Wafi and the Magnifying Glass Morning

On the morning of his sixth birthday, Wafi unwrapped a small, heavy box from his grandfather. Inside, nestled in a bed of soft blue cloth, was a magnifying glass.

It had a round glass lens as clear as water and a handle made of smooth, dark wood. When Wafi held it up and looked through it, his grandfather's eye suddenly became enormous, with a twinkly brown middle and lots of tiny wrinkles all around.

Wafi shrieked with laughter. "Jiddo! Your eye is as big as a plate!"

"That is what a magnifying glass does," said Grandpa Fawzi, chuckling. "It makes small things look big. With this, you can see the secret world that hides all around us. The world of tiny things."

Wafi held the magnifying glass close to his chest. "It's mine," he said. "All mine."

His little sister, Sidra, was sitting on the rug beside him. She was four, and she had pigtails that bounced when she talked. "Can I look?" she asked, reaching out.

Wafi pulled it away. "No," he said. "It's my birthday present. You might drop it."

Sidra's face crumpled, and she went to sit with their mother. Grandpa Fawzi watched, but he didn't say anything. He just raised his bushy eyebrows a little.

Wafi didn't notice. He was already running out into the garden.

The garden was bright with morning sunshine. Wafi knelt down on the path and held the magnifying glass over a crack between two stones.

And there it was. The secret world.

An ant was walking along the crack. Without the glass, it was just a tiny black dot. But through the glass, Wafi could see everything. Its shiny body was divided into three round parts, like beads on a string. It had six thin legs that moved in a careful pattern. On its head were two bendy feelers, tapping the ground as if it were feeling its way in the dark. It was carrying a crumb that was bigger than its own head.

"Wow," breathed Wafi.

He moved on to a leaf. Through the glass, the leaf wasn't just green anymore. It was covered in a pattern of tiny lines, branching out from the middle like the roads on a map, like the branches of a tree, like the lines on the palm of his own hand.

He looked at a flower. Its yellow middle was full of tiny golden grains, like sugar sprinkles. A bee had dusted them all over its fuzzy legs.

He looked at a pebble. It wasn't plain grey after all. It had sparkly specks in it, white and pink and silver, like the night sky.

He looked at his own finger. There were swirly lines on the tip, going round and round like a tiny maze.

"Everything is amazing," Wafi whispered. "Everything!"

He wanted to tell someone. He looked up. His mother was hanging washing on the line. His father had gone to the market. Grandpa Fawzi was sitting on the bench under the vine, reading his newspaper.

And Sidra was sitting on the back step, all alone, poking at the ground with a stick.

Wafi looked through his magnifying glass at a dewdrop on a blade of grass. Inside the drop, he could see a tiny, upside-down picture of the whole garden: the house, the tree, the sky. It was the most magical thing he had ever seen.

"Look at this!" he called out. But nobody heard him.

Wafi looked at the dewdrop again. It was still magical. But somehow, it didn't feel quite as exciting when there was no one to share it with. He thought about how fun it would be to see someone else's face light up the way his had.

He looked over at Sidra again. She was drawing circles in the dust, very slowly, with her head down.

Wafi felt a funny, uncomfortable feeling in his tummy. He remembered how he had pulled the magnifying glass away. He remembered how her face had crumpled.

He stood up and walked over to the step.

"Sidra," he said.

She didn't look up.

"Sidra, do you want to see the secret world?"

Now she looked up. Her eyes were still a little bit wet. "You said I might drop it."

Wafi sat down next to her. "I'll show you how to hold it," he said. "Hold the handle tight, like this. And keep your other hand underneath, just in case. Then you can't drop it."

He placed the magnifying glass gently in her hands and helped her wrap her fingers around the wooden handle. "Now look at the dewdrop," he said, pointing. "Get close. Closer."

Sidra leaned down. She held the glass over the dewdrop. For a moment, she was very quiet.

Then she gasped so loudly that Grandpa Fawzi looked up from his newspaper.

"There's a house inside it!" she squealed. "Wafi, there's our whole house inside the water! And it's upside down!"

Wafi laughed. Her face had lit up exactly the way he had imagined, like a lamp being switched on. And seeing it made him feel even happier than seeing the dewdrop himself.

"Come on," he said, jumping up. "I'll show you the ant with the giant crumb. And the sparkly pebble. And the maze on your finger!"

All morning long, Wafi and Sidra explored the secret world together. They took turns with the magnifying glass. They found a ladybug and counted its spots, seven in all. They found a feather and saw that it was made of thousands of tiny hairs, all zipped together. They found a snail shell with a swirl like a staircase.

Sidra found things that Wafi hadn't noticed. She found a tiny green caterpillar hiding under a leaf, and a seed with wings like a little helicopter. "Two explorers find twice as much," said Wafi.

When their mother called them in for lunch, they ran inside together, talking over each other. "Mama, did you know leaves have roads on them?" "Mama, a feather has a zip!"

Grandpa Fawzi folded his newspaper and smiled. "So," he said to Wafi, "how do you like the world of tiny things?"

Wafi thought about it. "It's amazing," he said. "But it's even more amazing when you share it."

He looked at Sidra, who was holding the magnifying glass up to her bowl of soup, staring at the tiny bubbles.

"After lunch," said Wafi, "it's your turn to choose where we look first."