Professor Rahman sat three tables away at the café.
I saw him immediately. Macro economics, ten years ago. Brilliant. Intimidating. I had questions about something I’d read online—digital currency, blockchain, terms I didn’t understand.
I asked the waiter instead.
Kamal was maybe twenty-five. He brought my tea and I asked him. Do you know anything about Bitcoin?
“It’s like money,” he said. “But no bank.”
I understood.
Professor Rahman would have started differently. I don’t know how, but differently. Expert bias, maybe. Assumptions about what I already knew. I would have nodded. Understood nothing.
I didn’t tell Happy about this. But she noticed anyway.
“Why do you always ask random people?” she said at dinner.
“What do you mean?”
“Last week you asked the shopkeeper about phone cameras. You work in tech.”
“Worked.”
“You know what I mean.”
I didn’t answer. Arash was moving rice around his plate, listening.
“Experts make me feel stupid,” I said finally.
“They’re trying to help.”
“Maybe.”
She looked at me for a while. Then back at her plate.
Three years ago, someone taught me guitar chords on a train to Chittagong. I don’t remember his name. He showed me three shapes. Said that’s all you need for most songs.
I tried lessons once, before that. The teacher, conservatory trained, kept correcting my finger position. Every time I touched a string, something was wrong.
I quit after two weeks.
The stranger on the train didn’t correct anything. Just showed me the shapes. Played a song. Said try it.
It worked.
I still play those three chords. Nothing else. Haven’t learned more. Don’t need to.
Last week Arash had math homework. I could have helped. I know the material. Used to teach it in another life.
I called our neighbor’s son instead. Rifat, first year university. He came over with his notebook.
“Why didn’t you help him?” Happy asked later.
“Rifat explains it better.”
“You have a degree in this.”
“That’s the problem. Cognitive blindness. I can’t see what someone who doesn’t know sees.”
She looked at me strangely. “That sounds made up.”
“Maybe it is.”
I watched them from the kitchen. Rifat drew diagrams. “I used to think it was this,” he said. “Then I realized it’s actually this.”
He remembered being confused. Last year. Recent enough to explain from inside the confusion.
My explanations would have been perfect. And useless.
I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not know quadratic equations.
“You’re avoiding something,” Happy said one night.
We were lying in bed. Dark room. Her voice in the dark.
“What am I avoiding?”
“I don’t know. Authority? Success? Being the expert?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t have better ones.”
Silence. The ceiling fan turned. I counted rotations. Lost count.
“It’s called the authority gap,” she said. “I read about it.”
“What is?”
“This thing you do. Asking strangers instead of qualified people.”
“Okay.”
“Your father was a professor,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You never took his classes.”
“No.”
More silence. The fan kept turning.
“Is that relevant?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I tried photography last year. Expensive course. Award-winning instructor. First session, he used words I’d never heard. Aperture priority. Exposure compensation. Histogram.
I smiled. Nodded. Understood nothing.
Second session, same. I stopped going.
Happy asked why I quit. “It’s like an intellectual barrier,” I said. “I can’t get past his language.”
“Maybe you need to try harder.”
“Maybe.”
Then I found a blog. Someone who’d started six months ago. Their beginner’s guide had pictures. Simple words. This is how I was confused. This is what helped.
I learned photography from that blog.
Not well. But enough.
The professional knew more. Obviously. But knowing more didn’t help me know anything.
“What are you afraid of?” Arash asked one afternoon.
We were walking home from school. He asks strange questions sometimes. Eight years old. Sees things.
“What makes you ask that?”
“You’re always asking other people things. Even when you know.”
“How do you know I know?”
“I can tell.”
We walked for a while. A rickshaw passed. Then another.
“Maybe I don’t trust what I know,” I said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He accepted this. Kids accept not knowing. Adults pretend they don’t.
At work—when I worked—new employees explained systems better than anyone. They’d been there three months. Still remembered not understanding.
The veterans, five years, ten years, they’d forgotten. Their explanations assumed knowledge. Skipped steps. Used shortcuts.
“You need to document this properly,” I told my manager once.
“The senior developers know how it works.”
“That’s the problem. The burden of expertise.”
“What?”
“They know too much. Can’t explain to people who don’t.”
He looked confused. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Maybe it didn’t. Two months later I quit. Different reasons. But that conversation stayed with me.
Professor Rahman teaches at the university still. I looked him up. He’s written books. Won awards. Students say his classes are brilliant.
I believe them.
But I’ll never take another one.
Last month I saw him at a bookstore. He didn’t recognize me. Why would he? I was one student ten years ago. He’s taught thousands.
I almost said hello. Didn’t.
What would I say? Your classes were too good for me? I learned more from strangers?
He bought three books. Academic texts. Left.
I bought a novel. About nothing. A man who couldn’t sleep. He walked at night. Nothing happened.
I understood that book perfectly.
“Do you regret leaving your job?” Happy asks sometimes.
“No.”
“Do you miss it?”
“No.”
“What do you miss?”
I think about this. The answer changes.
“I miss knowing what I was supposed to know,” I said last time.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
She’s stopped asking me to clarify. I don’t clarify well.
Yesterday Arash asked me about planets. I know about planets. I could have explained.
“Let’s look it up together,” I said.
We found a video. A kid, maybe twelve, explaining the solar system. Clay models. Simple words.
Arash understood everything. Asked follow-up questions. I answered those.
The video built the bridge. I helped him cross.
That felt right. I don’t know why.
Tonight, walking home from the market, I passed the café. Professor Rahman was there again. Same table. Reading something. Papers spread out.
A student sat across from him. Asking questions probably. The professor pointed at something. Drew a diagram on a napkin.
The student nodded. Wrote in a notebook.
I kept walking.
At home, Happy was cooking. Arash was reading.
“Did you get the vegetables?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What took so long?”
“I walked slowly.”
She looked at me. Didn’t ask more.
I sat next to Arash. He was reading about space. A children’s book. Simple pictures.
“Is this good?” I asked.
“Very good,” he said. “Do you want to read it?”
“Yes.”
He handed it to me. I read about stars. About how far away they are. About how the light we see is old. From years ago. The stars might not even exist anymore.
“That’s strange,” Arash said.
“Yes.”
“How do we know which stars are real?”
“We don’t.”
He thought about this. Then went back to reading.
I put the book down. Looked at Happy in the kitchen. Her back to me. Stirring something.
The ceiling fan turned.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to know anymore.
Maybe that was fine.
Maybe not.
I didn’t know.