Part-2
The person who comes to mind straight away is my uncle Faisal — he passed away a few years ago, but his influence on me is something I only really started to understand after he was gone.
I'd known him my entire childhood, since he lived just two streets away from us and we'd spend most weekends at his house. By profession he was a civil engineer — he spent most of his career working on infrastructure projects in rural areas of our province — but what made him remarkable wasn't his work, it was the way he engaged with people. He had this rare habit of treating children's questions as seriously as any adult's, which, looking back, was extraordinary.
His influence on me came less from anything specific he said and more from how he carried himself. He read voraciously, kept handwritten notebooks of observations from his travels, and never seemed to be in a hurry. I remember asking him once why he bothered writing things down, and he said something I've never forgotten — that paying attention to ordinary moments was a discipline, not an accident.
That idea has stayed with me ever since. It's shaped how I read, how I take notes for my own work, and even how I try to listen to people. Looking back, I think that's the thing about people who really change you — you don't notice it happening. You only see it later, and by then it's already part of how you think. That's exactly what he was to me.