3 Stories 1001 Secrets

At the far end of the bazaar was a small shop with a donkey tied up outside. Ali didn’t dare ask his mother what kind of work she had in mind for him. He was caught up in his thoughts when he found himself in front of the cobbler’s. Even in the half-light, he could see the wooden doors were worn down by the years. Once inside he saw that the shop was full of old and broken shoes. To Ali’s young mind, it seemed like a hospital but instead of going to get an arm or a leg fixed, people had left their worn out shoes for repair. And there were hundreds of them, piled high and smelly! Ali couldn’t hide from the awful odour that hung around the shop: the individual smells from so many people’s feet, still clinging to their shoes, all blended together in this little cobblers. If Ali had not been so well mannered, he would’ve held his nose. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the shop, he could make out, amongst all the shoes, the cobbler - a man of over fifty whose special eyes were giving him a fixed stare. Ali didn’t know whether to be ashamed or frightened. His mother was talking with the cobbler, but Ali couldn’t hear anything, so instead tried to understand why he was there. At the end of their conversation, with the cobbler still staring at Ali, he said, “Alright, let him work with me then, but on condition that he does not meddle in my affairs and that he listens carefully to everything I tell him.” Soon enough, Ali found himself sitting next to the master cobbler, learning how to make thread from cotton. He twisted the thread on the spindle and linked up the cotton, as he had been shown, until the thread became longer and longer. The master cobbler said to Ali, “Ali, your work is to take in the broken shoes from the people who come, then give the repaired shoes back to their rightful owner.” And so this is what Ali’s day involved: he arrived early in the morning, the cobbler would open up shop, leave Ali in charge and then leave. Each day, Ali would thread more cotton with the spindle. He liked to switch off from the task and lose himself in his thoughts. However, he observed how each day his master would arrive, open up shop then climb onto his donkey and leave. Then in the afternoon he would return, pay Ali, shut up shop and leave again. Each morning Ali noticed how people’s shoes were repaired and ready for collection and this was an enigma to him. “So where does my master go? When does he come back to the shop to repair the shoes?” He wondered. But he didn’t dare ask the cobbler. And so it went on, each day the master left and returned with his donkey. One day, Ali took his courage in both hands and decided, “I’m going to ask him, come what may.” So he said, “Master, may I ask you a question?” But his master gave him such a powerfully intense look that Ali forgot his question! II A few years passed with the same daily routine with Ali making the thread with the spindle. By now he was sixteen and he had understood that underneath his master’s harsh look and heavy silence, there lay a good heart. Once again he mustered his courage and said, “Master, forgive me, but I so want to know where you go each day,” Ali didn’t dare look up to meet his master’s gaze in case he forgot his question again, but finally asked “ Who gets all these shoes ready for the morning?” The master looked at Ali but did not speak, then after long months of silence his master eventually said, “If you promise to listen and do everything I tell you, I will take you with me.” Ali said, “I’ve been working for you for four years now and I’ve listened to everything you’ve said.” His master added, “The place I’m taking you to is beyond the normal understanding of mortals, and it is different to threading cotton.” Ali said, “I promise to do as you say.” The cobbler nodded, saying, “If you don’t listen to me, you will lose everything that you are going to learn.” Ali said again, “You can be sure that I will listen to you.”