The Naughty Diary
Written By Jamal Al Shehei and Mohammad Khamis

Chapter One: Who Am I

Hi! My name is Faisal, but my friends call me Fasool. I’m in the seventh grade and I love adventures, but I always seem to get in trouble because of them. The school agreed with my parents that my punishment should be “reading”: I have to read a book a week and then give a report about it, to make sure that I actually read the book. And every time I get in trouble, my parents add more punishments.

I love my mom and dad; I really do.

I also love my sister, Mimi, even though most of the time, I think her hobby is spying on me and telling our parents everything bad that I did. I love driving her insane.

My best friends are Mansour, who is obsessed with video games. My dad says that he’s going to be violent because of all the violent video games he plays. Jamal likes to spend his time at the elderly center with his father; this makes him sound like an old man himself. Hussein is a real brat. He thinks all of our problems can be solved by money.

Chapter Two: Welcome to Our Home

the early morning, I was captaining a magnificent ship that was sailing east. The waves were chasing the ship, and the sound of the water lapping brought a smile to my face. Suddenly, a huge rock collided with the ship, and I was drowning. The water seeped into my lungs, and I could no longer breathe.

I closed my eyes.

When I looked around, I noticed that I was on a strange island, filled with people the size of my finger, just like the people in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. These little people were stern, their eyebrows knit together and their small swords and weapons pointed at me.

As they attempted to kill me, I laughed and giggled, as the small needles did nothing to me. In the distance, I heard Mom calling me.

“Faisal . . . Faisal. Wake up, you have school,” she said.

My room was cold from the air conditioner, and I was wrapped up in heavy blankets to keep me warm. The king of sleep commanded me stay in bed. I don’t want to go to school, I thought to myself. Instantly, an idea popped into my head: I was going to pretend that I was sick.

I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder as she said, “Faisal . . . Faisal. Wake up sweetie, you have to go to school.”

I placed my hands on my stomach and pretended to be sick. “Mom,” I groaned, “my belly hurts. I don’t think I can go to school.”

I opened my eyes and gave her a very sad look. My angelic mother sighed, rubbed my forehead, and said, “It’s all right. Just rest, sweetie.”

I couldn’t believe what my ears were hearing! My mom is the type of person who would never let me be absent, no matter the excuse.

She gave me a warm smile, her eyes filled with sympathy. As she walked out of the room, she sighed and said, “No problem, I’ll just call the school and tell them that you won’t be joining their field trip to the mall today.”

I jumped out of my bed and caught up to my mother. “Is there really a field trip to the mall today?”

She didn’t reply, so I added, “My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore. Thank God.”

Mom stopped dead in her tracks and gave me a scorching glare. “That means you can go to school?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

She replied coolly, “Then go get changed.”

I dashed into my room to get ready. As I was picking an outfit, I heard her say, “Oh, by the way, your field trip is next week. Not today.” Gloom hung over me like a dark cloud as I went to the bathroom to dress.

I don’t understand why we need to go to school every day. Why can’t we go to school once a week and just mess around the rest of the week? Why do we need to go to school when we have Google? I mean, of course, I have all of my friends at school, but then there’s all the classes, and homework . . . I just wish that I could grow up faster and get out of school. I’m really thankful Mom didn’t punish me today by forcing me to read another book. I can still remember the day my parents and my school agreed on punishing me by having me read books every time I did something wrong. I hate reading.

I’m still reading Gulliver’s Travels and it’s the first punishment book I received. I haven’t finished, and not because the book isn’t good--it’s a great book, but I really don’t like to read. I prefer the movie version to the book. And once I’m done reading it, I’ll have to summarize it and write a gigantic book report about it, explaining what I’ve learned from it as well.

Chapter Three: At School With My Friends

Everyone was already at school; my closest friends that I can always count on-- Mansour, Jamal, and Hussein--were there as well. They were all talking about the newest Spiderman movie.

Mansour said, “My big brother Sultan saw it. He said that it was really awesome, and it had so much action!”

I suggested that we all go see it that afternoon, but Jamal said he couldn’t because he had to visit the elderly center with his dad. Again. “You spend more time with old people than you do with us,” I remarked.

Hussein butted in and said, “Don’t forget that it makes him younger.”

Furious, Jamal had to defend himself. He explained to us how old people are very wise and knowledgeable, and he finds these visits to them very useful and educational.

Mockingly, Mansour said, “What wisdom? Old people don’t even know how to handle a mobile.” Everyone except Jamal laughed at Mansour’s joke.

We all decided that we were going to see the movie after school tomorrow. As we were walking to class, Jamal reminded me of some homework that I forgot to do because I was too busy reading my punishment book. Okay . . . I wasn’t really reading. I was playing on Mansour’s old PlayStation (that I borrowed) and was pretending to read.

Thankfully, nobody found out, not even my devil of a sister. The reason I borrowed his was because my parents took mine away a long time ago because I wasn’t doing my homework.

“Hey! Faisal!” Mansour screamed in my face. “If you haven’t done your homework, Mr. Soud will kill you!”

Hurriedly, I asked them to help me with my homework so I could finish it before the bell rang and we all had to go to class and hand in the assignment. It turned out we didn’t have enough time to sit down and do all the work. “Don’t you have someone in your class that finished the homework?” Mansour asked.

Oh, right. Samir. The smartest guy in class, who just so happens to be afraid of my group because we always like to embarrass him in front of everyone.

We scouted the school looking for him, and when we found him, he was sitting alone with his nose stuck in a book, as usual. I don’t understand how people read. I just don’t.

“Hey Samir,” I greeted him. “So, I didn’t do my homework. You can either do mine for me, or you can just let me copy off yours.”

At first Samir refused. Mansour threatened to beat him up if he didn’t do my homework. Yeah, he likes to solve a lot of problems with fighting. When that didn’t work, Hussein suggested that he sell his homework to us. Again, that tactic failed to work on him. “If you don’t do his homework,” Jamal huffed, “then I’ll make everyone in this school rip your homework apart.”

That seemed to do the trick. Samir took my homework and did it as if his life depended on it. The homework was easy, but I just don’t want to spend my time and energy working on it.

I walked into class, and five minutes later I was called into the principal’s office. When I arrived, I noticed Samir sitting there, so I knew why I was called in. In short order, Mansour, Jamal, and Hussein joined me too.

Well, I guess I’ll have to make up some lie to get me out of this.

Chapter Four: Confess At Home

I was really scared the entire ride home. When I rang the doorbell, my sister Mimi opened the door and greeted me. “Mom and Dad are angry at you,” she sang. “Dad swore that he would give you the worst punishment of your life! Ha-ha-ha!”

I asked her to leave me alone and tried to go to my room. I didn’t want to go to my parents. Not now, not yet. But as I placed one foot inside my room my dad yelled, “Fasool! Fasooli! Come here!”

“I can’t!” I screamed. “I’m in my room. Um . . . I’m too busy!” With anger lacing every word my dad replied, “I WANT TO SEE YOU. NOW.”

I walked to the living room as if I had bricks tied to my ankles. Mimi was playing idly with her dolls; she even gave me a smile as I passed by her.

My dad asked about the “silliness” that happened. He said that a nice and good person never bullied people into getting what they want. It was simply against the rules of humanity. My mother shook her head back and forth as she looked at me. The entire time they were lecturing me, I kept my face down, my cheeks flushed scarlet because of my shame.

“Faisal,” my dad commanded. “Look me in the eye.” I looked him in the eye.

“What were you doing in your room if you were not doing your homework?”

At first, I thought about lying. But then I remembered Mimi coming into the room and seeing me playing with the PlayStation. Softly, I sighed and confessed. “I was on the PlayStation.”

Immediately after I ‘fessed up, Mimi dashed up the stairs and came back with the PlayStation.

Dad’s eyes turned a disgusting shade of red, and his ears began to steam up. I might have seen some fire coming from his tongue, too. “Where did you get this?”

At the same time Mom said, “Didn’t we take away your PlayStation?”

Mimi giggled. Man, she was really enjoying watching me suffer.

“I borrowed Mansour’s,” I said sheepishly.

“Oh,” my father belched. “Your friend Mansour decided to give you his PlayStation?” Why did it sound like a question?

“Wait,” Mom pointed a finger at me. “Isn’t he the kid solves everything with violence because he plays violent games on his PlayStation?”

I nodded my head in agreement.

“See?” Dad threw his arms up. “The more you play on your PlayStation, the more problems and complications you have in life.” He proceeded to tell me that I wasn’t prohibited from playing video games, but that I was prohibited from playing video games that had violence in them. My punishments were: apologize to Samir, no video games for two months, I had to finish the stupid book about stupid tiny people, and I wasn’t allowed to go to the theater.

Great. This was exactly the grounding that I had been waiting for. No games (or fun), no theater, no going out for a week, and on top of that, I still had to read a book and write a report on it. Awesome.

Chapter Five: My Sister Mimi After School

As I was walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water, I overheard my little sister talking to Sheika, Mansour’s little sister, about my punishment and grounding. She told her everything, including how she found the PlayStation in the closet. “I’m really good at finding things,” she boasted.

I thought of ways to get back at my sister--revenge plans, if you will. Then an idea popped into my head. I would hide the doll that she absolutely loves. It’s the doll that she couldn’t sleep without since she was a little baby. Quickly, I hid the doll in the storage closet and returned to the kitchen as if nothing had happened.

I heard Mimi laughing with her friend as she described how I looked during my lecture--how my eyes were brimming with tears and how my hands trembled. “You should tell your parents about what Mansour did at school with my brother.”

That was it. I lost it. I stood in front of her, demanding that she shut up. But it only made her burst into a fit of laughter. “Poor brother,” she wheezed, “Dad locked you up! Ha-ha-ha!”

“Shut up!” I raged. “Shut up or—”

“Mom! Faisal wants to hit me!” She cut me off, and went running toward my mom. “Dad, Faisal isn’t doing what he’s supposed to do.”

I ran to my room and closed the door before she got parental backup.

Chapter Six: Mimi’s Doll

I was in my room, reading Gulliver’s Travels after I had finished doing my homework. It was a fun story, filled with fantastical adventure and mysteries, but I don’t know what I gained from this novel, except some entertainment. All I learned was that in some situations someone is big, and in other situations, someone is small, both physically and mentally.

All of a sudden, as I was minding my own business, I heard Mimi wailing and crying over her doll, Susan. I knew she was going to come into my room, so when she finally tried, the door was locked, and she couldn’t get in.

“Faisal,” she begged. “Fasool . . . you better open up this door.”

I opened up the door a tiny bit, and she pushed the door forward and bolted into my room. Like a wild beast, she tore through my closet and drawers, throwing my stuff everywhere while she cried for her doll. “Faisal,” she said accusingly. “Stop messing around and give me back my doll.”

I denied knowing anything about the doll, but she wasn’t buying it.

A while later, she called in our parents and they asked her what was wrong. She pointed a finger at me and told them that I stole her doll.

“Did you hide her doll?” Mom questioned, her hands folded against her chest.

My dad’s eyes were burning bright. “Faisel,” my dad warned. “Before you answer, you must know that if you lie, and we find out that you lied, you will be in deep trouble.” Dad didn’t like us lying. Even if telling the truth meant getting into some serious problems, I still had to tell the truth.

But right now, telling the truth would result in a lot of consequences, and I didn’t want that. So I lied. “I haven’t seen Susan. And I didn’t hide her.”

“Liar! Liar!” Mimi shouted.

“Mimi,” my father said sternly, “don’t accuse your brother of lying. This family is built on truth, not on lies. Tell him you’re sorry.” He patted her shoulder.

My heart leapt with joy. HA! Finally, I got revenge on little Mimi!

“Sorry,” she said, with her head ducked down.

“I accept your apology,” I said, gloating inwardly.

Then Dad ordered me to go to sleep and told Mimi that we’d all search for her doll tomorrow.

After everyone filed out of the room, I pretended to be asleep until I was sure everyone in the house was in a deep slumber.

I decided to go to the storage room and change the location of the doll; that way, when they did find it, it would look like I never stole it in the first place! I went to the storage room and turned on the lights and found Susan. When I opened the door to finally get out of the room, I found my parents standing there, anger on their faces. With my dumb reaction time, I said, “I found Mimi’s doll!”

Chapter Seven: School - The Big Apology

I stood up in front of the entire class and apologized to Samir in a loud voice. Then I kissed his head and shook his hand and asked for his forgiveness. Thankfully, he forgave me. Hussein, Mansour, and Jamal were forced to do the same thing.

Last night, I didn’t sleep very well. After my parents found me, my dad said a few words that really made me think--things that kept me tossing and turning and wouldn’t let me go to sleep. He told me that God didn’t love liars, and that lying would send me to hell. I went crying to them and said that I was sorry, but he said that I should say sorry to God and not him. After asking for forgiveness from God, I went to Mimi and apologized for my wrongdoings.

The consequences for this act were no allowance, wash the dishes for an entire week, throw out the trash every single night, and clean my and Mimi’s rooms. In the morning, Mimi was hugging and kissing her doll over breakfast. When I went to kiss her head and apologize, she just continued laughing as if this entire thing was a joke. It just seems like today was the day of forgiveness and apologies.

My dad was still pretty angry at me, I mean, he didn’t tell me so, but by the way he wasn’t talking to me, I could tell. Sometimes, silence can be the loudest thing. But he was still goofing around with Mimi, and when I told him sorry, he just told me the story of the boy who cried wolf. “Someone who keeps on lying,” my dad explained, “is someone who is hard to trust.”

As soon as my friends and I were done making things right with Samir, Mansour whispered, “We’re gonna beat him up after school for making us do that.”

“No,” I hissed. “We can’t just hit him. That will get us in even more trouble. My dad says that hitting is weakness because you don’t have the brains to think of something else. He also warned me about the violent games on PlayStation.”

“Oh,” Mansour waved his hand in annoyance, “those games aren’t violent. Besides, they’re just games. Nothing really happens.”

I was hungry, but I didn’t have any money to buy food. “I wish I hadn’t made those mistakes.”

Chapter Eight: Hospital

I learned from Pippi Longstocking that school isn’t the only place to learn things. I learned valuable friendship lessons in my social life; I learned how to handle a bratty sister outside of school. Again, useful things I learned.

At home, Mimi continued ruining her room, because she knew that I had to go and clean it later on. Sometimes, she even stayed there, watching me clean it and then messed it up again. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t.

When I was in my room, minding my own business, I heard Mimi calling me, but I pretended that I didn’t hear her. “Faisal,” she barged into my room, “your friend Mansour is in the hospital.”

She heard this from his little sister. Poor Mansour, he bought some sandwiches from a restaurant that everyone said not to go to, so he got food poisoning. Even the health center told us not visit the place, since some restaurants and sandwich makers are not licensed.

I ran to my dad and asked him if I could visit Mansour, since my dad was always urging us to do the right things, such as visiting people in hospitals. My dad agreed, so we went to the hospital.

When we arrived, we saw Hussein and Jamal, along with Sheika and Mansour’s parents. The nurses let my father and me inside my friend’s room. Mansour looked very tired. His face was flushed and sweaty and he lay there motionless aside from the movement of his chest every time he breathed. My dad went outside and talked to Mansour’s parents to ask them about everything that happened.

I went and talked to my friends and Sheika. “So,” I sat down and fiddled with my fingers, “as I was coming here, my dad told me a story. A man went to a doctor of medicine and stayed with him for a long time. Then the man asked for some advice. The doctor said that when you visit a patient, you shouldn’t sleep or stay with them for very long.”

I glanced at Mansour and he shook his head. “You guys leave. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

We all made sure that was what he truly wanted, and when it was, we left his room and found a place where all of us could play. We all decided on playing ‘Hide and Go Seek.’

Jamal, Sheika, and I went and hid, while Hussein started counting. We continued playing the game and taking turns. All of us were laughing and smiling and running around the hospital like crazy people. We were so loud, the patients even complained about us. That was when my dad got angry at us and decided that it was time for me to go back home. As expected, he gave me a lecture about disturbing people who were going through a rough time.

I don’t understand old people. My friends and I didn’t do anything bad. We were just playing around, having some fun. When I went home, my dad told my mom what happened and all she said was, “Sick people need some peace and quiet.”

Chapter Nine: Theater

Finally, me being grounded was over. My parents allowed me to go the theater with my friends, but when I got there, we had some problems. First, all the movies that I wanted to watch, they had already watched. So I was forced to watch the latest Harry Potter movie that they had in the theater. The movie really inspired me to pick up Tarzan, the novel. Then I remembered that there was a movie, so after I was done reading the book, I could go ahead and watch the movie as a little reward!

“I have an idea!” I belted out in the cinema. The people watching were angry and started to shush me.

“I have an idea!” my friends said, mocking me. I laughed with them. We kept on laughing and laughing until two security guards came and told us to get out of the theater since we were disturbing the audience.

When we were escorted out, we came face to face with the owner of the theater. “You,” he pointed a finger at all of us, “are idiot children who don’t know how to be quiet. It’s rude to disturb other people’s experience at the theater.”

We all knew what we did was wrong, and we were all apologizing over one another, making it sound like gibberish.

“No. You are no longer welcome here for a month.”

“A MONTH!” Mansour got very angry. “Come on, let’s fight this out, man to man. Right now, outside.”

The person in charge laughed and glanced at the security guards who escorted us. Mansour was really furious now. He grabbed the man’s hands and tried dragging him outside so he could talk to him in private. “Security!” the man screamed. “I need their pictures taken and handed out to every single worker here. Make sure they are not allowed entrance for a month.”

My friends and I all agreed that we wouldn’t tell each other’s parents when we arrived at my house. When we entered my room, they asked me what I meant when I screamed, “I have an idea!”

“Well,” I sat on my bed, “I had an idea. Instead of reading a book, I could watch the movie version of it and write a report on that. I mean, they’re basically the same thing.”

Chapter Ten: Taxi

I bought the Tarzan movie and watched it. I didn’t learn anything from it, but I had to write something about it. So I wrote that it taught me to protect the ones I loved.

My friends and I all agreed to go to the zoo. Hussein came to my house by taxi. I asked him what happened to their car, and he said that the light stopped working. I shrugged and went to Jamal, and then we all arrived at Mansour’s house. When we picked him up, I noticed that his hair was messy and his clothes were very wrinkly and unkempt. As he got in the taxi, he was screaming and we asked him why.

His reply? “I was fighting with my older brother,” as if it was no big deal.

“That’s wrong,” Jamal said. “He’s your older brother. You have to respect him.”

Angrily, Mansour replied, “He doesn’t respect me, so I don’t respect him. He’s the one who started hitting me.”

I begged Mansour to be quiet and forget about the entire thing. Hussein suggested that Mansour buy his older brother a present to show how sorry he was. Mansour strongly refused and again, I urged everyone to change the subject.

To get his mind off his brother, I whispered to Mansour, “Hey. What if we leave the taxi and don’t pay?”

Softly, he replied, “That’s going to be a fun adventure.”

I forced Mansour to tell Jamal (who was sitting next to him) about the plan, and I told Hussein, who was sitting shotgun. At first, Jamal wasn’t the biggest fan of the idea. Thanks to Mansour’s convincing skills, though, Jamal final agreed on joining us.

The taxi driver parked us in front of the zoo, and as I was getting out of the taxi, I told them all to get out and start running. They ran, and I dashed behind them, trying to catch up. When I turned around, I saw the taxi driver chasing us, with a monstrous expression on his face. It was definitely something that we weren’t expecting. It made us all frightened.

My friends and I all ran into the Jumeirah Zoo and hid behind the large elephant cages until the driver finally left.

We all got up from our crouching hiding position and made a turn. There, right in front of us, were policemen, and we were caught.

Chapter Eleven: Police

Running away from the taxi driver was one of the stupidest adventures that I had ever had, and it was easily the most regrettable.

The policemen took us down to the police center. There, they interrogated us about the reasons we ran away from the driver, but none us said anything. We didn’t have an answer, and even poor Jamal, the guy who spends time with old people, was silent and had tears running down his face. I saw that Mansour was crying too, and before I knew it, I was crying alongside them. But I wiped my tears away quickly.

“You fellows know why you’re here, right?” a police officer asked.

Jamal was the first to speak up. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We just wanted to have some fun.”

“Some fun at a taxi driver’s expense! This unfortunate man left his country and family and came here to make a living, and instead of respecting him and making his life easier, you ran off and wasted this man’s time.” Just then, the phone rang and we heard someone say, “Throw them in jail. They’re criminals and they deserve it.”

I was the first to start crying loudly. “Please don’t throw us in jail,” I cried.

“It isn’t you boys that are being throw in jail,” the officer clarified. “But that doesn’t forgive your actions. You ran away from the taxi driver without paying the fee. That’s the same thing as stealing.”

My parents came in, then Mansour’s parents, then Hussein’s and Jamal’s. They were all very cross with us. The officer commanded us to get out of his office. As we were all walking out with our parents, I saw the taxi driver sitting on one of the wooden chairs, and he was looking at us with anger and deep resentment.

They called the taxi driver into the officer’s room. We were called in next. Inside, he asked if there was anything we would like to say. Together, my friends and I all said, “Sorry,” and looked down at the floor bashfully.

The police officer made us all apologize individually and shake the driver’s hand to show peace between us. When it was my turn, I realized that it was a very difficult thing to do--you know, looking someone you wronged dead in the eye. After that sad scene was over, the officer made us all sign a paper that showed that we knew what we did was wrong, and that if we ever did something against the law, no matter how big or small, we would be sent to jail. My dad thanked the taxi driver, who, fortunately, decided not to press charges. Because of that, we weren’t in a huge problem with the law and government. Again, we thanked the driver and left the building.