The exam invigilator handed me the paper and I sighed with frustration as I noticed how thick it was. I had been studying until very late at night and my eyes felt swollen and heavy and my mind sluggish. Just then, my stomach rumbled loudly — and the sound seemed to reverberate in the silence of the examination hall — I regretted skipping my breakfast in the morning.

I reluctantly laboured through the first few questions. Not being in the habit of writing with a pen or pencil, my hand seemed to stubbornly resist any command my brain sent to it. I struggled to remain awake for the next two hours, then turned the paper and reached the last question.

My mouth suddenly went dry and a knot tightened in my stomach. All the air seemed to vanish from the room. I was not prepared for this. How do you prepare for this sort of thing anyway?

We had to write a story. In the tense atmosphere of the examination hall, with a mind that was as if drugged, sitting in front of a panel of extremely stern-looking invigilators and a clock ticking maliciously behind me, I had to write a story.

And I had only 40 minutes left.

I reached down for my water bottle and frantically took two gulps of water. I could not afford to panic — that would be fatal. I forced myself to take deep breaths and tried to focus my attention on the page in front of me.

The topic I had to write on was “A brilliant idea”. Four hundred words… The black letters inked on the formidable looking page seemed to wriggle and dance mockingly before my eyes. I shook my aching head to clear my thoughts.

Fighting back the wave of despair and hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm me, I rested my head on the desk and forced my mind to think. It hurt badly.

I desperately thought of all the books I had ever read and all the movies and television programmes I had ever watched.

I suddenly had a sharp, bitter taste in my mouth and I realised I had been chewing the back of my pencil. I cursed myself, the pencil, the invigilator, exams as a whole and all the students around me who were filling in pages and pages with writing. The scraping sounds of their pencils seared through my head like stabs of pain.

‘A brilliant idea’…what kind of title was this? If only, I thought hopelessly, I had a ‘brilliant idea’ for this story I would be able to…

And then I had it. A brainwave. It came to me like divine inspiration. Finally I had ‘a brilliant idea’. I heaved a sigh of relief and, smirking, spat the remains of the pencil from my mouth.

I carefully wrote the title “A brilliant idea” on the top middle of the page and started writing:

“The exam invigilator handed me the paper and I sighed in frustration as I noticed how thick it was...”

I prayed and hoped fervently for an A+.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 7th, 2017