I have walked many sites in my life—valleys, plains, towns too quiet for maps and cities too loud for thought.
But the one lesson that has never left me came not from books, nor from codes of practice, but from an old darvesh who laid bricks as if he were praying.

I did not come from lineage or luxury. My engineering grew from observation, from standing beside those who worked with their hands before they worked with their tongues.
As a child, I would watch experts tap each brick lightly, almost lovingly. One day I asked my father’s companion, an old mason known simply as Baba Darvesh:

“Why do you tap them?”

He smiled through his dust-covered beard.
“Because some bricks sing their truth. Others hide their wounds. Eyes lie. Sound rarely does.”

Years passed. I became an engineer, travelling between mountains and plains, from government schools to forgotten bridges. But before every project, every morning, I carried a small hammer and tapped the fresh stacks of bricks.
Some rang clear.
Some sounded dull.
Some whispered a warning too soft for the untrained ear.

This was my first philosophy:
Everything—brick or human—reveals its truth only when touched at the right angle.

One summer, I was assigned to build a public library on the edge of a cliff.
The bricks arrived—red, coarse, imperfect.
I lifted one and tapped it. Hollow.
Another. Sharp.
Another. Confused.

From behind me came a familiar laugh.

The new site mason was an old man with a patched pheran, prayer beads wrapped around his wrist, and eyes that looked as though they had travelled farther than his feet ever had.

Baba Darvesh.

“You still listen to bricks,” he said.
“And you still talk to them,” I replied.

He sat beside me as workers unloaded more stacks.
He watched me test a few pieces, then asked:

“Engineer sahib, what do you hear in them?”
I said, “Their truth.”
He chuckled.
“Truth is not a sound. It is what survives after sound disappears.”

His words struck deeper than the hammer ever did.

That evening, alone on the site, I tapped brick after brick, each note rising into the empty desert air. I recalled the line:

“One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”

Chaos made bricks.
Chaos made humans too.

Rumi’s echo joined in:
“Don’t look for water; be thirsty.”

I realized I wasn’t tapping bricks to test them—I was tapping them to test myself.
My fears.
My assumptions.
My judgments.

One cracked brick would sometimes survive a full day’s load.
Another perfect-sounding brick would break under mild pressure.
And I would think:
“How many people do I misjudge like bricks?
How many weak voices hide unbreakable strength?
How many loud ones crumble at the first tremor?”

One night, as the cool wind arrived, Baba Darvesh approached silently. He watched me tapping bricks as if I was performing zikr.

He finally said,
“You judge the brick for what it cannot sing.
But real strength is often silent.”

He lifted a rejected, chipped brick from the discard pile.
Held it to his ear.
Closed his eyes.
And placed it back gently.

“This one has carried storms,” he whispered.
“It has nothing left to prove.”

His words changed me.

From that day, I placed the flawed and rejected bricks at the corner of the foundation of the library.
Not out of rebellion—but out of respect.

I told my workers:
“Let the building rise on what the world thinks weak.”

When the library was finished, I left a note for future engineers:

“A brick is judged by sound.
A human by assumption.
Both are incomplete measures.
Listen also to silence.
Look also at scars.”

Years later, a crack formed on one of the upper walls.
But the foundation—the one built of rejected bricks—remained unmoved, unshaken.
People wondered why the oldest, most imperfect bricks held the finest strength.

Baba Darvesh was long gone by then.

But his teaching lived in every corner of that library:

“Strength is not always what rings loudly.
Sometimes, it is what endures quietly—with no sound at all.”

And so my tapping became a story—not of engineering, but of listening.
Not of choosing perfect bricks, but of understanding broken ones.
Not of certainty, but of humility before the unseen secrets inside every brick… and every soul.