(The True Face)

The True Face

In the heart of Lahore’s ancient walled city, where narrow lanes echoed with the cries of hawkers and the aroma of spices drifted through crumbling courtyards, lived an old man named Baba Kareem. He was a quiet, observant man with eyes that had seen too much. He sold handcrafted masks—ornate, colorful, mysterious. People came from far-off places to buy them. Some believed his masks had magic, others just found them beautiful. But no one knew why he made them. No one asked.

Until one rainy evening, when the city’s power flickered and a knock fell on Baba Kareem’s worn wooden door.

A young woman stood outside, soaked and shivering. She introduced herself as Alina—a journalism student from Karachi, curious about the old man who carved faces but never showed his own. His story was a whispered mystery among the bazaar’s shopkeepers, and Alina had come to find the “asaal wajah”—the real face behind the masks.

“I don't give interviews,” Baba Kareem said, starting to shut the door.

“I don’t need one,” she replied, bold. “Just the truth.”

Something in her eyes—innocence or perhaps the same burden he carried—made him pause. He let her in.

The room was dim, lit by oil lamps and the amber glow of forgotten time. Masks lined every inch of the walls—sad ones, joyful ones, masks of kings and beggars, saints and sinners.

“You want to know the truth?” he asked.

Alina nodded. Baba Kareem pointed to a dusty trunk in the corner. “It began with that.”

Inside were dozens of old photographs—black and white portraits of smiling people, many of them children, their eyes full of hope. Each photo had a small name scribbled on the back. Alina picked one up.

“Rafiq, 1981.”

“That was my son,” Kareem said. His voice cracked like old paper. “He was eight when the fire took him.”

Alina sat silently.

“I was a schoolteacher. My wife, Fareeda, and I lived in Multan. We were happy. I taught literature; she made clothes. Then one day, the school was attacked—sectarian violence. A fire broke out. The roof collapsed.”

He looked away, as if remembering scorched memories he never wanted to see again.

“Rafiq died in that fire. Along with eleven others. Children. My students.”

Alina whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he stood, walked to a mask on the wall—a child's face, smiling, painted in soft pastel hues—and took it down. “This was Rafiq. The first mask I ever made.”

Alina’s breath caught. “You… made masks of the children?”

“I tried to remember them, to preserve them. But also…” He paused. “I needed to find their real faces again. The fire burned them. All I had left were fading memories and blurred photos. I made masks to give them peace. To give me peace.”

“But why keep making them?” she asked. “These masks—many are not of children.”

Baba Kareem sighed. “Because I learned something after the fire. That people wear masks every day. They hide who they are. Their true reasons. Their ‘asaal wajah.’ I began to see through them. A beggar who once stole bread from my stall came to return it years later—he had become a police officer. A woman who spit at me for being a ‘mad old man’ came crying when her husband beat her. Behind every insult, every cruelty, there is a hidden face. A hidden reason.”

Alina sat still, absorbing it all.

“I began making masks not just to remember faces,” he continued, “but to reveal them. Not the physical features. But the truth behind them.”

She looked around. One mask looked angry, but if you stared long enough, you saw sorrow. Another looked proud but held a trace of shame in the eyes. Each mask was a story, a contradiction. A reflection of someone’s asaal wajah.

“You see,” he said, standing before a mirror. “Even I wear one. Not carved, but built by years of silence and grief.”

Alina slowly raised her phone to take a picture, but he gently pushed it down.

“Don’t capture this,” he said. “Not now.”

“Then what should I tell people?” she asked. “What do I write?”

He looked at her kindly. “Write that behind every mask—anger, laughter, strength—there is a story. Sometimes we judge too quickly. Sometimes we never ask, why? That is the real face of the world—not what we show, but what we hide.”

Alina left that night changed. Her article, titled Asaal Wajah: The Man Who Made Faces Speak, went viral—not because of scandal, but because of truth.

People began to visit Baba Kareem not to buy masks, but to tell their stories. A widow who had never spoken of her husband’s suicide. A father ashamed of abandoning his son. A child who blamed herself for her parents’ divorce.

And slowly, the walls of Baba Kareem’s shop filled not just with masks—but with confessions, with healing, with truth.

Years later, when Baba Kareem passed away peacefully in his sleep, he left a final note:

"The face you wear is not always the face you are. Find your asaal wajah, and help others find theirs. That is where peace begins."