The Rain Collector

It had been raining for three days straight.

The kind of slow, patient rain that softened everything — the air, the roads, the people.

In a small neighborhood at the edge of the city, Faisal, a retired schoolteacher, stood outside his house holding a tin bucket. Every few minutes, he’d glance up, letting the rain fall on his face before it slid into the bucket.

To most, it seemed strange. To Faisal, it was sacred.

For years, he’d collected rainwater — a habit that began when his wife, Saba, was alive.

She used to laugh at him for it. “You can’t store rain, Faisal. It belongs to the sky.”

But he always said, “Maybe. But some drops carry memories.”

Now, three years since she passed, he still collected it.

He said it helped him feel close to her — the way she’d dance barefoot during monsoon season, or the way her laughter used to echo through their small home.

Neighbors knew him as the rain collector. Children would wave when they saw him outside with his bucket. Some adults found it odd, but no one questioned it anymore.

One afternoon, during a particularly heavy downpour, a young woman from next door — Aisha — came rushing out to rescue her clothes from the line. She slipped on the wet tiles and dropped everything in a messy heap.

Faisal hurried over. “Careful! The rain can be a trickster.”

She laughed, embarrassed. “You’d think I’d know how to handle it by now.”

He smiled kindly. “No one truly does. The rain teaches us every time.”

From that day, Aisha began talking to Faisal more often.

She was in her late twenties, newly divorced, trying to start over. Her smile hid exhaustion; her voice carried both strength and sadness.

One evening, as the sky rumbled again, she found him sitting under the small awning outside, watching the rain.

“Why do you collect it?” she asked, curious.

He chuckled softly. “To remember.”

“Remember what?”

He pointed at the bucket. “The sound. The way it feels when you stop running from it. My wife loved this — the quiet after the storm.”

Aisha smiled faintly. “She must’ve been a beautiful person.”

“She was peace,” he said simply.

They sat in silence for a long time — the rain tapping gently on metal roofs, the air thick with petrichor and unspoken things.

Over the next few weeks, she started joining him during the rains.

At first, she stayed silent, just sitting there, holding her own small cup to catch raindrops.

Then, slowly, she began to share — her fears, her heartbreak, her loneliness.

Faisal listened. He didn’t offer advice, only presence.

Once, she asked, “How do you stop hurting?”

He looked at the sky. “You don’t. You just learn to make peace with the sound of it.”

Months passed. The monsoon began to fade.

One day, Aisha knocked on his door with a small clay pot.

“I made this,” she said shyly. “For the rainwater.”

Faisal smiled, eyes bright. “You’ve learned well.”

Together, they placed it outside. When the first drops hit the clay, they both just stood there — no words, no explanations.

Just peace.

As the years went by, the two of them became an inseparable part of the neighborhood’s rhythm.

Children would bring small bowls during rainfall, collecting their own “peace water,” as Aisha called it.

The laughter that once belonged to Saba now echoed again — through Aisha’s gentle smile, through the children, through the steady rhythm of rain meeting earth.

And though Faisal grew older and slower, he never missed a rain.

Each drop, he believed, carried forgiveness — for lost time, for grief, for everything left unsaid.

When he finally passed away one spring morning, Aisha found his last note on the table beside an empty tin bucket.

It read:

“Peace isn’t about keeping the rain away.

It’s about learning to stand in it — and smile.”

That evening, when the rain returned, Aisha placed all his buckets and her clay pot outside.

She stood there for a long time, letting the rain soak her completely, tears and raindrops mingling until they were the same.

And as thunder rolled far away, she whispered, “You were right, Uncle Faisal. Some drops do carry memories.”