Wazir Ali of Skardu - English Version

A reminder that learning isn’t measured in grades but in the wonder of discovery.

On that cold day, within the four walls of winter, I asked a boy from the eighth class to fetch a blue bag from the clutter of the office. As time stretched in the search, another child’s voice rang out in the local tongue: “Fetch the scissors from the office.” Moments later, a uniformed lad appeared with the scissors in hand.

I turned toward him, offered thanks, and began cutting and tying cords. When the need arose again, he was there, silently extending the scissors.

I asked, “Boy, in which class are you?”

“Sir,” he replied softly, “I am in grade one.”

Surprised, I smiled. “So young? That’s wonderful.”

But his answer carried a weight: “I’m not a student here, sir. I work here. I come before the children arrive and leave after they go.”

It was then that his name reached me, Wazir Ali.

His smile lingered, innocent yet weathered, and I told him, “Then you are not my Grade One… you are my Great One. You already run the school.” The other children laughed, but in his eyes there was only a flicker, something between pride and longing.

A child’s playful defiance becomes a quiet metaphor for imagination and freedom.

I asked if he liked to draw. His reply pierced me: “That was in my childhood.”

That day, I insisted he join our drawing class. The teachers resisted, reminding me he had duties, ringing the bell, fetching water, carrying things too heavy for his small frame. But love prevailed. I pleaded, the children echoed my request, and at last he was welcomed.

Inside the class, amidst pencils, recycled paper, and laughter, Wazir Ali sat down like the others, yet unlike the others. His presence carried the hush of another realm. I watched him, tall and thin, half-smiling, his eyes uncertain whether to shine with joy or cloud with sorrow.

The assignment was simple: to draw a tree. To imagine its story, the silent endurance of roots, the whisper of leaves, the quiet wisdom of seasons. Each child bent over their paper. Wazir too.

And then I saw it, the number "8" written across his sheet. Not his name, not his class, not the ordinary markers of school identity. Just the figure eight, curved and whole, infinite in its form.

I asked him why. He looked up, puzzled, as though the answer were obvious. Then, kneeling beside him, I whispered, “If you had not left school, which class would you have been in today?”

He did not hesitate. He simply wrote the "8."

A simple drawing exercise turns into a timeless symbol of curiosity and continuity.

That figure, that careless gesture, struck me like prophecy. It was not a child’s scribble but an unspoken history, his lost years, his stolen lessons, his silent endurance.

And in that moment, the classroom, the trees, the children, even the ringing of bells outside, all dissolved. What remained was Wazir Ali, the boy who worked instead of learned, who smiled instead of complained, who drew a number in place of a dream.

Years may pass, but that "8" will remain etched in my memory like a symbol of resilience, of absence, of a river that may yet find its course.

For I had not simply met a boy.
I had met infinity in the hands of a child.

Zaheer Chaudhry