At the stroke of midnight yesterday, Adnan Haider Rizvi, able bodied dreamer, bonded in servitude at IBM, heart breaker of girl friends of East European origins and noted Dubai socialite, pulled the plug on Lootmaar.com. I had been the attending physician, the counsel of record, the peddler on the street, the bearer of signs from destiny nagging Adnan to quit IBM everytime I saw him. A piece of my soul that had watched over the conception, struggle and launch of Lootmaar, quietly came back last night and died.
A moment of silence, if you please…
I am not sure if Adnan remembers the day when he first walked in my room at SZABIST with three of his classmates to pitch Lootmaar; or the day we spoke about him getting into Duke and following his dreams fulltime; or his decision to launch and accept the IBM offer in Dubai; or the day he gave away ipods to build traffic on the site; or the day we auctioned an hour of my time for a thousand US dollars to raise money for the Nishtar Park school being run by Sami Mustafa.
I do. A moment of silence, if you please…
Unlike Amin learning to ride his bike or finding himself in the pool, his first steps towards adulthood, Adnan’s first failure, marks a loss of innocence. More like a first heart break, there is no visible scar, but inside yourself you know you will never be the same again. A child entrusted in my care, is now a fully grown, mature warrior. He will never ask why again.
And as I watched one Adnan watch the other, yesterday, reach deep within their respective souls and bare it to a 100 people, I thought to myself, a moment of silence, if you please, for the two Adnans I see are not the Adnans I knew.