Impacting Others, Happy or Brilliant, and Huggers

Impacting Others, Happy or Brilliant, and Huggers

Amir was never the kind of guy people noticed twice. He walked with his head low, avoided loud conversations, and preferred to spend his evenings reading old books at the corner tea shop near Saddar. His world was small, quiet — and safe.

But deep inside, Amir carried a storm.

He worked as a junior clerk in the education office. Paper-pushing, file-sorting, coffee-fetching — that was his life. He wasn’t particularly brilliant, nor did he consider himself happy. Just average. Quiet. Replaceable.

That changed on a Monday.

A new teacher walked in for her document attestation — Ms. Saba Rahim — full of energy, dressed in vibrant colors that clashed against the dullness of the office. Her voice was kind, her laugh contagious. She handed Amir her papers and smiled.

“You look like someone who reads poetry,” she said.

Amir blinked. “I do… actually.”

“I knew it,” she beamed. “You have that silence — the kind that hides whole libraries.”

It wasn’t flirtation. It was something else. Recognition.

Nobody had ever spoken to him like that before.

Over the next few weeks, Ms. Saba returned multiple times, sometimes for paperwork, sometimes just for chai. She’d talk about her students — orphans, runaways, troubled teens — and the tiny classroom she’d built in Lyari.

“They don’t need brilliance,” she’d say. “They just need someone to see them.”

Amir listened.

She spoke about one boy in particular — Tariq, a 14-year-old who hadn’t smiled in months. Abandoned, angry, silent. She said he hated school, hated people. But one day, after weeks of sitting at the back, arms crossed, he walked up to her and said, “Miss… I don’t hate you.”

And then he hugged her.

“A real hug,” she told Amir, eyes shining. “The kind that says, ‘Thank you for not giving up on me.’ I went home and cried.”

Amir smiled, touched. But deep down, he thought: People like Saba change lives. Not people like me.

He never expected to see Tariq in person.

But one Friday, Saba brought him to the office. “He wanted to see where I work,” she said. “And he needs to meet people who care.”

Tariq was quiet. Thin. Suspicious. But he shook Amir’s hand.

Amir surprised himself by asking, “What do you like to do?”

“Draw,” Tariq muttered.

“Ever thought of designing book covers?” Amir asked.

Tariq looked up, a little intrigued.

Saba winked at Amir. “See? You do impact people.”

It stirred something inside him. A seed.

That night, Amir did something crazy. He printed one of Tariq’s sketches — Saba had shared it with him via WhatsApp — and pasted it onto an old Urdu poetry book he had written but never published. He took it to a local printer and got five copies bound.

The next week, he handed them to Saba and Tariq.

The boy stared at the cover. His own art. His name, printed in small letters under Amir’s pen name. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would you do this?”

Amir shrugged. “You helped me finish something I was too scared to show the world. That deserves credit.”

Tariq hugged him.

Amir froze. It was awkward, brief, clumsy — but genuine.

It was the first hug Amir had received in years.

Something shifted in him after that. He started sitting outside more, smiling at strangers, offering book recommendations to chai customers. He wasn’t trying to be brilliant. Just... present. Real.

A few weeks later, Saba called him. “We’re having a small event — our first open mic night at the school. The kids are sharing poetry and art. We want you to speak.”

Amir laughed nervously. “I’m not—”

“Yes, you are,” she interrupted. “You’re the one who reminded a kid he could be more than his pain. That’s not just happy or brilliant. That’s human. That’s impact.”

He went. He spoke. He read two poems. Tariq introduced him on stage as “the man who saw me when I was invisible.”

And when Amir stepped down, all the children stood and clapped. Some hugged him. Some just smiled. But in that moment, Amir didn’t feel average anymore.

He felt enough.

Not everyone who changes the world stands on a podium or wins a prize.

Some simply sit with you, share chai, and whisper, “I see you.”

And sometimes, that’s all the change the world needs.

The story end kay mujay pata lagay kay yahatak story hay.