Fared raced down the narrow side street. His heart pounded and sweat built up on his forehead and upper lip, irritating his skin and threatening to either fall into his eyes or else get sucked into his nose as he breathed. He wiped his brow with a quick brush of his sleeve and licked up the sweat he could reach with his tongue but kept on running. The few other pedestrians in the side street leapt out of his way when they saw him coming. Most looked surprised, a few shouted after him, but Fared paid them no mind.

“Ghaz!” Fared cried out as soon as he burst into the barber’s small shop. “I need your help!”

Ghaz, who had known Fared since his birth, looked over to him with a slow and steady nod, indicating the empty seat in the corner.

Fared twisted the ends of his shirt as he debated on insisting that Ghaz help him right away, but experience convinced him that doing as he had been told would be best. So, Farad moved over to the empty chair and sat down. He couldn’t sit still, however, and his knees bounced up and down in an alternating rhythm. He tried to keep them still, but it was no use. He knew the others in the shop, though he hadn’t spoken to them very often. It was usually in times like this, when he needed Ghaz’s help, that he saw them. They all nodded and smiled to him and Fared tried to return their smiles, though he knew he probably looked like he was in pain.

In truth, he was in a sort of pain. Not a pain of the body, but of the mind and heart. That was why he had come to Ghaz. Only Ghaz would know what to do. Ghaz was wise and had given Fared excellent counsel every time Fared had come to him. It was the same for everyone who came to see Ghaz. Well, that and to get their hair cut, but everyone knew that the haircut was secondary.

As Fared waited, each of the people in line ahead of him took their turns in Ghaz’s chair. He trimmed their hair, and while he worked, they would speak. He’d listen to everything they had to say, dust off their shoulders, and then give them his advice.

It was always very good advice.

Even still, good advice was not always easy to accept. That was, in part, what made Ghaz’s advice so valuable. He never told people what they wanted to hear. He told them what they needed to hear.

When Fared’s turn in the chair came, he hurried over and sat himself down. Ghaz quickly wrapped the sheet around Fared to keep the hair from getting all over and set to work.

“Sometimes, life is fair, right?” Fared began at once. “Things must go how they ought to go at least some of the time, you know? When nothing unpleasantly unexpected happens. But my life is, well, if everyone’s life were as unfair as my own, then surely there couldn’t be a functioning society anywhere.”

Ghaz gave him an encouraging nod. He of all people knew how unfair Fared’s life was. He’d heard about so much of it from Fared that ignorance of his many misfortunes would be impossible.

“But now I think I may have a stroke of good luck,” Fared went on. “I’ve met the loveliest woman and she seems to genuinely like me, warts and all.”

He wiggled his sandaled toes beneath the sheet as if to show off the warts there but then realized no one, not even Ghaz, could see them.

“But my problem is that she loves poetry.”

Fared fell silent to let the weight of this statement to sink in.

“I recall you being particularly skillful in creating poetry,” Ghaz said when Fared’s silence dragged on.

“I guess,” he lamented, “but only when I speak. She wants me to write down my poems for her.”

Ghaz nodded his understanding but said nothing. Fared’s lack of education, which included his inability to read or write, was often at the root of most of his woes. Fared sat quietly for a while longer, hoping Ghaz would begin to speak, but he couldn’t stand the silence for very long and so he began to speak once more.

“I met her a few months ago,” he explained, “and lately we’ve been spending most evenings together. Her family even seem to like me well enough. I’m taking her dad on a fishing trip in a few days and her brothers might come along. We aren’t rushing towards getting married or anything like that,” Fared added hastily, “but the subject has been brought up a few times.”

Fared wrung his hands and fought the urge to hang his head in shame and despair.

“I don’t want to lose her,” he groaned, “but what will she think of me when she finds out I can’t read or write? Is this some trick of hers to see if I’m illiterate?”

“Does she seem that sort of person?” Ghaz asked.

Fared thought for a moment. He wanted to say no, that she wasn’t shallow or would judge him for his lack of education. She certainly hadn’t given any obvious signs of being that sort of person. Unfortunately, he’d met others before who had seemed similarly welcoming only to have them turn cold once they found he couldn’t read or write. It was as though they blamed him personally for it, as though it had been his choice in the matter.

Ghaz set down his scissors and brushed off Fared’s neck and shoulders. He withdrew the sheet and held up his mirror for Fared to see his new haircut. He hadn’t really done much, but Fared frequented Ghaz’s chair often enough that there wasn’t much for Ghaz to trim.

“She will eventually learn you cannot read or write,” Ghaz told him while Fared looked at his reflection, “and if it is something she cannot see passed then you will have to go your separate ways.”

“But what if she rejects me?”

“Consider the potential outcomes and then you must decide what will make you happier,” Ghaz stated. “You can go on living with this uncertainty for an indefinite length of time, always under threat of being discovered, or you could tell her and risk being rejected by her?”

Ghaz’s expression softened and he rested a comforting hand on Fared’s shoulder.

“You make your living by fishing,” he said. “You live comfortably, have a small but decent home, whereas countless others who can read and write have not fared so well as you. You need to stop devaluing yourself simply because you are illiterate. It may not change everyone else’s behavior towards you, but it will help you in dealing with those situations.

Ghaz nodded to him encouragingly and waved him on. The next customer was already getting ready to sit down in the chair so Fared thanked Ghaz, paid him, and left. As usual, Ghaz advice was good even if it wasn’t exactly what he had wanted to hear. He did need to let go of the fact that he couldn’t read or write. His bitterness and shame were never going to help him. He would just have to tell Noor the truth and go from there. Life couldn’t be all bad luck, after all.