The Ghost Has a Name
Karam's Legacy, Chapter 9: Unmasking Harith Hassan
Hey there!
This is Chapter 9 of my serialized novel - Karam’s Legacy
If you’re just joining in, catch up here:
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8
He was seated behind the register, elbows on the counter, eyes fixed on the name scribbled at the top of his notes.
Outside, the street had quieted—the after-school rush faded into silence, the usual clatter replaced by the low hum of passing cars.
Inside the shop, time seemed to slow. Rashid was deep in his work. When he was in the zone, everything else slipped away. The only thing that ever snapped him out of it was the bell on the front door—a soft chime, sharp enough to cut through the fog. That’s why he had it. Not for customers. For himself.
Rashid tapped his pen against the margin. His father used to sit on this same stool, laughing with customers, recommending books with a kind of softness Rashid hadn’t inherited. Now, the stool groaned under his weight as he tried to make sense of the clues left by his father.
The sudden disappearance of Harith Hassan from Astoria after Wakil Afzal’s tragic suicide had never sat right with Rashid. For years, Hassan had been nothing more than a soft-spoken Arabic instructor at the neighborhood mosque. He was well-respected, and the young girls swooned after him.
But in hindsight, Rashid felt there was something off about him. He was always too clean. Too careful. Too smiley. The kind of guy people always complimented and never seemed to make a mistake.
Men like that didn’t just vanish. Especially not teachers—teachers got goodbye parties, farewell dinners, framed verses from students.
Hassan left without a word. No announcements. No explanations. Just a quiet absence and a few murmurs from those who noticed he was gone.
Years earlier, Rashid had spent countless evenings listening to the old cassette tapes his father left behind—recordings of sermons from a Lahore imam, crackling with static and reverence. He assumed they were a part of Wakil’s daily devotion.
Over time, the tapes became familiar. Almost comforting. He could recite some of the lines by heart.
Then, one afternoon, scrolling through his phone, he heard that voice again. Same accent. Same cadence. Same opening line.
The full sermon was on YouTube. And it didn’t match the one in his father’s collection.
The opening line matched. But then Rashid found that entire sections were missing. Pauses had been inserted where none should be. A phrase in the YouTube version—“Speak the truth even if it burns your tongue”—was completely absent on the tape.
Rashid played his version again. Listened more closely. What once sounded like a simple breath now felt like a cut. A deliberate splice.
He sat back, heart pounding with a different rhythm.
His father had edited these.
Rashid leaned forward and replayed the last few seconds, pressing his ear closer to the speaker as the tape clicked and hissed. The imam’s voice returned, calm and deliberate:
“A man may preach peace and still carry a loaded silence.”
The line crackled through the cassette’s worn speaker. Rashid had heard it before—always buried near the end of Side B, as if tucked there deliberately.
He paused the tape. That phrase again. It wasn’t a Qur’anic reference. Not a hadith either. It sounded like something from…
He turned from the desk and pulled a thin, dust-streaked volume from the shelf.
Manazir-e-Zamana. (Translated: Scenes of the Era)
Not a well-known book, but one of Wakil’s favorites. Rashid flipped through the brittle pages. Near the top, a sliver of folded paper jutted out—one he hadn’t noticed before.
Page 17. Line 9.
There it was, in its entirety!
“A man may preach peace and still carry a loaded silence. A silence not to be dismissed, but feared. The quieter he is, the more carefully he watches—observing, waiting, plotting. Until the moment the cards shift to his deck, the odds tilt in his favor, and he moves with certainty, knowing the victory is his.”
And in the margin, written in his father’s handwriting: H.H.
Rashid stared at the initials.
His heart thudded.
He returned to the cassette, pressing play.
“And may we never forget: Yusuf was betrayed not by strangers, but by those who claimed to be brothers.”
The tape clicked. End of side A.
Rashid sat back, the room silent now except for the echo of that final word—brothers.
In the story of Yusuf, betrayal didn’t come from enemies. It came from kin—brothers, blood, trusted voices. That was the part people liked to skip over in sermons. The part that stung.
And whoever H.H. was… Rashid wasn’t sure which side of it he fell on. Had he been Yusuf—the one thrown into the well? Or had he stood among the brothers, choosing silence while another was buried?
The imam’s words, the redacted sermon, the passage in Manazir-e-Zamana—they weren’t about faith alone. They were a record of an event. A way to pass down to Rashid what couldn’t be said aloud.
This was the beginning of cracking the code, but eventually, H.H. became glaringly obvious: Harith Hassan.
He was the only one who fit the clues.
Wakil’s tapes never said who Hassan was. But Rashid understood that Harith was part of the truth of what had happened to his father.
And Rashid needed to know what part. For the next few years, Rashid chased that alias through dead ends and rumors. He pored through his father’s tapes, trying to piece together the full story. There were two points he became sure of:
Harith Hassan wasn’t his real name.
He worked for the NYPD - as an informant or a cop, he wasn’t sure.
Rashid had all but given up on pulling on this thread. Every time he pulled, he became disappointed.
Until two years ago, when he finally struck the jackpot at the Pakistan Day Parade.
The Parade had flooded Midtown Manhattan with color and sound. Flags waved. Children danced. The streets pulsed with celebration.
Rashid hadn’t gone looking for Hassan that day, but his eyes scanned faces instinctively. And then, in the blur of bodies and banners, he saw him.
A figure resembling Hassan emerged from the crowd, holding the hands of a young child, while a woman standing close to him balanced multiple shopping bags. As Rashid weaved through the crowd, drawing himself closer to the man, he began to isolate in his mind the conversation between the man and his family from the rest of the noise during the parade. It was difficult to do, and Rashid needed to be careful. If this man were a cop, he might get the sense that someone was surveilling him.
As Rashid finally closed the distance, the man turned—and there was no doubt.
His pulse surged. Anger rose like bile in his throat. But he swallowed it. This wasn’t the time. He trailed the man through the crowd, shadowing him for the rest of the afternoon. The woman beside him carried shopping bags. The girl clung to his hand. They moved like any other family. Harith—or whatever his name was—smiled easily, enjoying this time with his family, something Rashid missed.
He had never missed his father more than in that moment. And with every memory, the weight of his absence grew heavier. This man did something, Rashid thought. Something that led to my father not being with us today.
Several times, the wife called out to the man, but the noise of the parade swallowed her voice. Rashid thought he caught the name—maybe Jatin, maybe Sachin—but it was too faint to be sure. Two hours passed. The man was now juggling shopping bags while the woman held her daughter’s hand, distracted by her phone. Rashid’s patience was thinning.
Then came the break.
A popular Pakistani celebrity appeared on one of the floats. The daughter, eyes wide, slipped free from her mother’s grasp and darted toward the barricade—toward the float. Dozens followed. A surge of fans broke through the crowd.
And then it happened.
The woman shouted, first her daughter’s name—“Shazia!”
Then, urgent, commanding: “Fatin! Fatin, get Shazia! She ran this way!”
The name sliced through the noise. Rashid froze.
Fatin.
The name rang like the final piece in a puzzle. Until now, the man had been a ghost. But ghosts don’t have names. Now he did. Now he could be hunted.
Rashid’s flashback was broken by the sound of bells as the front door of the bookstore opened. He turned to glance at the customer who had just walked in and immediately recognized her as Niyaf Malik, his brother’s ex-fiancée. He held back a flood of bad memories as he forced a smile, trying to emulate how his father would always be kind to all patrons who stepped through the door.
“Hi, Rashid.”
She spoke before he could greet her.
“Hello, Niyaf. Long time. How is everything?”
“Rashid. I need your help.” Niyaf avoided Rashid’s gaze as if she were ashamed, or maybe afraid, of being there. She stood with her hands clutched around the strap of her purse.
Rashid stood up tall from the stool he was sitting on. He skipped further pleasantries. If Niyaf, who ended things with his family on such terrible terms, would walk through those doors again after all these years to ask for help, something must be very wrong.
“They’re targeting girls. Mine included.” Before Rashid could ask, she continued, “There are these groups of men. Punjabi, I think. A gym opened up around the block from the Astoria Arabic Institute.”
The Astoria Arabic Institute—known simply as The Institute to most locals—had opened just three years ago. It offered classes in Arabic language, cultural studies, and general tutoring, quickly becoming a trusted after-school option for many families. Over time, it expanded, adding English classes for new immigrants and evening courses in professional development. What started as a modest community initiative had become a vital anchor in the neighborhood.
“Around evening time,” Niyaf began, her voice tight, “these men just linger outside and harass the women coming out of the Institute.”
Rashid leaned in slightly.
“People have tried to intervene,” she continued. “But they move in packs—all from the same gym. If you confront one, five others step in. Fights have broken out. And it’s always our men—Muslim men—who end up hurt.”
“That’s horrible,” Rashid said at last. But he could tell she wasn’t done. So he waited.
“Last week. My daughter was the target.”
Rashid straightened up. A lifetime ago, Niyaf was going to be part of the family. He had seen her as an older sister, and it felt odd to hear her talk about a daughter. Memories of Niyaf with his older brother Munir began to creep into Rashid’s mind.
Niyaf sensed Rashid's uneasiness and quickened her narrative. "She was with a friend when two men aggressively began to tease them. They were being very rude.”
"Is she alright?" Rashid inquired.
Niyaf shook her head. "Physically, yes. She managed to escape with her friend at the first opportunity. But mentally, she's not in a good place. She's extremely frightened. We all are."
"So, what do you need me to do?" Rashid asked. While he had heard about what was happening around the Institute, his focus had been on his project, leaving him little time to intervene.
"Well," Niyaf continued, "I've heard about your expertise."
Rashid smirked. The story of the train incident had spread like wildfire.
"Have you considered the cops?"
"We did file a police report. But the cops don’t do anything. They can’t even get entry into the gym," Niyaf explained.
Rashid nodded in understanding. "By any chance, do you know the names of the men who attacked your daughter?"
Niyaf shook her head. "We don’t know their names. But my daughter can probably recognize them."
"And remind me, where did you say their gym was located?"
"The corner of 14th and 31st Drive," Niyaf replied.
Rashid nodded. “I’ll pay them a visit.”
“Thank you,” Niyaf responded, her voice nearly a whisper. She nodded and turned to leave the bookstore.
“Niyaf.”
Niyaf froze. She thought Rashid might bring up Munir—the last topic she wanted to face. Instead, Rashid simply said, “It was good to see you.”
Niyaf nodded without returning to face Rashid and quickly walked out the door.
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