The Hardest Word

On Friday mornings, Year 3 had a spelling test. And on Friday mornings, Omar's tummy always felt fluttery.

He had practised all week at the kitchen table in Luton, while Abbu stirred the dal. Ten words were stuck on the fridge with a banana magnet. Some words were easy-peasy. Some were tricky. And one was the trickiest of all: believe. The E and the I kept swapping places, like two naughty kittens.

Omar wanted ten out of ten more than anything.

Rain tapped on the classroom window as Mrs Lewis read out the words. "Garden… Because… Answer… Believe." Omar's pencil stopped.

Then someone from the office knocked. "Keep checking your words, Year 3," said Mrs Lewis, and she stepped into the doorway to talk, with her back to the room.

Her word list lay on the corner of her desk, right beside Omar's table. Face up. Every word was there in neat black letters. Even believe.

Omar's heart went thump, thump. Nobody was looking. "Just one peek," whispered a little voice inside him. "Then you'll get ten out of ten."

His name was at the top of his paper. If he copied, his paper would say, "Omar knows how to spell believe." And that wouldn't be true. His paper would be telling a lie, even without him saying a single word.

So Omar turned his chair a little, held his hand beside his eyes like a wall, and kept looking at his own page.

In the margin, he tried the word his own way. First with two E's in the middle. That looked wrong. Then with the E before the I. That looked wobbly. Then with the I before the E. That one looked right. At least, he hoped so.

Mrs Lewis returned and finished the test.

After lunch, the tests came back. Omar turned his over slowly. Six out of ten. Not ten. His shoulders drooped.

Then Mrs Lewis crouched beside him. "Omar," she said softly, "I can see your three tries at believe. You kept going until you got it right. That's the trickiest word on the whole list." And she stuck a little gold star next to it.

Omar's cheeks went warm.

At dinner, Omar pushed his paper across the table to Abbu. "Only six," he said. Then he told him about the list on the desk, and how he hadn't looked. Not even once.

Abbu put down his chai and smiled the slow smile that crinkled his eyes.

"Do you know," he said, "long ago in Makkah, the Prophet ﷺ stood on the hill of Safa and called his people together. He asked them, 'Suppose I told you that there were horsemen in the valley, about to attack you. Would you believe me?'"

"Were there really horsemen?" asked Omar.

"No, it was a 'what if' question," said Abbu. "And they said, 'Yes, for we have never found you telling anything but the truth.'"

Omar sat up. "Believe! That's my word!"

"It is," said Abbu. "When you are truthful, even when nobody is watching, people can believe you. I can believe you. And six words that are really yours are worth more than ten that aren't."

That night, Omar lay in bed listening to the soft rain. His test was tucked in his book bag. Tomorrow he would practise the four words he had missed.

But tonight his heart felt calm and clear, like a window after the rain. "Alhamdulillah," he whispered.

Then, very sleepily, he spelled it once more in the dark. B, E, L, I, E, V, E.

And he fell asleep smiling.