The Scribbles of a Crazy Child

By: Jihan Omer Muhamad Osman

Her peers exploded in laughter, making her feel the sense of her importance in the classroom, which she had refused to leave as if it were in love with her . However, sometimes, it mocked her.
The still objects appealed to her, so she paused before the wall and spoke to it in her usual silence, and on another day, she talked to a great tree that nobody diligently cared for its cultivation and welfare.
She came just like other things that invaded life voluntarily . Her scribbles painted lots of little trees which as yet had n’t come, and nobody would look after their planting and watering. There She often stayed.
When it turned out to be difficult to come across her, you would find her in her respective classroom writing something , but nobody comprehended what she had written as though she was sneering at those around her.
Her teacher screamed at her because of what she excessively did, but the girl paid no heed to her teacher’s shouts. She stole glances, casting a look at a congregation of girls while she overheard them. Then, she dropped some words within their earshot and withdrew as if she had accomplished her mission.
Sometimes, she climbed up a tree and wrote her scribbles as if she inhabited a world other than the one we lived in.
The gathering of girls around her annoyed her, and she shot me a glance imploring me to intervene, so I told the girls to leave her alone.
As the girls walked away, I let myself remain with her for a while to discover what was within her.
When I asked about the child’s story, her teacher had replied, ” Keep a way from her. “Why have they abandoned this demented one among the girls?
Her words saddened me and left an invisible deep wound inside my self as If she meant me. I did not repeat my question to her, so I made up my mind to look for her by myself, but sometimes she stood before me. I never knew the secret of the power that drew me towards her. She was like a green land and a broad spot of light that no one had set foot on, so I was the first to arrive there.
Amidst the emotions stirred in me, she baffled me with a piece of paper as she laid her hand on mine to hide it from view. . Suddenly, she ran as if she were chased by someone behind her.
When I opened the paper, I had found some disjointed letters that said, “I thank you for looking after me.”
I was stunned. What were these? These were her scribbles.
I strode to her classroom to further decipher her scribbles, which said, “Give me a chance. Do not shout at me with your horrific voice. If I hid the money, which is between your hands, you wouldn’t have depicted me as mad.”
“But Is she really mad, as anyone has claimed so? Or is she the most intelligent girl that life has ever brought to that school?”
As she was with people who understood nothing of her gift,, an insanity was her fate ! The life of children is a world of magic and chaos confined and bound by the splendor of such a little girl. What astounded me was her painful crying when that disabled child passed away; she was a child who confronted life in her wheelchair and had strutted proudly in front of the morning parade.
I saw her mourning, and her crying dominated over the murmurs and gossips of girls about her.
One of them said, “Even this crazy one knows screaming and wailing, teacher!”
A terrifying feeling haunted me when I realized I concealed the hope behind her pupils and, in my eyes, welled up tears for her weeping and sobbing.
When she was summoned, she came to me, hiding her eyes with both hands, wondering why she was called on her own without others.
She was frail and incapable of resisting tempetation , but she possessed two legs capable of helping her flee but she woukdb’t. And stll I wish could keep it from her.
I approached her as If I was consoling myself. I stared at her with two anguished eyes, and her sorrow fell on me.
She threw her self to my embrace , and I didn’t resist hugging her. How I wished I could remove her grief to return her to what she had been before: an enchanting, mad, freak, and eccentric child.
When she took life with all its contradictions and heavy loads, she had been one of those sensible people teeming with life.

Jihan Omer Muhamad Osman born in Gedaref in 1989, is a short-story writer . Her story Setit: the Returnee has won the first award in the Youth Short Story Comoptition Organized by Maeen Association. . ” Ahandful of Earth”, is her first collection of stories and was published in Khartoum in 2020. She recieved a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies from University of Gedaref in 2010. She is a member of the Gedaref State Writers Union Her series of essays titled ” A traveler’s Tales” have been published in local newspapers, Akhbar AlYoum, and AlSudani AlDuwali “.