Editorial text
How did NAKTASHIF begin with a simple question about a giraffe? Chapter One of Ahmad's Journey, inspired by real events, about knowledge, family, and a dream that began during one long night.
Inspired by a true story. Some characters, situations, dialogue, and chronology have been reimagined or combined for narrative purposes.
On the night NAKTASHIF began, Ahmad's daughter had already forgotten the question that started it.
He had not.
Hours earlier, at 4:45 in the morning, his phone vibrated on the small table beside the bed.
Ahmad reached into the darkness and silenced the alarm before it could ring a second time.
For a few moments, he stayed where he was.
The steady hum of the air conditioner filled the room. His wife was asleep beside him. In the next room of their small villa, their daughter slept in a world that knew nothing yet of alarms, long shifts, payments, or the calculations adults learned to carry around in their heads.
He checked the time.
A financial notification sat at the top of the screen.
He read the first few words, then swiped it away.
Not now.
He got up.
Before leaving, he paused at his daughter's door. He did not go in. He looked at her from the hallway for a moment, then closed the door gently.
Minutes later, he was on the road.
The city was still waking, but his day was already underway.
The roads were nearly empty, lights scattered in the darkness, shops beginning to open for people whose lives started before sunrise.
Ahmad was a chemical engineer. His work was steady, and so were the responsibilities that came with it. On many days, he left home around five in the morning and did not return from work until evening.
He did not hate his job.
What he hated was reaching the end of the day and realizing that the hours left for the things he loved were always the smallest part of it.
A wife.
A daughter.
Training.
Himself.
Then sleep, if there was still room for it.
The day passed the way long, familiar days often do.
And when it ended, he did not drive straight home.
There was one more appointment he rarely cancelled.
He wrapped his hands, tightened the straps, and stood in front of the heavy bag.
One punch.
Then another.
A step to the side.
A short breath.
Another combination.
Physical exhaustion made more sense to him than the kind that lived inside his head. A muscle hurts and you understand. Your breathing shortens and you slow down. Anxiety is different. It sits somewhere inside you and refuses to tell you where to put your hand to make it stop.
He paused.
Someone nearby looked at him and asked:
“After a full day at work, you still come here to train?”
Ahmad smiled and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“If I don't train, I get more tired.”
The man laughed and shook his head.
Ahmad turned back to the bag.
It was not a performance, and it was not a daily act of heroism. For roughly ninety minutes, life became simpler: breathe, move, balance, take the next step.
By the time he finished, night had reached home before he had.
He opened the front door and heard his daughter before he saw her.
The rhythm of the day changed instantly.
He took off his shoes, set his things down, and sat on the floor beside her. His wife moved through the ordinary details of the evening and, without interrupting the conversation between father and daughter, placed his dinner on the table.
The little girl had a picture of a giraffe in front of her.
She lifted it toward him and pointed at its neck.
“Dad... why is its neck so long?”
Ahmad smiled.
He gave her a simple answer, the kind that would have been enough for a small child at the end of a long day.
Then he stopped.
He looked at the picture again.
“Wait. Let me make sure.”
He pulled out his phone.
He searched.
Opened the first result.
Then the second.
Then the third.
At first, it seemed easier than he expected. There were plenty of answers.
But after a few minutes, his question was no longer: What is the answer?
It had become: Where did this answer come from?
Similar passages.
The same sentences repeated in different forms.
Confident claims with no clear source.
Pages that gave him two lines and somehow left him with the same question, only less certain than before.
He opened another page.
Then another.
Eventually, he looked up.
His daughter was on the other side of the room, absorbed in a different toy.
The picture had been left on the floor.
For her, the question was over.
For Ahmad, it had only just begun.
His wife noticed that he was still holding the phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking something up for her.”
She glanced at their daughter, then back at him.
“Clearly, she’s still waiting.”
Ahmad looked up and laughed.
“No. This is personal now.”
She nudged his plate a little closer.
“At least eat while you investigate.”
He looked at the food as if he had only just remembered it existed.
He took a bite, then returned to the screen.
“Everywhere gives you an answer. But the moment you ask who said it, or where it came from, you start going in circles.”
She shrugged lightly.
“Then use the answer that feels right.”
He stopped.
“That's exactly what I don't like.”
“What?”
“That it only feels right.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Most people could have left the matter there. His daughter had asked. He had answered. The evening could have moved on.
But it was no longer about a giraffe.
“So you want one place that's reliable. That's it?” she asked.
Ahmad looked at her.
He did not answer immediately.
For the first time, the question felt larger than the evening itself.
Their daughter went to sleep.
The small villa grew quiet.
What remained of his dinner went cold.
Ahmad stayed in the living room.
He was no longer searching for the giraffe.
He was searching for the place he wished he had found in the first place.
Arabic encyclopedias.
Educational sites.
Children's content.
Pages about animals and nature.
Scientific sources.
He found good things.
That made the problem harder, not easier.
Knowledge was not absent.
It was scattered.
A strong explanation here.
A good image there.
A clear piece of writing somewhere else.
Then gaps.
Then repetition.
Then a claim with no visible origin.
Then ten open tabs just to reach one answer he felt comfortable trusting.
He looked at the time.
11:38 PM
He exhaled.
“Enough.”
He locked the phone and placed it on the table.
Two seconds passed.
Three.
Five.
He reached for it and unlocked it again.
His wife appeared at the edge of the living room a little after midnight.
At first, she said nothing.
She looked at Ahmad.
Then at the phone.
Then at the clock.
“You're still awake?”
“I'm thinking.”
She answered immediately.
“That's the problem.”
He laughed quietly.
She sat at the other end of the sofa.
After a moment, he said:
“Imagine there was one place... if someone wanted to learn about an animal, or any creature, they wouldn't have to jump between twenty different places. They'd know the information, know where it came from, and be able to trust it.”
“So... a website?”
He slowly shook his head.
“Maybe. I don't know. The point isn't a website. The point is... somewhere I could tell her one day: if you want to know, go here.”
He looked toward their daughter's room.
His wife did not look toward the room this time.
She was looking at him.
“If the place you're looking for doesn't exist... maybe you should make it.”
Ahmad smiled as if she had said something far simpler than what he had heard.
“Just like that?”
“No.”
She stood.
“But sleep first.”
“Two minutes.”
She stopped in the hallway.
“I know your two minutes.”
She was smiling when she said it, but Ahmad watched the empty hallway for a second after she disappeared.
Then he turned back to the screen.
He started typing names.
Then deleting them.
He tried others.
Deleted those too.
Some made the idea sound as if it were only about animals. Some sounded like the title of a school textbook. Others were far too grand for something that did not even exist yet.
He put the phone down for a moment and leaned back.
His eyes landed on an old photograph on a nearby shelf: a road, a helmet, and the edge of a red-and-black motorcycle.
He looked at it for only a second.
Then he returned to the screen.
He wanted a word that did not describe an encyclopedia.
A word that described an action.
Something he had been doing since childhood, long before he knew it might one day become a project.
He typed:
NAKTASHIF. In Arabic, the word itself was a verb: we discover.
He stared at the word.
He did not have a project yet.
No plan.
No company.
No business model.
Not even a clear idea of what that name would demand if he ever decided to take it seriously.
He only had the sense that the word had landed on something true.
For the first time that night, he did not look for a source to confirm it.
He locked the phone.
By the time he returned to the bedroom, his wife was asleep.
He placed the phone on the same small table beside the bed.
He lay down.
The giraffe, his daughter's question, the open pages, and his wife's simple sentence moved through his mind.
Then he fell asleep.
A few hours later, the phone vibrated.
Ahmad opened his eyes.
4:45 AM
The name was still saved on his phone.
The time that name would require, however...
had never existed in the first place.
