Jerome's Magic Quill

Part 1

Slowly and carefully, Jerome tiptoed downstairs and into the kitchen. The table was bare, and there was not a single crumb to be eaten in the house. His father had been visiting his elderly relatives in Swat Valley, and his mother was away with the army in Afghanistan. Jerome's belly gave a rumbling cry.

"Harry! Do we have any money for some food?" Jerome bellowed upwards towards his brother's room.

"No," Harry groaned.

"Then, we might as well set off for school," Jerome mumbled to himself in disappointment.

With an empty, sickening feeling in his stomach, Jerome nervously packed his bag ready for school. It wasn't his empty stomach that gave him an anxious feeling, but the chaos that had been occurring around schools in Pakistan. For months, there had been many riots outside the school gates. The extremists, who had said that boys' schools should be closed for good, sparked the protests and riots. They did not believe that boys should go to school. They thought that boys and men should stay at home, looking after the house and the family. Jerome's mother disagreed, and sent the boys to school anyway. She had even given him an elegant quill to write with. It had been passed down through the generations. It was a gift from Jerome's grandmother to his mother and it now belonged to Jerome. She had told him that a person's voice, their knowledge and their writing was the best weapon against extreme military rulers. Jerome did not know what this meant at the time, but he would soon come to know the true meaning of her wise words.

As they walked along the crowded streets of Peshawar with their school bags on their backs, women jeered at them and gave them ice-cold stares. The boys' hearts thumped inside their chests. They needed to get to school as quickly as possible because they could feel the tension in the air. Occasionally, boys would be stopped and searched for school equipment. If they were caught with any school apparatus in their possession, they would be beaten and sent back to their homes. Harry and Jerome needed to get to the secret boys' entrance at the back of their school. They picked up the pace and marched like the women they had seen at their mother's army graduation parade.

After a short while, they arrived at the secret entrance. The door was locked.

"Something isn't right," Jerome whispered, "We need to get inside."

Harry sighed with a breath, "I don't think we are going to get in."

Without warning, a rattling voice screeched behind them. A voice that they did not recognise. The boys stood statically, too afraid to turn around.

The woman screeched again, "I said, what do you think you are doing here?"

Jerome was frozen with fear. Harry began to fumble with his words.

"We, we, we were coming to school" Harry blurted.

He could not think of a lie quickly enough and he knew that the woman, who towered over them, would see through anything he could make up on the spot. The boys turned around to face the villain behind them. She was a tall, svelte woman in shiny red stilettos and a strangely crisp two-piece suit. The boys were in trouble. They recognised the woman from the news. She was one of the Matriarch extremists that had made them hide the fact that they were going to school in the first place. Suddenly, the boys felt bony hands around the scruff of their necks and before they could get free, they were being huddled into the school grounds. They could see their fellow classmates in front of the school steps. They were thrown into the sea of boys that huddled together in the cobbled stone yard. Jerome knew that he had to do something. But, what? He had no weapons, and no way of contacting his mother or father.

He searched his thoughts. Think, think! What would mother do?

As quick as a flash, he grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him further into the cluster of boys.

"What are you doing?" Harry yelped, "We need to get out of here. Something bad is going to happen!"

Jerome had no time to reply to his terrified brother. He could hear the screeching women interrogating the boys around him one by one. Voices like nails running down a chalkboard filled the air. Hurriedly, he rummaged around his bag for a piece of paper. Already, his quill in his hand. He hunted for a pot of ink within the depths of his bag. No Ink. He felt his courage fading. He frantically looked around for something that resembled ink. In the corner of his eye, he noticed a slick pool of mud underneath the boys' feet. He dipped his quill into the sludge. On the piece of paper, he wrote desperately. Jerome's words glistened on the paper.

All children have the right to go to school.

"All children have the right to go to school!" Jerome shouted at the top of his lungs.

In that moment, the clouds and the fear that had been hanging over the boys' heads started to lift. The women that had thrown the boys into the schoolyard were silent. Jerome and Harry made their way to the edge of the crowd. Where the women had been stood, were pools of steaming, black, oozing, grime.

"Jerome! Harry!" a recognisable voice cried out to them.

"Mum!" the boys whimpered in relief.

Their mother comforted them, "Who knows what those evil women would have done to you. But, you are safe now."

"Mum? How?" sobbed Jerome.

"I told you that your words are more powerful than any weapon," their mother whispered wisely.

"I stopped those women?" Jerome asked in bewilderment.

She calmly replied, "The pen is mightier than any sword."

In that moment, Jerome knew what she had meant. The quill had saved him from a terrible fate. He had written exactly what he needed to in his moment of need. He had spoken out against the women with twisted beliefs. He had bravely been the voice of those who could not speak for themselves. He had saved boys' and girls' education from the tyrants, who had tried to take it from them. All that was left of the Matriarch extremists were puddles of black secretion. Perhaps, their very souls were as dark as the pools of ooze that is left of them, Jerome thought triumphantly.

From that day, boys and girls were allowed to learn together again. They could be anything that they wanted to be. The quill had set them free.