The Man Who Listened

In a narrow lane of the city, where the sun barely touched the ground by midday, stood a tiny shop no wider than a doorway. Its paint was peeling, the glass smudged with fingerprints and rain, but inside, everything was in order—neat rows of tiny gears, magnifying glasses, and clocks of all kinds, some ticking, some frozen in time. This was Arman’s world.

He was not a man of many words. In fact, he hadn’t spoken in years. But his hands moved with quiet purpose, and his eyes—deep, still, like the surface of a pond undisturbed—held a kind of understanding that needed no voice.

People came for their watches. They left with something else.

A woman once walked in, her shoulders heavy beneath a thin shawl. She placed a silver watch on the counter, its glass cracked, hands stuck at 4:17. “It was my husband’s,” she said. “He didn’t wake up one morning. The doctors said it was quick.”

Arman nodded. He picked up the watch, not with the urgency of a repairman, but with the care of someone handling a memory. He didn’t ask if she wanted it fixed right away. Instead, he gestured to the chair beside him—Sit. Take your time.

And so she did.

She told him about mornings with burnt toast, about how he always forgot their anniversary but remembered every year anyway with a single red rose. She laughed, then cried. Arman listened. Not the way people do when they’re waiting to speak, but truly listened—like he could hear the spaces between her words.

When she left, the watch still sat on the bench, not yet repaired. But her steps were lighter.

That was how it always was. The shop wasn’t just a place of broken mechanisms. It became a quiet harbor for broken hearts.

Arman hadn’t planned it this way.

Once, he had been a schoolteacher. He used to read stories aloud to children, his voice warm and steady, filling the classroom like sunlight. He had a wife who loved jasmine tea, and a son who believed in ghosts and superheroes in equal measure.

Then came the rain. A slick road. A truck that didn’t stop.

He woke up in a hospital bed, alone.

The doctors said he was lucky to survive. But the voice that had once read bedtime stories and called out names during roll call never returned. Not fully. It was as if grief had settled in his throat and refused to leave.

So he left teaching. Left the house full of photographs. Moved to the city, found this little space, and began fixing watches—small things that could be taken apart, understood, and put back together.

But people, he learned, weren’t like watches. You couldn’t just replace a spring or clean a gear and expect them to work again. Yet, in his silence, he discovered something powerful: the weight of being heard.

One evening, a boy appeared at the door, small and barefoot, holding a plastic watch with a broken strap. “It doesn’t tick anymore,” he said.

Arman took it, turned it over. No real mechanism inside—just a toy. But the boy’s fingers trembled as he handed it over.

Why does it matter? Arman signed, gently.

“It was my brother’s,” the boy said. “He’s gone. But I wear it so I remember him.”

Arman closed his eyes for a moment. In that child’s voice, he heard echoes of his own grief—raw, unguarded, still learning how to carry itself.

He cleaned the watch, fixed the strap with a piece of thread, and placed it back in the boy’s hand. As the child hugged him—small arms around his waist—something shifted inside him.

A whisper, soft as breath, escaped his lips: “Goodbye.”

Not to the boy. To the silence. To the years he’d spent hiding inside his sorrow.

That night, he took a piece of chalk and wrote on the glass of his shop window:

*“I fix watches. But I’m here if something else is broken too.”*

No signs. No slogans. Just words, plain and true.

People began to come—not just with broken timepieces, but with stories they’d carried too long. A student afraid of failing. A woman missing her homeland. An old man who just wanted someone to sit with him.

Arman offered tea in chipped cups, played old songs on a radio that crackled between stations, and listened—really listened.

He never gave advice. Never said, “You’ll be fine” or “Time heals.” He simply sat, present, as if to say: I see you. You’re not alone.

Years passed. The shop remained small. The city grew louder, faster, more distracted. But in that quiet corner, time moved differently.

One afternoon, a young man stepped in. He looked around, then said, “My mother came here once. She lost her father. She never forgot how kind you were. I came today… because I need that kindness too.”

Arman looked at him, nodded, and gestured to the chair.

Sit. I’m listening.

And so he was. Not because he had answers, but because he remembered what it was like to be lost—and how much it meant when someone simply stayed