The Empty Jar

Hadi collected sounds the way other people collect stamps.

He was thirteen. He wore big headphones round his neck even when he wasn't listening to anything, and a mustard-yellow jacket with a small old sound recorder in its pocket, which his grandfather had given him before he passed away. He recorded everything: rain on a tin roof, water trickling in a fountain, a faraway train whistling at night, his little sister's laugh when he tickled her. He said that every place in the world had a sound, just as every person had a face.

That summer, his family moved into a house in Listeners' Lane, the oldest lane in the old city. It was narrow and winding and cobbled, with houses squeezed together and wooden lattice windows jutting out over the street, so close that neighbours could almost shake hands from their windows. And it was full of sounds: the hammering of copper in the coppersmith's shop, the bean seller calling out in the morning, cockerels crowing on the rooftops and the old radio in the café that never stopped singing.