The man who forgot his name


🧠 “The Man Who Forgot His Name”

By Faraz Parvez

Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Retired Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA
(Pseudonym of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal)

Part I: The Awakening

It began on a Thursday — the most forgettable day of the week.

Dr. Umar Fawad opened his eyes in his sea-facing apartment in Clifton, Karachi. The sheets were unfamiliar. The room too bright. There was a woman in the kitchen humming an Urdu lullaby he couldn’t name. She walked into the room holding a mug. “Your espresso. Two sugars, like always.”

Umar blinked. “Who are you?”

Her face stiffened. “Umar, stop joking.”

He wasn’t.

He walked to the bathroom. The mirror showed a tired man in his early 40s. Deep hazel eyes. Slight greying on the temples. Hands trembling. He examined his wallet: ID card: Dr. Umar Fawad — Consultant Psychiatrist, MindLab Institute. CNIC, driver's license, even credit cards — all confirmed it.

But the name meant nothing. Not a flicker of memory.

Part II: The Patients Arrive

Despite the memory void, Umar was driven — almost magnetically — to the MindLab Institute, a sleek neuropsychology clinic in PECHS.

As he entered, the receptionist nodded. “Good morning, Dr. Umar. You have six patients today. First one’s already in.”

File: Saima Sattar, 33, PTSD, subject code F-91.

She sat across him, her face haunted.

“I had the dream again,” she whispered. “The one you told me might be a side effect of the reprogramming. The lake. The mirror. The child without eyes.”

Umar felt his pulse spike. “What… reprogramming?”

She frowned. “Is this part of the evaluation again? Testing my memory erosion?”

He said nothing.

She leaned forward. “You told me everything — how you invented the "Identity Soft Reset Protocol." How it erases selective trauma. You said it was illegal but ethical. You called yourself a necessary devil.”

Umar's vision blurred.

Part III: The Woman Behind the Curtain

That night, he confronted the woman at home. She called herself Sara, his wife of eight years, a neurologist.

He demanded answers.

Sara finally sighed. “We were part of an underground cognitive experiment. You — the genius psychiatrist, me — the technician. The clients were powerful people: politicians, CEOs, celebrities. You erased things they couldn’t live with.”

“Why me? Why now?”

“You… went too far. You wiped your own memory — a suicide of identity. You couldn’t handle what you’d become.”

She handed him a USB drive. “If you want the truth, watch this.”

He did.

It showed himself, looking deranged, recording a message to… himself. “If you’re watching this, I’m already gone. I’ve become what I swore to fight. I erased memories of whistleblowers… children… even war crime testimonies. For money. For power. I’ve tried to purge myself. Good luck finding your soul.”

Part IV: The Mind Fractures

Over the next few days, Umar’s behavior shifted.

He heard voices in parking lots. He began sleepwalking. One night, he painted a disturbing mural on the clinic wall — a tree with brains hanging like fruits, each labeled with names.

The clinic was shut down. The authorities were notified.

But there was no record of MindLab Institute in SECP. The address was wiped from Google Maps. Staff vanished. Even the receptionist’s number was disconnected.

Sara was gone.

Part V: The Final Unveiling

One rainy morning, Umar wandered into the Karachi Psychiatric Hospital, barefoot and shaking.

He kept repeating, “I’m the doctor… I’m the doctor…”

The guard on duty recognized him. Not as a doctor — but as Patient #09-761: Umair Farooq, admitted six years ago under schizophrenia and identity delusion. He’d escaped.

He had never been a psychiatrist. He had created the persona of Dr. Umar Fawad during his episodes, based on medical journals and television shows. The clinic? Fiction. The patients? Mental projections. The wife? A nurse who once took care of him.

The final scene: Umar sits in a hospital room, sketching faces on the wall. One of the sketches eerily resembles you, the reader.

And underneath it, the words:
“You can forget your name… but your sins never forget you.”

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