The wall between Anvar and Tolib runs down the middle of a plot of land behind their houses, and it has been in the wrong place since 1974.
Both brothers know this. That is what makes the story worth telling.
They argued about it for seven months. The meeting in the mahalla office in February was the third one, and by then every family on that street had an opinion, and all the neighbours came out to watch the two of them walk in.
Hamid aka, who is eighty-four and has been the elder of that street since 2001, let them talk for twenty minutes. Each of them said the same thing in a different order: the wall is two metres inside my land.
Then he asked one question, and he asked it once.
"Both of you were boys in 1974. Who built that wall?"
Neither of them answered.
The room waited. Anvar looked at the table. Tolib looked at the window. Nobody in that office was surprised, because every man over sixty in the room already knew the answer, and the answer was their father.
He built it in the summer he came back from the army, by himself, in three weeks, and he built it two metres out of line because he had no line and a bad eye. Either brother could have said his name in one second, and either answer would have won him the land.
Neither of them was going to do it in front of forty people.
Hamid aka waited until the silence became uncomfortable and then he made his ruling, and it took eleven words: the wall stays, each of them pays half of a new gate in it, and the gate is never locked.
The gate was hung in April. It is plain, it is grey, and it has no lock on it at all.
Both families use it every day. Neither brother has ever mentioned the wall again, and Hamid aka has told this story at four weddings, always finishing with the same line: a man who will not blame his father in public will not blame his brother in private.