Pizza, young man?”

  The server was young and friendly, and Wasim felt the hungry, tickly weakness in his arms as they started to move his tray towards the pizza. He tried to think of show-off Faizhan and then he remembered the grown-ups.

  “Not ready yet! Maybe next year. Not ready!”

  How many times did he hear that?

  Move to library books?

  “Oh, Wasim’s not quite ready!”

  Move to the deep end?

  “Oh, he’s not quite ready.”

  Play for the school team?

  Hardest shot in the school, but not quite ready!

  “Got to go to the toilets, soz!”

  And Wasim pushed his way back through “Oys” and “ Watchits” and out of the canteen door, trying to think of anything but the empty plate he had left next to the hatch.

  His stomach was in agony waiting behind the locked toilet door, wondering what kind of children had scratched all of the names and jokes and who-loved-who into the wall. He stayed sitting on the closed seat until a charge past the door and a crash in the cubicle next to his told him that meal time was over.

  It was agony. Ramadan was agony, but “not quite ready”? Wasim Ahmed threw back the door and headed back to the noise and the clatter of trays.

  He was ready!

  Chapter Four

  Trying to get outside for the adventure game was madness. Children from different schools swarming through a door, throwing slippers and pumps into baskets and struggling into brand new wellies or blister-making new outdoor boots. Wasim put his full kit on, and only just made it to the meeting area in time to hear about the game.

  Dom was there waiting. He wore his CBC T-shirt with its arms cut off to look like a vest, shorts made out of jeans and climbing socks and boots. He had his sunglasses on his head and a whistle hanging from his neck. Along the line, boys started rolling up their sleeves into vests just to look the same, but Wasim – all ready for the mountain weather to close in – was boiling and his hat was itching again. At least the gnats swirling in clouds over every excited head wouldn’t get him.

  “OK, you guys, this is the game. . .”

  “When are we going on the quad bikes?”

  Trust Dionne.

  “Maybe never, mate, if you can’t shut up and do this activity.” Dom was furious and Charles, just about to ask when they were going on the ‘commando cord’, snapped his hand down quickly.

  The teachers, who had been last out, came and joined the group and Dom put his nice face back on. Mr Abbot and Mrs Scott had to go to a meeting, but Mr Bird would be staying, and they hoped that the children wouldn’t let the school down and would do as Mr . . . Dom and Mr Bird told them.

  “I’ve told them the rules, they’ll be great,” said Dom. “Right, guys, we split into teams. One team hides in the woods, and the idea is for the defenders to tag them before they can get back to this circle and pick up one of these tokens . . .” Dom pulled a coloured disk out of his rucksack, “without being tagged. Simple?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Not simple, guys. The defenders can only tag by touching the attacker on the arm with one of these.” Dom suddenly flicked his wrist and a bright purple frisbee curved its way through the air towards Mr Bird.

  Mr Bird, who couldn’t have looked more different from Dom – with his shirt tucked into purple jogging bottoms – wasn’t expecting it. He had his hands in his pockets and couldn’t get them out in time. The frisbee hit him on the chest, and his hands jerked out of his pockets and knocked it up into his glasses, which fell onto the floor next to his sandals.

  “Oh, sorry Sir. Thought you were up for it,” smiled Dom.

  “Quite alright,” gulped a breathless Mr Bird, scrambling for his glasses on the gravel. And he threw the frisbee back with a wobbling flick that only made it halfway back to the instructor.

  A few whispers of “Bird the Nerd” went down the line, and Wasim was sure that Mr Bird must have heard.

  “OK. . . Teams! Half with me, half with Sir. Let’s go!” Dom blew his whistle, jumped off the wall and a stampede raced to be in his team. Every single person, except Dionne, who never wanted to look like he was in a hurry. And Wasim, whose hat over his ears had meant that he didn’t hear the instruction at first, and then because he sort of felt he should be in Mr Bird’s team after the coach ride.

  It would be hard being an elite commando in that team, but Wasim went and stood with him anyway. For the first time in his life, he didn’t care if he won a game or not. He was really not feeling well.

  “Aching, man.” That was Charles’s latest way to say how good something was. But aching was the word for Wasim – stomach-aching.

  He was on the attacking team, and hiding in the woods and creeping back to base dressed in his commando clothes should have been exactly what he’d been looking forward to since Year Four. But he didn’t feel like it tonight, he definitely didn’t feel like it.

  Dom evened the teams up (groans from everybody now on Bird the Nerd’s side) and they all charged for hiding places in the woods. Wasim joined in with everyone, crashing through the bushes and trees and then, when the showing off stopped, he felt part of the strange quiet that suddenly fell over the woods as the city children entered a new world. A world of gloomy greenness, of crackling twigs and of a dark smoky stink, as rotting leaves were woken up by new boots.

  But the woods could only take their shouts away for a split second. The silent moment past and then there were squeals of pleasure when a doe rabbit and her litter of white-tailed babies bolted for cover in front of them. And screams of real fright when an evening owl hooted its command over the tree tops.

  The owl slowed the attacking team in its tracks, and heartbeats of fear, as well as excitement made them want to stick together as the trees got thicker and the light faded.

  The first mention of a bogeyman brought more shrieks, and most of the team just made a half-hearted effort at getting behind a tree before starting the run back to the light and friends.

  But Wasim saw a gap under the roots of a massive tree that was lying on its side with scorch marks burned down its bark. He managed to ignore the buzzings that could have been anything on the other side of his hat and only made a feeble effort at batting away the whine of a gnat which had found his hiding place. Then he curled up a
nd waited. And when he found that it was helping his tummy, he curled up even tighter. He wasn’t going to make a run for it. This was just right.

  Wasim didn’t know how long he had been there, but it wasn’t long enough. Crashing and shouting sounds made him start thinking again. He thought he heard his name, but he had found a comfortable position and he didn’t want to move.

  But he couldn’t stay there forever. He didn’t fancy being in the woods all night, and he didn’t like the buzzing. Charles had said they had killer bees in Wales. He opened an eye.

  “Just Waz and Dionne left.”

  “Come on out. We know you’re in there. . .”

  The crashing was Dionne. He was making a run for it. And Dionne could shift!

  “Come on, Waz. We’re last.” Dionne had found him and was stretching a hand down to pull him up.

  Wasim took it slowly, weakly. The shouts were getting nearer and Dionne was off again, so Wasim started to move. He didn’t want to get left on his own. Nobody could keep up with Dionne, but Wasim followed as fast as his wobbly legs and knotted stomach would let him. He swallowed something, but he had no spit to get rid of it, and so he had to trudge on.

  “There they are. It’s Dionne . . . and Wasim. Charge!”

  They’d been seen. Wasim tried to go quicker but his legs didn’t want to know.

  The trees were thinner and it was a bit lighter when Wasim felt something hit his arm. “Got you, Waz! You’re caught, no getting out of it!”

  The frisbee bounced on the hard mud and did a twirl before settling down. Wasim lumbered on.

  “Oy, Waz! You’re out! Got you. You’ve got to take it . . . Waz! Sir?”

  But Wasim wasn’t interested. In the gloom he saw Dionne streaking out from the last of the trees and heading like a bullet for the base. Then he saw a larger figure, Dom, and a purple flash in the gloom. The frisbee soared even faster than Dionne, and then it swerved upwards and slammed into his ear. He slowed for a second – it must have really hurt – but Dionne didn’t show it. He streaked into the circle on the ground and picked up a disk and held it up like it was the World Cup.

  “Doesn’t count, Dom got you. The frisbee got you. You’re a cheat, Dionne, so are you, Waz. . .”

  “Err, no. Actually, well done, Dionne.” It was Mr Bird. His voice quiet but firmer than when they mucked him about in class. He was talking to Dom. “I thought it had to hit his arm. Not his head!”

  There was silence while the children waited for it to be sorted out. Then Dom spoke through a fixed grin.

  “Did it miss his arm? Oh, then well done, mate. Your team gets a home run.”

  Cheers and boos, and Dionne finally rubbed his ear, but Wasim wasn’t listening. He was still moving, he just had to curl up again. That was all he was bothered about.

  Curl up, and it stopped hurting.

  He lurched through the confusion of the attack and defence teams swapping over and carried on up to the main building.

  Afterwards he remembered taking off his outside shoes and thinking that climbing up onto his bunk would be the last thing that he would ever do. And then he was in his curled-up position again, looking at the window and listening to the distant shouts and screams of people having fun.

  Chapter Five

  The strange thing about being so hungry – and even worse, so thirsty – was that you didn’t feel like you were part of the world anymore. The sounds and places and shapes outside, they were nothing to do with him.

  But whenever his eyes opened they took in the window and a wriggly shape that sometimes looked like a question mark and sometimes a giant squiggle, like one of the handwriting practice exercises he had to do every morning. It was getting clearer all the time, and Wasim forced his eyes to stay open. There was a ball above it now and Wasim realised that the handwriting shape must be a mountain or a hill. Mount Snowdon?

  His eyes closed and he curled tighter as the tummy pain got worse.

  And the ball? Now there was only half of it, deep red behind the squiggle.

  The ball!

  Wasim began to uncurl. It hurt, but he uncurled some more. The ball was the sun, and it was going. It was going fast.

  Wasim risked the pain and twisted himself to the steps of the bunk. He didn’t watch where his feet were going but just kept his eye on the glowing ball dropping behind the mountain. He looked at his watch – 8.55. The sun didn’t go down until 9.13.

  But this was Wales, and it was going down behind the mountain earlier here. If it was Mount Snowdon, then you could keep Mount Everest and Ben-something in Scotland. Snowdon was the best and Wasim loved it, because it was swallowing the light like a huge greedy bird being fed a worm . . . swallowing, swallowing, swallowing. And then it had gobbled it all. Gone!

  Today’s fast could end!

  Dad had told him that during Ramadan when he was a boy they used to hold up two pieces of cotton, one white and one black. If you couldn’t tell the difference, then that meant that the sun had set.

  But Wasim didn’t need that. He had seen it go. The sun had disappeared behind the mountain and all that was left was a goodbye orange glow.

  He half-jumped, half-fell onto the bunk underneath and fumbled for his bag.

  Thirst . . . coke. . . That would need to be first. But the bag was tied and Wasim felt too weak to deal with knots. There was a sink just next to the bunk and he knocked a jar of toothbrushes onto the floor, turned on the tap and forced his mouth under it.

  The water was warm and wasn’t the colour it should be, but it was wet. Wasim ignored how it hurt his throat at first, and he gulped and gulped until his tummy felt like a balloon.

  Now the bag. Wasim wobbled his tummy round and ripped through the plastic below the knot. He fished inside. What first? He fumbled. He wanted something soft and chose the bread. Sitting cross-legged on the floor he remembered to murmer “Ramadan Murbarak,” a greeting for Mum, Dad, Shamaila and Atif, and then he stuffed a whole nan and kebab into his mouth. He enjoyed the aching of his jaws as he chewed it down, while his hands busily searched out the crisps and banana.

  As he chewed he thought of his family at this special time for them all. Ramadan. It was the most holy of the Muslim months. It was a time for thinking how lucky you were not to be poor and starving. So during this month there would be no food or drink passing lips, from when the sun had risen in the morning until it had set at night. Dad had explained that people of their faith recognised this as the time when the angel Gabriel had shown the verses of the Koran to Muhammad, peace be upon him.

  Wasim also remembered his class at the mosque, and the look from Faizhan when they had been reminded that the Koran had been split into thirty parts, one for each day, to make it easy for Muslims to make sure that they read it all through during the month. That was probably another of the things they thought that Wasim wouldn’t be ready for.

  Well, nothing had passed his lips from sunrise to sunset. It had been hard today. . . But he had been ready. And he was proud to have been such a good follower of his faith.

  He would be tomorrow, too. Archery, orienteering and then the mountain hike.

  Wasim stopped chewing. Tomorrow he would have to get through it all again, and he would need fuel in his body. He would have to eat the suhoor, the meal before the sun came up, while everyone else was sleeping in the dorm. What had he saved for when the sun rose at 3.30 a.m.? Wasim started taking the bits out of his bag and hiding them in the crack beside his mattress. It was only until dawn. Nobody would know.

  There were shouts from downstairs and Wasim quickly climbed back up onto his bunk, rolled the carrier bag up with his United pyjamas and banged the pillow down just as the door burst open.

  That must be Ellis, he thought. He was quicker up the stairs than even Charles.

  Wasim turned. “Who won the—?”

  But it wasn’t Ellis.

  Chapter Six

  “That is about the most dangerous thing you could ever do, mate.”

 
Wasim’s glasses were on the floor next to the spilled toothbrushes, so he just stared.

  “Leaving an activity without telling anybody. . . We didn’t know if you were stuck in the woods, dead or alive. . .”

  The others all piled in now, sweaty and dirty from the woods. After the fun of the game outside they now sat on their bunks, ready for Wasim’s telling off.

  “So, what did you think you were doing, fella?”

  “Don’t know. . .” Wasim managed to mumble.

  “Not listening to the rules under that hat of yours?”

  The instructor took a step into the room. He saw the toothbrushes on the floor and Charles’s wet towel on the bunk.

  “You’ll need to get this dorm a bit tidier, guys, keep towels on the—”

  Dom stopped. And all the eyes in the room followed his down to the floor, and to crumbs, a banana peel and a crisp packet. Then they all went back to him as he took his sunglasses right off and lifted the banana peel up with his pencil as if he was on CSI from TV.

  “Food!” he sighed. “What happens if there is food in a dorm, guys?”

  Ben chimed in first, “The dorm misses the next—” And then, too late, he realised what he had done. “Activity.”

  “Oh, well done Ben!” Charles exploded.

  “Correct! I don’t know what you guys would have had first tomorrow morning, but you’ll be writing out our rules instead.”

  “Nice one, Ben.”

  Dom was on his way out. “And I wouldn’t blame Ben. There is obviously somebody in here who does not know our rules. See you tomorrow, guys.”

  And he was gone, while the five puzzled and then angry faces on the bunks turned slowly towards Wasim.

  “Sent to Coventry,” they called it. No-one was allowed to speak to you, not even the kids from the other rooms, once word got round.