The man who spoke in palindromes

 

Experimental Short Story Series #41
Title: “The Man Who Spoke in Palindromes”
By Faraz Parvez (pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, Former Faculty Member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Blog Introduction:

Welcome back, dear readers, to The Experimental Short Story Series—where narrative boundaries are bent, expectations defied, and storytelling dances with the surreal. This is Blog #41 in our literary journey of 60 breathtaking tales, each more experimental than the last. At FarazParvez1.blogspot.com, we don’t just write—we explore, distort, and reimagine the art of fiction.

Today’s story enters the labyrinth of language. Prepare for a tale where words mirror themselves, and each reflection might just be a prophecy. This is not just a story—it’s a riddle wrapped in syntax, echoing like an ancient spell.

The Story:

The villagers first heard him before they saw him.

"Madam, in Eden, I'm Adam," a voice whispered through the forest fog that draped the small settlement of Khera—an old village cradled between misty hills and forgotten superstitions.

A day later, he arrived. Tall, wiry, with hair like cobwebs spun from silver, and eyes that blinked as if translating reality into code. The only thing stranger than his silence was the moment he chose to speak.

"Eva, can I see bees in a cave?"

Nobody understood it. Nobody dared to ask.

Until the first death.

It was Bhola, the village’s honey-gatherer, stung fatally while collecting wild hive nectar from a cave the very next morning. The villagers remembered the man’s words. "Bees. Cave."

Coincidence? Some said yes.

But then he spoke again.

"Do geese see God?"

That night, the old temple—abandoned since the priest disappeared twenty years ago—lit up with unexplainable lamps, casting goose-like shadows across the village pond.

Each palindrome carried weight. A riddle. A prophecy. Or a curse?

And the man? He stayed mute until fate demanded he speak.

Panicked and perplexed, the village council summoned Aarav Mehta—a young linguist from the city with a fascination for forgotten tongues and mirrored syntax. He arrived, briefcase in hand, disbelief in heart.

"Palindromes?" he scoffed. "Cute party trick."

But that was before the man looked at him and said, "No lemon, no melon."

That night, Aarav’s mother called. The family’s melon fields in Nashik had caught fire. Nothing was left but charred earth and a single lemon tree, untouched.

Aarav stayed.

He observed. He recorded. He dreamed in reverse.

And slowly, something began to unravel.

Each palindrome was more than clever wordplay. It was a linguistic loop—a closed circuit. The man wasn’t just speaking—he was invoking. Calling echoes from the past and future into the present.

"A man, a plan, a canal: Panama."
—Aarav discovered the old British blueprints for a hidden canal project under the hills of Khera, buried under red tape and time.

"Step on no pets."
—The village dogs vanished for a week. When they returned, they followed the man like monks behind a master.

"Was it a car or a cat I saw?"
—And there, in the dusk shadows, people claimed they saw a pale animal with wheels for legs—silent, and very, very fast.

Aarav tried to interview the man. Asked his name. His origin. His purpose.

But all he got was: "Mr. Owl ate my metal worm."

Was he an oracle? A glitch? An ancient AI in human form?

The linguist began losing grip. He stopped sleeping. Started dreaming in symmetrical sentences. He began responding in palindromes too.

"Borrow or rob?"

"Never odd or even."

Then one rainy night, the old man handed Aarav a mirror folded inside a manuscript written backward. One sentence stared back at him:

"Mad am I, son? No, I’m Adam."

And the man vanished.

No footprints. No trace.

Only the village, forever changed—where even silence began to echo backwards.

Postscript (From the Author’s Desk):

Language is more than communication—it’s construction. In this story, we explored the eerie tension between symmetry and prophecy, form and fate. Palindromes, with their haunting echoes, become the soul of mystery.

At FarazParvez1.blogspot.com, we dare to tell stories no one else does. If you’ve traveled with us from #1 to #41, you know this isn’t just a blog—it’s a living, breathing literary phenomenon.

Stay with us as we journey to 60. Because each number folds into the next. And somewhere between fiction and reflection—you’ll find yourself.

Until next time… Don’t trust every mirror.


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