I’ve just begun writing. My first book was an eruption of expression resulting from a suppression of two decades of yearning to become a writer. But now, as I embark on writing my second book, I want to refine my writing skills and become a better writer. So I gave myself fifteen awesome writing drills — no shortcuts, no cheating. Here is the third one.

Exercise 3—Biased Observation

Goal: Demonstrate how worldview filters description; what the POV omits matters as much as what they note.

Prompt: Walking through a night market in a foreign city with a secret agenda.

Target Length: 1,000 words

Some things are unchanging. Flipflops clapping, shoes tapping, heels clacking, children’s feet shuffling, four-legged creatures wandering furtively on their soft paws, no matter which country you are in, no matter what language people speak, and no matter what food they eat, night markets are always the same. Everyone is so busy talking, eating, flirting, stepping in oily puddles, and walking over discarded plastic packets and lost soft toys that no one seems to notice that an entirely different world exists below their knees, even in a place as busy as a night market. But why would they even want to look at the ground, when all that delights their mind and body is at eye level? I can’t help it; I must look down. To be precise, I must pay attention to the shoes. It is by the person whose feet wear the right shoe that I will be granted release from my curse, a curse that I have been carrying on my back for the last three thousand years. I traveled, not just through time, but also around the world to fairs and markets, weddings and funerals, churches, mosques and temples, all those places where people gather looking for the right pair of shoes. I am sure you have already guessed who I am by now. I am Qaasim the miser, the man whose stinking shoes became a story that the collective consciousness of humanity chose not to forget.

That shoe, those feet, they are interesting. Oh, didn’t I tell you, I can read people by their shoes, their past, and their future. Thousands of years of looking at feet can endow you with extraordinary powers. Ok, living long is the only magical part of my story; everything else, as the fictional Sherlock Holmes used to say, is the art of deduction. And what Sherlock didn’t have is what I was cursed with, infinite life, or at least till I can find the one who will finally free me.

That one is one horny woman, the one chomping down on the skewered meat, and talking noisily to her man. Now, don’t ask me how I know all this. If I really had to explain, it would take an inordinate amount of time, and trust me, you and I both don’t have that kind of life. For you are eager to live your life, and I am tired of living it. She is sleeping with at least six men, and none of them can quite fulfill her.

A few centuries ago, I used to set up a stall in night markets like this, well, not exactly like this — this is the first time I have traveled so far east. I have been living in this place called Bantam Island, south of Singapore, for two years. My stall used to be called, ‘come have your life read by seer extraordinare, Qasim’. I used to do reading and tell people what about their past, their past lives, and about their future. When the things I foretold—specifically the bad things—would come true, their ire would break out against me. They called me a devil worshiper, or that I had cast a curse on them and beat me to an till I looked all but dead. Now, mind you, I cannot die but I can sure as hell feel pain, no pun intended. After having too many beatings, I not just stopped putting up those infernal stall, but stopped talking to people altogether. When the world grew small, being quiet, unseen, unheard, unwanted, helped.

But all this is hardly a surprise for me. I have never been close to people, even when I was an ordinary person. But don’t think for a second that I don’t have any friends. My pals live in the underworld, dogs and cats. You seldom see them, and when you do, it is to throw them a scrap or two, but me, my endless obsession with shoes and feet, introduced me to my best friends. I can almost talk to them and tell them who I am looking for. What I see with my eyes, they can smell with their nose, and in that we are the same.

You see that man over there, the one with brown flip flops, long feet, crooked toes, cracked heels, and stinky heels. Oh, I am sorry, your eyes aren’t as acutely attuned to feet as mine, the tall, lanky one, standing below the red and yellow lanterns and cherry lights, beside the seafood and fried rice counter, the one wearing a red sarong with a white baju koko. I can see it in my mind’s eye, his bare feet walking for hours in abject hunger and poverty, but he is going to be the richest man on this island in the next ten years. He will wear Gucci shoes all the time, even when he goes to bed. But then, after becoming rich, he is going to become obese, and then at the ripe age of 51, the day he buys a blue suede clogs, his heart will explode, and he will die in this very market. No, he is not the person I am looking for.

The person I am looking for is a great Djinn, one who has been freed from slavery. It was my stinking shoes, which I had thrown into the sea before they got caught in the net of the village fisherman, that released it from its millennia-long captivity. It owes me a wish. But god asked it to hide from me for three thousand years, the day I was cursed. Three thousand years were up last year. It should’ve presented itself by now, but now I am sure, it is up to mischief.

That one, the one with the neat, shiny, black leather shoes, that one is interesting. The leather is unblemished, it has no wear marks. It is as if she doesn’t walk, but floats over the muck and grime of this market. Something about those shoes is unique and different. Could it be? I’ve had false alarms before, too. I must be careful. She is thin, curvy, and lavishly dressed, standing next to the boba tea stall, smoking a Djarum black. But those shoes, they are odd. Djinns can take any form; that is how they fool people, but not me. I have my sixth sense, my shoe-sense, I can see through their deception from the worn-out soles of their shoes. And if I miss something, I have my canid friends to help me with their sniffing snouts.

My furry friend is back. She was distracted for a moment by that little boy who threw her some craps, by the fried chicken stall, but then she went in and sniffed the leather shoe girl. She told me she has no history, and it’s as if the smells on her don’t have a past; they are just present in the moment. I must go in for a closer look; I can barely make out the laces on her oxfords. If she is the one, then this will be my last night market. My debt paid, my work done, Qasim the Miser will become Qasim the Free. Wish me luck?