“Shadows Behind Fareed”

Everyone in our neighborhood thought they knew Fareed.

He was the quiet man with salt-and-pepper hair and tired eyes who lived alone in the small, vine-covered house at the end of Rafiq Lane. Every morning, precisely at 7:15, he left for his walk—wearing the same brown sweater, even in spring. He rarely spoke unless spoken to, and even then, his answers were polite but brief, like he was guarding something deeper behind those long pauses.

Children called him “Ghost Fareed.” Adults just said he was “private.”

But none of us really knew him. Not until after he died.

The news came quietly one morning: Fareed had passed in his sleep. Natural causes, said the doctor. No relatives came forward. No will. Just the house—and the quiet it held.

Since no next of kin could be found, it was my father, a longtime neighbor and community trustee, who was asked to help sort through Fareed’s belongings. I went with him that Sunday afternoon, mostly out of curiosity. What could the old man have possibly left behind?

The house was cleaner than expected. Bare, even. One worn-out couch. A small wooden table with two mismatched chairs. A shelf of books—philosophy, mostly. The kitchen held exactly one plate, one fork, one glass.

But it was the back room that stopped us.

The door creaked open to reveal a different world.

Sketches—hundreds—pinned across every wall. Drawings of people, places, fleeting expressions captured in pencil and charcoal. Some were almost photo-realistic, others loose and full of movement. But what struck me most was the emotion—raw, haunting, tender. Faces I recognized. Neighbors. Shopkeepers. Even me.

I stood still, my stomach tightening. Fareed had drawn us all. Not just how we looked—but who we were when we thought no one was watching.

At the center of the room, on a makeshift easel, was one unfinished portrait. A woman with kind eyes, her face half-shaded. A note beneath it, in careful handwriting: "Zara. I never forgot."

“Who’s Zara?” I asked my father.

He was silent for a while, before sighing. “Zara was his fiancée. She died in a train accident... years ago. Before he moved here. They say he was never the same after that.”

I looked back at the drawing, then around the room. This wasn’t just a hobby. This was his sanctuary. A place where his grief had found language. Where he kept her alive—where he kept himself alive.

The man we knew—the quiet one in the brown sweater—was only the outline. These walls were his truth.

After that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. About how someone could live beside us for years, and yet remain unknown. How easy it was to assume a man had nothing to say just because he said little.

I asked the local community center if we could hold a small exhibition of his art. To my surprise, people came. Dozens. Some cried seeing how they had been captured on paper—vulnerable, thoughtful, human.

One sketch showed Mr. Hanif, the grocer, looking out of his window late at night. “He caught me thinking of my wife,” Mr. Hanif whispered, wiping his eyes. “No one knew I still do that.”

Another showed young Amina tying her shoelaces, tongue peeking from the side of her mouth in concentration. She giggled when she saw it. “I didn’t know anyone noticed that!”

Through his art, Fareed had spoken louder than words. He had seen us. All of us. And quietly, he had given each of us a kind of immortality.

But still, no one could tell us much about Zara.

Months later, while cleaning out the attic, I found a box labeled simply: "Letters Never Sent." Inside were pages and pages written to her—dated over twenty years. Long letters. Short notes. Observations. Memories. Some were angry. Others tender. All of them aching.

I read one aloud at the final night of his exhibit.

“Zara, today I saw a girl smile and it reminded me of you. Not the way you smiled for cameras, but the one you gave me when I brought you burnt toast and pretended it was gourmet. You laughed, and in that moment, I thought the world would never end. But it did, didn’t it?”

No one said a word when I finished. We just stood in silence, surrounded by his sketches, the shadows he left behind.

Fareed had always been there—but only in his absence did we finally see him.