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By Fathi Afifi
When little Jimmy brought his essay to the front of the class, his teacher glanced through it, paled, and crumpled it in her fist. She’d read many strange things as an elementary school teacher, but no matter what she was always surprised by the next freak paper. She took a deep breath, smoothed out the paper, and read the prompt again to herself. Write about your favorite place.
And in uncannily smooth round print, with a miraculous choice of words and very few syntactical errors, the boy had written this below.
Inside the factory, you’ll hear many voices. Not just the blue-coated workers, the white-shirted executives, the jacket-shawled suppliers who zip in and out with their trucks and their packages. You’ll hear the growl of the machines, unsatisfied with anything less than human blood. They shake and chortle happily only when one man takes the dare and sticks his hand in too far when processing the products. You’ll hear the wheezing of the pipes that suffer from too little oxygen, that burp up a steady stream of black fumes, as if they’ve been condemned to an eternal ordeal of cleansing their black hearts and just keep finding more blackness to emit. You’ll hear the crackling of flames in the ovens where the rods are fashioned and pounded into shape, flames that sputter and cackle as they dance, stretching orange arms out to each other, praying that one day they’ll unite and one day they’ll break free and one day they’ll revolt and swallow this massive dark building and these little blue-coated figures that chain them behind grates and poke them with rods.
“You can take a seat now, Jimmy,” the teacher said. She looked down at the boy staring up at her with large unblinking eyes, and she was unsettled by the intensity of the black pupil, the sadness of the dark iris, the forthright purity of the white, white milk of the eye. Suddenly she felt a very firm and heavy weight settle on her shoulders, a sadness at the child’s perspective that surpassed even her elation at the child’s abilities. She didn’t know what to say, and so she rang the bell for an early recess.
"Angreek87"
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