We were the students

My eyes opened in a home where poverty was a norm, joy an occasional guest, comfort a distant dream, and hope was a faint light hidden in my mother’s prayers. Our home was a humble mud hut, its walls scarred by time, and its roof leaking during the rain as if even the sky wept at our condition. In the courtyard, my mother’s clay stove would glow, and the nearby clay pot was our last refuge against the summer heat.
Poverty was part of our clothing, but dignity and knowledge were the pillars of our character.
When we were young, the price of a dream meant only one thing that our mother wouldn’t buy milk for a few days just so we could pay our school fees. School the place where a fire was lit within us, where our desires found words, and where we were given hope for a future brighter than our past.
I still remember those days… when it was time for school and we wore the same uniform every day the one our mother had stitched with so much love for Eid, so we wouldn’t feel less than anyone else. That uniform wasn’t just cloth it was our shield of confidence.
A schoolbag? No, a bundle of dreams.
We didn’t have the fancy cartoon bags others had. We carried little cloth bundles sometimes made from our mother’s old shawl, sometimes from our father’s torn shirt. Inside were not just books but dreams. At the bottom, a worn-out slate, in the middle, reused notebooks from our sister, and at the top, a single pencil that had lasted for years.
Old Books, New Worlds
Our textbooks were never new. They had other children’s names written in them, which we would erase with ink and write our own. Those books were treasure chests for us — through them, we saw the world, lived through words, and befriended knowledge. Each worn-out page was a new mystery, and behind every torn cover lay a story that taught us something new.
Ink… The Picture of Our Hard Work
We made our own ink sometimes mixing black powder from old batteries with sugar, and sometimes scraping soot from pans. With that ink, we wrote words, and with those words, our destiny. That ink opened the door to knowledge, and on every line, we wrote our hopes.
Notebooks? Hand stitched pages
We gathered leftover pages from old notebooks of siblings and stitched them together using our mother’s needlework. Whatever we wrote on those pages wasn’t just homework it was our history: our hard work, our passion, our belief.
Lunch? A piece of Love wrapped in cornbread
When the stomach is empty, the path of knowledge feels the hardest. But the dry corn bread and a pinch of salt our mother packed for us were no less than a feast. We ate that bread at school, and every bite was filled with her love. That bread never left us hungry it was filled with care.
No Water, No Fan, No Bathroom… Yet Our Spirit Was Alive
We studied drenched in sweat during summer, wrote with trembling fingers in winter, and sat on wet ground during the rains. Yet we never complained, because the fire inside us was stronger than the hardships around us. Our school lacked facilities, but its students were rich in spirit.
We Were Those Students… Who Not Only Dreamt, But Chased Their Dreams
We never used our circumstances as an excuse. We didn’t cry when our sandals broke or stop when we had no schoolbag. We carved our own paths and touched our goals. When others slept, we spoke to the stars, praying for our future in the silence of night.
We Were Those Students… Who Lit the Lamps of Greatness in the Shadows of Obscurity
Our faces never appeared in the newspapers, but they still shine in the books of hard work. We touched great dreams with small steps. We walked long paths in torn sandals. We defeated deprivation and lit the flame of knowledge with our own blood.
We Turned Deprivation into Strength
When others said, “You can’t,” we whispered to our hearts, “We will.” When we didn’t have books, we borrowed them. When we couldn’t afford tuition, we studied ourselves and taught others too. When there was no path, we paved one with our dreams.
And Today?
Today, we are successful. We hold respectable positions in society and can provide every comfort to our children yet we haven’t forgotten those days… when we longed for a sip of water, when we collected coins to pay school fees, when we spent a whole year with a single pencil.
Today, when children complain about no Wi-Fi, a slow mobile, or not having a branded uniform, it breaks our hearts. We wish we could show them those days… when we searched for the light of knowledge without electricity, when we treated the teacher’s words as treasure without a mobile, and when we collected the pearls of learning drenched in sweat, without a fan.
In the End…
We were those students… who wrote their future on a slate, carved their fate with homemade ink, and measured the path to success in broken sandals. We turned deprivation into the ladder of achievement. If we share light today, its roots are deep in those dark nights when we slept on pillows of poverty wrapped in the blanket of dreams.
We were those students whom time tried to erase, but we wrote our names in history with our own hands.
We were those students who had nothing, but had the passion to become everything.
We were those students who, even today, when we see a slate, don’t bow our heads… we lift them high with pride.