FROM THE SILENCE THAT HURTS TO THE VOICE THAT BUILT YOUR FUTURE

For years, Malik walked upside down the hallways of the high school without uttering a word. Not because I didn’t want to talk, but because I felt like I had nothing to say. He had arrived with his mother from Morocco when he was nine years old, fleeing a life that hurt even more than uprooting. The language seemed to him a wall, and his accent, a burden. So she chose silence. A silence that protected him, but also isolated him.

– Don’t you ever talk, Malik? —the literature teacher once asked.

Malik stared at him, swallowed saliva, and denied his head.

—So if you don’t talk, write. Sometimes the voice starts with the hands — that teacher told him, leaving an empty notebook on the table.

That night Malik opened that notebook like he opened a crack in his own wall. He wrote without worrying about spelling, without fear of mistakes. She wrote about her father, about her mother working cleaning houses, about the cold of the first winter without heating. He wrote about silence.

The years have gone by. Malik stayed quiet but wrote every night. One day, already seventeen years old, a classmate saw him writing in the recess and asked him:

—What are you doing there all the time?

—Stories. —he responded for the first time without shaking.

The companion, surprised to hear his voice at last, smiled at him.

—And can I read some?

Malik was hesitant. Then he tore a page out of the notebook and handed it over, as if he gave him a piece of himself. The boy read it in silence and, when he finished, said:

— Dude… this is brutal. You should post it.

Within days, the literature teacher called Malik at the end of the class.

—I read what you write. I haven’t touched it. It’s perfect the way it is. Have you thought about submitting to the town’s storytelling contest?

“I don’t know if I’m good enough,” Malik replied, shrugging.

—The only way to find out… is talk.

Malik did it. he submitted a report. He won.

From then on, they started inviting him to read in libraries, in youth centers, even on local radio. Her voice, once fearful, began to find a rhythm. At first, I read her texts like someone who reads a private letter out loud. But over time, he was filling the rooms with more than words: with presence, with truth.

At twenty years old, Malik published his first book. It wasn’t a commercial success, but every copy sold was a reminder of how far he’d come from that child hiding behind his silence.

At a performance, someone from the audience asked him:

– What would you say to Malik from ten years ago?

He thought for a second. He then answered :

-I would tell you that silence hurts… but it can also be the fertile ground where a voice of its own grows. You just have to dare to water it with truth.

Today, Malik doesn’t just write. Give workshops in schools. He speaks to young people who, like him, once thought they had nothing to say. And I’ll repeat them:

—There are no small voices, only distracted ears.

Because he learned that when one dares to speak from the depth, there is someone, somewhere, waiting to listen.