by Zanib Mian
Charlie and Daniel were so happy, gobbling candy and piling all the available toppings onto cookies, that I just kept my mouth shut about the bad news.
At lunchtime, we got cauliflower spring rolls with steamed “carrots,” which may as well have been steamed sloth fingers, because they were so brown and gross. After we had finished complaining about the school cook and wondering how much it would cost to get a real chef at our school, I blurted out the bad news. “I have to tell you something . . . I can’t buy a Nerf blaster anymore.”
Daniel jumped up as if his bottom had been
and ran in circles around Charlie and me, screaming,
Charlie looked at me with a smile so big I could almost see his gums. He liked it when Daniel behaved all wild, as long as it wasn’t against him or us, like it used to be.
“Because, Daniel . . .” I said loudly over his screaming, “the mosque is going to close down if they don’t get enough money.”
Daniel stopped suddenly with his jaw dropped and said, “Really?”
“Yes. Super really.”
He started up again, and this time Charlie and I joined in.
When our lungs screamed back at us to stop, we fell onto the floor.
I had known Daniel would be upset, too. Ever since we got lost together on the London Underground and were chased by a not-really-zombie, Daniel has often talked about the London Central Mosque—because that’s where we ended up being rescued. I think he’s decided that mosques have superpowers or something. He even insisted on going to my local mosque with me once to see what it was like and whether they have halal candy there, too.
We made a new friend there that day, a girl named Aisha who doesn’t go to our school but who likes Batman almost as much as Daniel does. That kind of nice thing often happens at the mosque, not just for kids but for grown-ups, too. That’s probably another reason why Dad has a secret smile there—he says that it isn’t just a place for praying; it’s a place where a single person becomes part of something bigger. I’m not exactly sure what he means by that, but I guess the mosque IS quite a lot than a house. You couldn’t fit everyone who goes there into our living room for tea and snacks . . . though I bet my mom would try it if she could.
After we’d fallen down on the floor, we were all quiet for a little while. Then Daniel whispered, “No,” in a very small voice.
“No,” whispered Charlie.
“No,” I whispered, too.
And we decided right there that we were all going to help the mosque .
CHAPTER 6
It was the first Sunday in three months that we had to cancel our family tradition of
because the meeting in the mosque was in the morning, and Science Sunday always happens in the morning. Everything at our house has its set time and day and exactness, as if life is
Morning is Mom and Dad’s favorite time. They always wake up early, even over the holidays, and act as if they’ve drunk loads of soda, even before breakfast. Some days, Dad takes his motorcycle out after his dawn prayers so he can enjoy the empty roads. Mom always worries that he goes too fast. He always says, “Don’t worry, darling. I’m safe with it.” But I know he’s not, because I’ve seen his face when he drives the Peanut and gets to go fast on the highway. He looks like a kid who’s just been given a lifetime supply of Oreos. (By the way, I’ve always wanted a lifetime supply of Oreos.
I love them, and I know seventeen different ways to eat them. If Mom hadn’t refused to buy them for me anymore, I would know at least thirty-seven by now . . .)
Anyway, back to Sunday. I couldn’t wait to start planning . Charlie and Daniel were going to come over when we got back from the mosque so we could start.
At the meeting we found out that they needed to raise $30,000. The imam of the mosque spoke to everybody. He looked like he was sad but trying not to be.
“We’ve discovered an urgent issue with the mosque building.
It’s holding for now, but it’s something we need to get working on in a few weeks. The woodwork in the roof is rotting.”
The whole roomful of people looked nervously up at the ceiling.
“Now, unfortunately, we don’t have enough funds to pay for the work needed to fix everything, and if we can’t raise it, we will have to close the mosque because it won’t be safe,” the imam finished.
I thought. That sounds kind of easy. I think I could raise $30,000 with my friends. And other people would be raising money with their family and friends, too, so I was sure it would be OK. But the best bit was that the imam said that if you’re involved with making a mosque, or you stop one from shutting down, Allah will build a house for you in
I couldn’t believe it. I imagined Allah making a house for ME. And because He’s God, He would know exactly what I want in my dream house: it would have one room made entirely of , even the walls! One room would be a with reclining seats, so tons of friends could come. There would be in there, too. There would super definitely be a game room, with all my favorite video games, and I think if I was in heaven, I would even be allowed to play the games that Mom and Dad have forbidden me to play on Earth. The kitchen would be built entirely of , and the only other things available to eat and drink in there would be You could break the Oreos off the wall if you wanted, and they would just grow back. In the bedroom, the whole floor would be a waterbed, so you could just drop and sleep wherever you wanted. And there would be no roof, so you could see the stars and planets in the sky. Anything that you threw on the floor would magically put itself away in the closet or on the shelves. Oh, and all my favorite authors would be there, all ready to read me a story. And of course Mom and Dad, because they’re the best at telling stories. (Don’t tell my friends, ) I guess Maryam and Esa could be there, too.
I was so busy imagining my that I didn’t realize it was time to leave the mosque until Maryam flicked my ear.
“What the was that for?”
“For being such a daydreaming piece of ostrich gut!”
In case you’re wondering about this strange way of insulting each other, it all began when Mom was driving and a bus pulled out when it shouldn’t have, almost causing an accident, and Mom shouted,
Maryam and I had looked at each other and raised our eyebrows all the way to the tops of our foreheads, because we saw what Mom did there. She swore . . . without swearing . . .
And then a couple of days later, Mom dropped a butternut squash onto her toes and screamed,
That was so random that Maryam and I rolled all over the floor laughing, and we repeated it to each other and cracked up again and again. Ever since then, we’ve been trying to come up with more and more inventive insults.
As we drove home, I was feeling excited. Not only was I going to help save the mosque with my friends, but I was going to get my dream house for doing it!
CHAPTER 7
I ran to the door when Charlie and Daniel arrived.
Daniel was sporting a red nose, because he had a cold. Dad looked horrified. He’s super scared of germs, because when he gets sick, he gets really sick. He says it’s a that man flu is worse than the flu that kids and women get, but Mom says it’s only because we’re a lot tougher than he is.
My friends and I went straight up to my bedroom, and I shoved Esa’s toys under his bed to make space.
“Let’s brainstorm,” I said. “Mrs. Hutchinson always makes us do that to think of ideas.”
“OK,” said Charlie.
Daniel blew his nose and nodded his head.
So I got a piece of paper and my Sharpies and wrote:
“Right, guys. Shoot,” I said.
said Daniel.
“Lemonade?” I said.
“Yeah.”
I wrote it down.
“My uncle sells things on eBay,” Charlie said.
“Like what?”
“Lik
e earphones and fans and stuff like that.”
“Cool. But where can we get those from?” I said.
said Daniel. Charlie and I must have looked confused, because he tried again. “You bow—we dob’t have aby. We’re brying to babe bongey.”
“We do have $42.53,” I said, figuring out his blocked-nose secret code. “I wonder how many earphones we can buy with that.”
“Or we can just make stuff to sell,” said Charlie.
I wrote that down.
Then I told them my idea. “Let’s hold a talent contest and charge people money to come and see it! It would be so great!”
“Cool!” said Charlie and Daniel both at the same time.
“How much should we charge, and where will we have it? Maybe I could ask my parents if we can have it here in the backyard or something . . .”
“Or maybe at the mosque?” said Charlie.
“Oh yeah. Good idea. They have a huge room.”
I wrote down and we kept thinking.
“Do chores for bongey,” Daniel suggested.
“Like cleaning our rooms,” said Charlie with a cheeky grin.
We all
at the thought of asking our parents for money for cleaning our rooms.
Daniel laughed too hard before he managed to grab a tissue and got snot all down his face.
“Ewwwwwww, Daniel!”
I couldn’t breathe anymore from laughing. Ouch, ouch—it hurt!
There’s something about snot that is funny and disgusting at the same time. Like farts.
Anyway, by the time we were done, we had lots of ideas to get started on:
I was starving after all that thinking! Or maybe it was more because Mom has been making these funny healthy muffin things for breakfast. They are and . Dad pretends that he likes them so that he doesn’t hurt Mom’s feelings, but once I caught him smothering one with peanut butter when Mom wasn’t looking. Before we went to the mosque, I had put mine in the pocket of my bathrobe and just pretended I’d eaten it.
Have you ever been so hungry you felt like you had a huge hole in your chest? I don’t understand it, because it should be my tummy that has a problem with being hungry, but for some reason it feels more like my chest needs food to fill it up. Sometimes it feels like the hole is so big it could be a , ready to suck in anything I walk past! I imagined Charlie jumping into it and ending up in some other dimension. I wondered whether he would find me and Daniel in that other dimension and what we would look like there . . . Probably completely different, with green hair or something.
Luckily, Dad had made his famous spaghetti Bolognese as a treat, since my friends were staying to eat lunch with us. He puts stuff in it that he won’t tell us about, but I don’t mind, because it makes it taste deeelicious. I’m OK . . . as long as he’s not adding
I guess it wasn’t just me who was super hungry, because Charlie, Daniel, Maryam and even Esa shoved down the Bolognese without saying a word from start to finish. When I had eaten every last bite, I looked up and realized
I’m such a that Mom doesn’t let me order spaghetti if we go out to eat. Also, it’s not usually halal at restaurants.
As soon as Daniel’s and Charlie’s parents had picked them up, Mom said, “Right, who wants to do the grocery shopping with me?”
Perfect opportunity, I thought, and volunteered myself super quick.
“I’ll do it with you, and I’ll pack the bags and unpack them back at home. All for $2.50!”
“Don’t be so cheeky!” said Dad. “Since when do you get paid to help out?”
I shrugged. “It’s part of the plan to raise money for the mosque.”
That made Dad change his mind pretty fast. He said he was really proud of me and my friends for being such stars. And then he said of course I could have $2.50 for helping with the shopping. In fact, I could have $5.00.
Maryam said, “Humph. That’s so unfair,” and she stormed off to get her coat.
I like doing the grocery shopping with my parents, because I can get stuff that they wouldn’t normally buy when they go on their own. Sometimes I ask them if I can have this or that, but sometimes I just sneak it into the packed cart.
Esa is too big now to sit in the cart like he used to, so I also have to put up with him following me and picking stuff up. Once, he even dropped a jar of pasta sauce on the floor and which was
I wasn’t sure if I should run away and pretend I didn’t know him, or stick around and help Mom deal with it.
This time, he started flinging sausages into the cart at the speed of Dad’s motorcycle.
“What are you doing, chipmunk?” said Mom. “You can’t have all those; they’re not halal.”
Esa is still learning all about the food he can’t eat when he’s at preschool or restaurants and things, because of being Muslim and needing to
which has been prepared in a special way. It can be confusing for little kids, since chicken is OK at home, because we get the halal kind. But at school, it’s not halal, and Esa doesn’t always understand.
Maryam teases him for being such a but I feel a little sorry for him, because he gets sad when he can’t eat things he’s chosen. Like after the sausages, he chose some that had gelatin in them, so he got told they weren’t halal and he almost burst into tears. I helped him find some halal ones that said they were vegan and got a pack for myself, too . . . Well, I deserved them for working so hard on this chore.
CHAPTER 8
At school on Monday, we huddled together to share what we had brought in to sell to kids on the playground. Charlie had made yummy cookies at home with his mom, and Daniel had made . . . wait for it . . .
Charlie and I couldn’t believe it! We couldn’t stop quizzing him about whether he was kidding. Did his dad make them? Did he buy them? No. Apparently, he’d been folding paper into things since he was six, but he’d just never shown anyone before. After that, the hard candy that I had found in my bedside table and shoved in my bag to sell didn’t seem so great. We walked around the playground, shyly approaching kids, asking them to buy our things. Some kids just laughed and ran away. LOTS of kids told Daniel that he DID NOT make those birds, and Charlie and I told them they could bet their best friends’ teeth that he did.
Sarah from our class really cheekily said,
“No,” said Daniel. “It’s 50 cents and no less, because it’s delicious.”
“Charlie would give me one for free, because he’s kind!” teased Sarah, with one hand on her hip.
Charlie blushed bright red and immediately handed over a free cookie. Daniel and I said in unison,
After a while of walking around, we finally realized something: kids don’t usually bring money to school with them.
“What will we do? If we can’t sell stuff to kids at school, who will we sell it to?” said Daniel.
“Maybe we can ask Mrs. Hutchinson if she can talk to the parents and tell them to give their kids some money,” I suggested.
“Do you think she would listen to us?” said Daniel, who had seen the angry side of Mrs. Hutchinson a lot when he was more of a troublemaker.
Charlie assured him.
“You ask her, Charlie,” I said, because no matter how nice she was, I still felt too shy to ask her something like that.
“Why me?” pleaded Charlie.
“’Cause you have the best smile,” I said, quickly thinking of one reason we all like him so much.
Charlie went red again and said that we should all ask her together.
said Daniel.
“Yup,” I agreed.
So we went to find Mrs. Hutchinson, who looked like she had just started her lunch, even though it was nearly the end of lunchtime. Her hair told me why: she had been very busy. Her hair couldn’t hide anything. It was all over the place. Some curls looked like they had to be somewhere else, w
hile others were desperately trying to eat her lunch.
We told her all about the plan to raise money so that the mosque wouldn’t have to close down. She looked at us as if she was about to
and love or something. I wondered: If a human ever did actually burst with pride and love, would balloons and confetti and cotton candy come flying out of them?
“You are such generous children!” she said. “I’m going to help you as much as I can, but the thing is that I can’t speak to parents without Mr. McLeary approving it. He is the principal. I’ll arrange a meeting for the three of you to tell him about your idea.”
Mr. McLeary is the meanest meanie in the school. Everyone calls him behind his back. I have literally seen him smiling at a kid.
And now we were at his mercy . . .
CHAPTER 9
As soon as I got home from school and downed a bag of chips (and the apple that Mom said I had to have if I wanted the chips), I went over to see my next-door neighbor, Mrs. Rogers.
“Now, there’s a lovely face I haven’t seen in a while,” she said when she opened her door.
“I’ve been busy making plans to save the mosque!” I told her.
“Save the mosque? Well, that sounds heroic. What are you saving it from?”