Urban Fable | The Man Who Bought Silence
By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)
🌆 “In cities that never sleep, silence becomes a myth. But myths have a way of haunting the ones who chase them.”
He lived in a building where the walls were paper and the arguments next door were louder than prayers. Where motorcycles coughed under his window at 3 a.m. and neon signs blinked like cursed eyelids through his curtains. The man—quiet, sleepless, slowly unraveling—was tired of the city’s noise eating away at his sanity.
His name was Zarar, but it didn’t matter. In crowded places, names fade. What matters is the ache.
The Whisper Market
One evening, in an alley behind a crumbling cinema, Zarar found a man with a cracked briefcase and no shadow.
“You look tired,” the man said.
“You need what I sell.”
“What’s that?”
“Silence.”
Zarar laughed. “Earplugs?”
The man opened the briefcase. Inside were small glass vials, each glowing faintly—some blue, some amber, some pitch black.
“Each bottle contains a silence,” he said.
“Mountain silence. Mosque silence. Graveyard silence. The rarest one—Womb Silence—costs the most.”
Zarar bought the smallest bottle with what little he had.
When He Opened It
That night, for the first time in years, he slept.
No crying child.
No traffic.
No barking dogs.
Just a vast, velvet emptiness that held him like a mother who never rushed you to grow up.
He cried in his sleep.
And then he returned to the alley.
Greed for Quiet
He bought more.
A silence for each hour.
A bottle for each mood.
- When his boss screamed at him, he’d uncork “Forest Silence.”
- When his heart ached, he’d open “Midnight Desert Silence.”
- When the world felt too much, he used “Pre-Dawn Mosque Silence.”
But the bottles had side effects.
What Was the Cost?
Soon, he couldn’t hear laughter.
Or music.
Or the call to prayer.
Or his own name spoken with love.
The silence began to spread inside him—muting memories, muting emotions, muting meaning.
He didn’t feel peace.
He felt absence.
The Final Bottle
One day, he found the vendor gone. Only a dusty note was left on the wall:
“Silence is not the absence of noise. It is the presence of balance. You wanted escape. But silence, like sound, must be earned—not bought.”
A City Too Quiet
Now, they say, Zarar walks the city with silence dripping from his skin. Street dogs never bark at him. People forget they passed him. Even mirrors no longer reflect him.
He finally got what he wanted.
But silence, once swallowed whole, has a hunger of its own.
🌌 Why This Fable Matters
In a world of notifications, loud opinions, newsflashes, and social noise—many of us crave peace.
But real peace isn’t soundproof.
It’s being able to hear the world—and still remain rooted.
It’s balance, not erasure.
So the next time you beg for silence, ask yourself:
Are you fleeing the noise… or are you failing to face what it’s trying to teach you?
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Where metaphors breathe, silence speaks, and fables refuse to fade.
