The Drawer of Echoes

There was a boy named Ilham in my Secondary Two class.

He didn’t speak much.

Didn’t run in P.E.,

Didn’t laugh during assembly.

But he kept something strange

At the back of his locker.

A small wooden drawer.

Not a notebook.

Not a journal.

A drawer — carved roughly from teak,

With little scratches like it had been handled by time itself.

We only noticed it when a new boy, Faiz,

Asked him, “What’s that?”

Ilham didn’t hide it.

He opened it, gently,

Revealing scraps of cloth,

Tiny envelopes, faded Polaroids,

A key that didn’t fit anything in school.

We all found it weird.

Who keeps a drawer in a locker

Like a shrine?

We teased him behind his back.

Called it the "ghost box".

Said it was cursed.

But once, during detention,

It was just him and me.

He was polishing the drawer.

I couldn’t help but ask,

“Why this old thing? What’s even in it?”

He looked at me for the first time

Like really looked.

And said quietly,

“Things that echo.”

I laughed, awkward.

“You mean like… voices?”

“Not just that,” he replied.

“Moments. Touches. People.

Things that are no longer loud,

But still ring somewhere in me.”

He pulled out a letter

Torn at the edges.

“I wrote this to my sister

After she died. Never posted it.

Didn’t need to.”

He pointed to a shoelace,

“From my uncle’s boots.

He used to take me hiking.”

Then a broken badge:

“My dog’s name tag.”

That day, I didn’t laugh.

I sat quietly,

While he sorted grief

Like it was sacred.

Then something unexpected happened.

When Ananya — my bench partner — moved to Australia,

I felt something…

Empty.

Ilham must’ve noticed.

He came over, handed me a blank folded paper.

“No words needed,” he said.

“Just feeling. Drop it in.”

I didn’t understand it then.

But I did it anyway.

Weeks passed.

Our teacher, Mr. Rahman,

Collapsed in the staff room one morning.

Heart failure.

Gone.

School paused.

The class was stunned.

But Ilham?

Ilham walked to his locker

And opened the drawer.

He held a crumpled timetable —

The one Mr. Rahman had given him

At the start of term.

He added it gently.

Closed the drawer

Like a prayer.

Over time,

Others began to add to it.

A wristband from a school trip.

A joke note passed during math.

Even an apology scrawled in pencil.

It wasn’t Ilham’s drawer anymore.

It was ours.

Until one day —

Ilham stopped coming to school.

No warning.

No transfer letter.

No news.

Just

Gone.

We waited a week.

Then two.

His locker remained locked.

Then one morning,

The janitor was clearing old lockers.

He brought the drawer

To the Lost & Found.

We all stared at it

Sitting on a metal shelf

Under flickering fluorescent light.

No one touched it.

I did.

Carefully.

Took it home.

Years passed.

I forgot most of secondary school.

Forgot the names of classmates.

But not Ilham.

Not the Drawer.

When my grandfather passed,

I sat by his hospital bed,

My heart heavy with unspoken stories.

At night,

I opened the Drawer.

Added his old pipe filter,

Still smelling of tobacco.

I started calling it

The Drawer of Echoes.

Not because it was haunted,

But because it remembered

What I dared not forget.

I’ve moved house four times now.

The drawer still comes with me.

It sits by my study desk.

When my daughter lost her favorite plushie,

I folded a note with its name

And let her place it inside.

When my wife miscarried,

We added a little crocheted bootie

That had no feet to wear it.

You see,

Ilham wasn’t strange.

He was a librarian of memory.

A collector of echoes

That time tried to erase.

We often say

"Move on."

"Let go."

"Forget."

But maybe

Some memories deserve

A proper place.

A drawer.

A shelf.

A quiet box

To keep the sound alive

Even when the world is silent.

🪵🗝️ The Drawer of Echoes isn’t about being stuck.

It’s about honoring what once made you feel.

Even if it was pain.

Even if it was love.

Even if it was goodbye.