KARACHI: The air inside a Liaquatabad mechanic’s shop on a January evening in 2016 was thick with the smell of oil and gasoline. Amid the clang of wrenches and the growl of engines, a young worker, Behzad Ahmed Warsi, wiped grease from his hands, slipped into a quiet corner, pulled out a scrap of paper and began to draw.
That day, fate rolled in on four wheels. A car broke down near the shop, and behind the wheel was Shahid Rassam, a prominent Pakistani Canadian painter, sculptor and principal of an art school in Karachi.
While waiting for repairs, Rassam noticed the boy sketching.
“I saw a boy who wiped off oil and then went to sit in a corner, picked up a piece of paper, and started sketching on it,” Rassam recalled.
That fleeting scene, a moment of creativity in the midst of grease and noise, would alter the young mechanic’s life.
