Maryam and the Magic Pencil

Maryam loved to write. Stories, poems, very long letters to her cousins, and at least one extremely dramatic diary entry per day. So when her uncle came back from Madinah and gave her a beautiful wooden pencil with tiny golden stars carved into it, she nearly cartwheeled across the living room.

'This,' said her uncle with a wink, 'is no ordinary pencil. It only writes the truth.' Maryam laughed. 'Uncle, pencils don't know what's true.' But that night, when she sat down to write her diary, something strange happened.

She wrote: 'Today I was the best student in class.' The pencil refused to move. She frowned and tried again. 'Today I helped my little brother with his homework.' The pencil glided smoothly. She tried, 'I LOVE eating spinach.' The pencil refused so hard the tip almost snapped.

Maryam sat back, amazed. The pencil really did only write the truth! For a whole week, she tested it. She tried to write little brags, small exaggerations, the kind of harmless fibs everyone tells. The pencil refused every time. She had to rewrite sentence after sentence, more carefully, more honestly. It was hard. It was a little embarrassing. But slowly, she started to like it.

One day she wrote: 'My friend Sara made fun of my new scarf.' The pencil wrote it. Then she added: 'So I made fun of hers back.' The pencil wrote that too. Maryam stared at the page. The truth, in her own handwriting, looked very small and very ugly.

She closed the diary, walked to Sara's house, and said sorry — properly, the way her mother had taught her. Sara hugged her and said sorry too. That night Maryam wrote: 'Today I learned that the truth is sometimes hard, but it always makes things better.' The pencil glided across the page like it was dancing.