Sumayyah and the Eid Money Jar

On the shelf above Sumayyah's bed sat a jam jar she had covered in star stickers back in Year 2. Inside it lived nine pounds — nine whole pounds — saved coin by coin since the summer. They were for the thing she wanted most in the world: the big art set in the window of the shop on the high street, with forty-eight pencils, twelve paints and a real wooden case. Price: fifteen pounds. She had walked past that window so many times that she knew which way every pencil faced.

And today was Eid.

Eid morning smelled of Mum's spiced vermicelli and Dad's best perfume. Sumayyah wore her new lilac dress with the tiny mirrors on the sleeves, and her little brother Muaz toddled about in a waistcoat he kept trying to unbutton. At the masjid, the prayer hall hummed with "Eid Mubarak! Eid Mubarak!" and hugs all round.

Then came the part Sumayyah had been waiting for. Aunty Rukhsana pressed a five-pound note into her hand. Uncle Jameel gave her a pound coin, shiny as a medal. Six pounds! Nine in the jar. Six in her hand. Fifteen. Exactly fifteen. Enough for the art set — at last!

She was still glowing when the imam's voice came gently over the speaker. "Before you go home to your feasts," he said, "remember our brothers and sisters far away who have no clean water to drink. There is a collection box by the door. Whatever you give, Allah sees it."

By the door stood a green box with a picture of a well on it.

Sumayyah's fingers curled around the money in her pocket, and her stomach tightened. It's my Eid money, she thought. I've waited months for this. And what difference would one note make, anyway? Five pounds can't dig a whole well. Surely somebody else will fill the box.

She very nearly believed it. Then she watched little Muaz march over, reach up on his tiptoes, and post in the shiny fifty pence Grandad had given him — his only coin. He did it with a grin as wide as Eid itself, then trotted off to find the biscuits.

Sumayyah stood very still.

She remembered a lesson at Saturday school. Her teacher had drawn a single seed on the whiteboard and, growing out of it, a plant with seven ears of grain — seven fat, whiskery heads, like the tops of wheat. "Allah gives this example in Surah Al-Baqarah," she said. "When people spend their wealth in His way, it is like one seed that grows seven ears, and in every ear there are a hundred grains. One seed becomes seven hundred — and Allah multiplies the reward for whoever He wills." Then she tapped the tiny dot at the bottom of the drawing. "Nobody plants a seed because it looks big. They plant it because they trust what Allah can grow from it."

Sumayyah looked at the green box. She thought of children her own age walking miles and miles for water that wasn't even clean. She thought of Muaz's fifty pence, already somewhere inside.

Her hand went into her pocket. It came out holding the five-pound note.

For one second, she held it tight. Then she folded it small, whispered, "This is for You, Allah," reached up, and posted it through the slot. It made the softest sound as it landed — like a seed falling into soil.

The tight feeling in her stomach melted away, and in its place came a glow, warm and golden, that lasted through the samosas, through the long, happy afternoon of Eid, all the way to bedtime.

That night, Sumayyah looked at her jar. Ten pounds now. Not enough for the art set — not yet.

"But somewhere," she whispered, "my seed is growing."

It took three more weeks of pocket money, washing the car and helping carry the shopping. But the day she finally brought the art set home in its real wooden case, it felt even sweeter than if she had bought it on Eid.

And do you know the very first thing she painted?

A field of golden wheat under a starry sky — with a little green well right in the middle.

She hung it above her bed, next to her star-covered jar, and fell asleep smiling.