The Locksmith

A short story

By: Zeeshan Mahmud

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

A Sufi tale has it that there was once a metalworker who tinkered with locks and was unjustly put in the dungeons by the king. His wife came upon a brilliant plan to gift him a prayer rug with a pattern of the inner workings of the lock woven in which one day he saw in a flash after the fajr prayer. He cajoled the guard to provide him with some scrap metals and after months of procuring such tiny shards he would eventually fashion a key and with the help of the guard escape. He would be reunited with his loving wife and be lifelong friends with the guard in a classic fairy tale ending!

He once shared this with Sarah. She was lying on the bed in a bathrobe having just blow-dried her hair and solving New Yorker crosswords.

“That’s so silly!”

He just didn’t know if she was so absorbed in trying to remember the capital of Eritrea or really thought of this sparkling tale as stupid. But a pang of anxiety clutched his arteries. We often tend to take umbrage and slide these daily idiosyncrasies straight under our emotional rug, but they stay with us forever.

(Excerpt from The Locksmith)

Set in Southern California, this short story depicts a cross section of the life of a locksmith. An original unpublished story crafted by Bangladesh-American author Zeeshan Mahmud.