RATE YOUR SILENCE : ShahNawaz Nazir

RATE YOUR SILENCE 

ShahNawaz Nazir

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For a few moments, Yaseen was certain that something inside him had stopped—not his heart exactly, but something quieter and more essential, like the thread that tied him to the world had snapped without warning. He was standing on the Bund in Srinagar, watching the Jhelum move in its slow, indifferent way, when the feeling came over him, a sudden hollowness, as if he had been emptied out and left behind.

It wasn’t the first time.

He leaned against the rusted railing, pretending to check his phone, though there was nothing to check. No messages. No missed calls. Not even the usual forwarded prayers from his uncle. For a second, he thought of calling someone—anyone—but the thought dissolved before it could take shape.

Instead, he thought of his room back in Zagipora. The unmade bed. The damp patch on the ceiling that had been growing for months. The notebook filled with half-written poems he no longer believed in. He imagined someone entering that room after he was gone, flipping through the pages, trying to understand him, and failing.

He wondered who would claim to have known him best.

Probably Aaliya.

She would say they had been closer than they really were. She would tell people about the long walks they took by the orchards, how he once read her a poem under a walnut tree. She would leave out the silences, the way he had begun to withdraw, how their conversations had turned into careful negotiations rather than anything real.

And yet, she would cry. He knew she would cry.

That thought, oddly, comforted him.

“Are you all right?”

The voice startled him. An old man stood nearby, wrapped in a pheran, his face deeply lined, like the bark of an ancient chinar tree. He held a kangri close to his chest, though the day was not particularly cold.

Yaseen nodded too quickly. “Yes. Just… standing.”

“Standing is not always simple,” the old man said, as if this were a well-known fact.

Yaseen almost laughed, but didn’t.

They stood there together for a moment, watching the river. A shikara passed, its oar cutting the water with quiet precision.

“Tell me,” the old man said suddenly, “if your life is from one to ten, what number is it?”

Yaseen blinked. “What?”

“Your life. Your happiness. What number?”

It felt like a strange question, almost intrusive, but also harmless. Yaseen thought about it seriously, more seriously than he expected to.

“A five,” he said finally.

“Five,” the old man repeated, nodding. “Very popular number.”

“What about you?” Yaseen asked.

The old man smiled faintly. “Ah. I stopped counting.”

“That bad?”

“No,” he said. “That complicated.”

They fell into silence again.

Yaseen wanted to ask more, but the old man had already begun to walk away, merging into the slow rhythm of the street, as if he had always been part of it.

Left alone, Yaseen felt something return—not entirely, not completely, but enough to notice. A slight warmth in his chest, like the first ember catching in a dying fire.

He took out his phone again.

Still nothing.

For a moment, he considered messaging Aaliya. Just a simple “How are you?” Nothing dramatic. Nothing that would reopen anything. But his thumb hovered over her name and then moved away.

Instead, he opened his notes app.

He typed:

If I had to rate my silence,

it would not be five.

It would be something without a number,

something that keeps changing

depending on who remembers me.

He read it once, then locked his phone.

The Jhelum kept moving.

Yaseen straightened up, took a breath that felt slightly fuller than the last, and began to walk—not toward anything in particular, but not entirely without direction either.

And for now, that was enough.

(ShahNawaz Nazir is a Kashmir-based storyteller, columnist, author, and poet influenced by Sufi thought. His work explores themes of love, spirituality, and human emotion.He can be reached at nawazrather786@gmail.com)