Create the Chain

By Shahid Fayis

It was the month of Shaban when Hamzah’s family decided to move to a new villa in Sharjah.

‘Do you hear that?’ Khalid asked Ahmed.

‘I think our new neighbours are here.’ They

ran out to take a quick look. The movers were offloading the furniture from the truck. Hamzah was standing aside with his dad.

‘Hello, I am Ahmed, and this is my brother Khalid. We are happy to welcome you to our neighbourhood. If you require anything, we are happy to help.’

In a matter of hours, the three of them became very good friends.

Ahmed and Hamzah were 11 years old and Khalid was 9 years old. All of them were disciplined, kind-hearted and very well-behaved boys.

Since Hamzah’s parents were busy settling into their new home, Hamzah spent a lot of time with Ahmed and Khalid.

They loved playing with LEGO bricks and PS4 at home and enjoyed playing kurat alqadam (football) with other children in the nearby park.

One morning, while playing in the park, they noticed an unusual plant in between the bushes.

‘WOW, look at those glossy oval leaves,’ said

Ahmed.

‘Look at the bright red flowers.’

Suddenly, they heard a LOUD CLINKING sound. A small boy had fallen off his bicycle. They quickly ran to help him.

‘ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? Let me help you,’ said

Hamzah. They helped the boy walk to his parents, as he had bruised his knee.

‘WHOA! Can you see what I am seeing?’ asked Khalid. ‘This is UNBELIEVABLE,’ said

Hamzah. The boys were astonished to see that the plant had grown a few inches taller in just ten

minutes.

Now, it was time to go home, so they decided to return next day to check on the plant, which they named Tizarre as it was a bizarre plant.

Days passed by. It was the first day of Ramadan. They all decided to have combined dinner in the park along with their families. Hamzah’s mum cooked delicious shawarma rolls, harees and kunafah, while Ahmed and Khalid’s mum cooked lamb machboos and basbousa.

They found a comfortable place near the Tizarre plant. After dinner, Ahmed and Hamzah took some food to feed a cat near the plant.

‘Whoa, how did that happen? Tizarre

grew few inches again right before our eyes,’ said Hamzah.

This was when they realised that the plant grew in a strange way. They spent hours thinking about this unusual plant.

‘Whenever anyone does an act of kindness near the plant, it grows bigger immediately,’ said Ahmed.

‘So . . . if we care and help people and the environment, this plant will grow by Eid!’ said Khalid.

Khalid, Ahmed and Hamzah were very excited and discussed many ways to help the plant grow faster. They made more friends in the neighbourhood. Together, they made a list:

‘The blank space is for you to

add your ideas,’ said Ahmed to all the children who wanted to join to help in making the tree grow faster, including you.

‘Let us start with the Buddy activity,’ said

Khalid.

The idea was to become a Buddy and help another child in the neighbourhood learn something new. Ahmed was very good at drawing, Khalid loved reading and Hamzah was a good football player.

All the children wrote down their best skills and decided to meet at the park near the plant every evening at 4 PM to teach the skill. This way the plant grew faster and started producing more flowers. The children in the neighbourhood enjoyed learning new things and became more talented. Word spread around and children from other nearby areas started joining.

Later, they made a theme poem to sing in the park.

We love to share, We love to care, We love to be kind, We have a thoughtful mind.

They enjoyed pretending to be different characters from novels and even made a name for their group. They named the group ‘Chain Brain’.

They continued doing other activities in the list like donating meals, toys and whatever else they could.

After a month of fasting, it was the day of Eid ul Fitr. All the children were dressed in new clothes when they met in the park after Eid prayer.

‘WOW, LOOK AT THIS. The flowers have

started opening,’ said Khalid. They were still not sure what fruit it would produce.

The Chain Brain team watered the plant and continued doing acts of sharing and kindness. The plant grew into a beautiful tree.

It was a long wait. Two months seemed like a year. They looked around the tree and saw a ripe fruit. In the beginning, they were a bit disappointed since it did not turn out the way they expected it to be. Khalid thought that it was going to be a big shiny fruit while Ahmed thought it was going to look magical and glow in the dark. However, it turned out to be a dark

red and round-shaped fruit. It looked more like a regular red apple.

They were curious to know what it was and took it home. After they had a nice look at the fruit, they got to know that it was a special variety of the rumman, or pomegranate.

They took it to show to their parents and all of them tasted bits of the fruit. It tasted very good. They learned from their parents that rumman is a very nutritious fruit.

Months passed by and the children got busy with exams. One day, Ahmed was curious to know how big Tizarre had grown and went to the park.

‘OH NO, this is very upsetting.’ He noticed

that the plant had become shorter.

Next day, he called the Chain Brain team to come to the park. They all were expecting something good but were upset to see the plant had become shorter.

Something was very suspicious about this and they had to solve it. They knew it was going to be tough, so they made a list for research activity:

1. Why did the tree grow shorter? 2. Is there another plant with a similar growth behaviour? 3. What can we do to help the environment?

The Chain Brain team met the next day with the answers:

1. The tree became shorter because we stopped doing acts of kindness when we became busy. 2. We can only find out when we create a bigger chain around the world to do acts of kindness to people, plants and animals. 3. There are many ways to help. Each one of us should take a pledge to do our part.

They were very happy to see the tree growing bigger again. They decided that they would continue to take care of nature in every way possible.

There may or may not be similar plants anywhere, but all plants and animals in this world deserve kindness. Let us ‘Create a Chain’ to take care of our environment.