Ahmed.

I stare at my own signature. I stare at the name that seems so unfamiliar to me and yet it is my name.

It isn’t the name that I had all my life. It wasn’t a name I was given by my late parents. In fact, at this moment in time there isn’t a single soul in the world who knows who this Ahmed is. 

My silhouette reflects back in my rolex watch. It is of a man that I don’t yet recognize. For a moment, I see him trying to make sense of everything that has been. Everything that changed. The bushy strands of hair that grew on my chin that I otherwise used to regularly shave off are trying to awkwardly become about my face. It is a new territory. It is a new identity. Disease brought in some wrinkles earlier than time to my face. My striking dark eyes tired from everything that went by in the last two years. And I know one thing with certainty in the sea of all the oblivion. I am a completely changed man altogether.

My friends and family don’t know this man. They knew someone who had not yet known the touch of love. A man whose soul was still sleeping. A self-assured businessman who owned a world of his own. 

Arjun Pandey. 

Arjun Pandey was a different man. He had different plans in store for himself. A different life that he planned to live for himself. He was a man who lived and did as he pleased. He was a free, independent soul. Someone who wasn’t tethered to the ground at all.

Until he found his grounding.

I stared at the signature at the consent form once more. My hands almost instinctively move towards my phone. I open the camera and take a picture. It is only when I tap on the share option that I realize what I was doing.

I smile. It is a bittersweet smile. There are very few people in the world who you miss talking to so much that you want to talk about their absence with them too.

Nothing was able to fill in or replace her presence in my life. 

Even now, she remains the favorite contact on my phone. The name that pops up the first in all my search bars and the first name that my phone suggests when I want to share something.

And each time, it tricks me into having hope again. I fall head first into it.

I tap the send option on whatsapp and just like all my messages from the previous months, this one also receives only one tick. Indicating that the user had most likely blocked me. 

I still can not help but smile. When you love someone, you even adore their anger. 

    ‘Allah-hu-Akbar’

I am awakened by the sound of the prayer on my phone. I sit up and stare around at the darkness for some time. 

This apartment is far from any mosques in San Francisco. So, I never used to hear the sound of the Fajr prayer on my phone. 

That didn’t matter back in those days though. I was already up almost each night until the morning prayer time. I had learnt the times of prayers better than most born Muslims at this point. They were rhythmic and clocked inside my circadian rhythm.

Each morning I prayed under the open sky of my balcony in the studio apartment. Just like every day, I did the same today.

Sitting down on the floor cross-legged, I opened both my palms and joined them together. This was the way I prayed each morning and asked only for one thing.

As I say her name, a wind blows across my face. It is as if the Universe, or Allah is trying to comfort me. 

I take it as a sign that my prayer is heard and smiled. But with each smile my heart constricts as well. Forty one days and nights I had not shared a single word with my love. Despite all my attempts and efforts to reconnect.

Each passing moment, a gust of wind, a sound from neighbors, the beating of my own heart spent without her feels like a sin.

But the only thing that keeps me going is the promise that one day she will be by my side and perhaps we will share this moment together, perhaps we will pray together and I will not have anything to ask from God.

Ruminating and yearning for a reunion, I fall asleep on the prayer mat. Until something wakes me up. 

It is an echo of a memory that long swept past me. But I let it beguile me anyway.

‘Arjun! Arjun! Wake up! How can you fall asleep on me like that?’

I stir in my sleep. The soft, breezy voice was as familiar as it was my dead mother’s. I had long forgotten what she sounded like. But if there was ever a love so unconditional as that of a mother, I am sure this voice spoke of that love.

I wake up to an angelic face. It is an angular countenance with large round eyes. She has a brown complexion and wavy thick hair that would become all about her face if she ever let them down. But she had tied them tightly, almost too tightly, into a braid that she put on her shoulder proudly.

I stare at her for a solid minute without saying anything at all. I am taken by the spectacle. It was all too familiar. But it was surreal because I have not seen it in a while.

I have not seen her, looking at me with those expectant round eyes. Those bright eyes that were always filled with hope. 

Maybe this was where I was inspired to always hold an indestructible hope within me no matter what happens.

‘Why did you sleep on me Arjun? You know I waited so long to talk to you!’

Her voice echoes in my mind as if the present isn’t the present, it is merely a remnant of everything that has been in the past. It was like the soft breeze after my morning prayer. A sweet melody I memorized by heart.

I want to open my mouth and say something but my mouth produces no sound. I want to tell her how much I longed to hear her voice, how glad I was to have woken up from what could only be the most frightening nightmare I had ever been inside.

I want to tell her desperately that I had learnt everything there was to know about her religion, that I had converted, that I had taken the name that she once jokingly had picked for me. I wanted to tell her that the nightmare was soon going to be over.

‘Why are you not saying anything? You know, I have wanted to tell you all these things,’ she hurriedly starts to speak up as if she is scared that the call will cut off, ‘Before you disappear again. I aced that project management course you referred me to. And you know Maria? Maria is having trouble in her marriage again. Her husband is acting up. I am really worried. I wanted to tell you that when I think about marriage, I only think of one man. And that’s you. I am afraid that any other man will not be able to live up to how you have made me feel. I only dream of you. I dream of the day when you will come to Pakistan. You know, I can not wait anymore. But I still keep waiting. Arjun? Will you say something?’

I open my mouth, clasping the tablet in my hand tightly, afraid that the image of hers will sleep away. Those bright eyes begin to glisten with tears. A sight that always drowned my heart. I could never tolerate the idea that something brought tears to her eyes.

As tears pour out of her eyes, she smiles. A bittersweet smile. 

I try to capture the smile in my eyes. The last smile that she ever gave me was riddled with tears.

And now my voice does not work anymore. I try to speak to her, to send out words of comfort, of love and hope but they do not reach her. 

‘Fatima,’  I mouth the word in my mouth and no voice comes out. A lump forms in my throat for all the unsaid words continue to make a graveyard of their own in my throat.

‘I am coming,’ I mouth the words again, hoping they will reach her, ‘I am coming to you.’

Fatima’s form starts to blur and soon I can barely make her out anymore. It is as if a stone was thrown in the water reflecting the moon at night. 

And now all I can see is ripples.

I open my eyes to look at the bright sunshine that was all around my balcony. I look at the time on my watch.

It’s 5:30 a.m. in the morning in San Francisco where I am.

It’s 5:30 p.m. in Lahore where she is.

                                                             ********

 ‘Abdul, what is the meaning of a dream in which you lose your voice and can’t say something important to someone you love?’

 Mr. Abdul Qadoos was the only Muslim in the area that I had found who was still practicing and of faith. We unexpectedly struck a friendship one day when I was attending a Friday sermon. Now he remains to be one of the only few people I still talk to.

After saying our Friday prayer together, we often go together to the Golden Gate park and stroll as we talk of religion and our journeys with faith.

Abdul was a born again Muslim. He grew up in a house that did not prioritize faith. After a series of struggles in his life, he found his faith back to God.

And in this moment, it makes me glad that he did because everything I needed to know about Islam he taught me.

 Abdul scratches his beard before answering me. His beard was quite just like some of the facial hair that sprouted out of my chin after I stopped shaving. I used to shave every single day when I was Arjun. 

I still remember the time when Fatima first expressed her desire to see me in a beard. I scoffed at that idea for I was always clean-shaven and could never see myself as anything but that.

And yet here I was. After a month of trying, a stubble had already formed. At this moment, it looks a bit awkward but I hope by the time I see her again, it will be in its complete form. A proper beard.

Just how Fatima wanted it.

‘Do you know Ahmed,’ Abdul begins to speak, bringing me out of my reverie, ‘When it comes to dreams, not all dreams are omens of some sort. Not all dreams are from Allah either. Some dreams are from the devil who wants to put fear into your hearts.’

‘Really?’ I ask him, ‘Do you think this might be happening to me too?’

Abdul looks over at me. His eyes are as kind as ever. Abdul’s like a heaven-sent to me. He sees through me in a way no one has in a while. 

‘The devil can not reach those with pure love in their heart. And you, my sir, have the purest of love that I have ever seen. A love so pure that it brought you closer to God.It changed the entire course of your life. Now that’s something the devil can’t break. Your fear can never be stronger than your love.’

His words warm my heart. In him, I find a friend that keeps my hope alive. 

‘Do you think that if I want something with all my heart and pray for it every day, will I finally have it?’ I ask him.

‘You are not the only one praying, brother,’ Abdul smiles, ‘I pray for your desires too. And I can say certainly God hears you. And one day you will find what you are looking for. There is a verse in the Holy Quran. Allah is with the ones who hold patience. So, be patient my brother and you will find the thing you are longing for.’

His words give me courage. I say a silent prayer in my heart as we walk on. It is a cool evening in San Francisco. I count my days in this city each day now. The last ten days of November have become exceptionally difficult to maneuver. Probably because the day is coming near when I will finally get to see her. 

I imagine that will not be an easy task either. It isn’t as if she is going to readily welcome me with open arms but I feel she must miss me and upon seeing my face, she will forget everything that has been as well.

I know that deep down her love for me is the same. It will pour out when the gust of anger settles in.

‘Waiting can feel like dying. But remember you are alive. And you are swimming towards your ultimate goal.’

Abdul’s words ring in my mind as I finally feel it too. In just ten days, a dream that was born two years ago will come to fruition.

                                                                *******

‘Dear Fatima,

Saying your name. Writing your name. Hearing your name. It is still like music to my ears. I have waited for years to say your name to your face when we see each other. I can’t believe I have come so close to it now.

‘When will you come to Lahore?’

This was always your complaint to me. In the last few times we talked before everything fell apart, you walked me through your favorite points in Lahore.

You said one day you would like to walk with me in Lawrence Garden hand in hand. That you often saw married couples do that and felt envious. You said that at least once you wanted to legitimize this love. You wanted to proudly show me off in the streets of Old Anarkali. And when someone stopped to question us, you would proudly answer;

We are married! We are in love!

Nothing has changed in my heart. There is only your name that it beats for. And when I think of Lahore, I think of you. You and every single dream you ever had.

A part of me believes that I only made it through that terrible sickness because I wanted to stay alive for you. Because I wanted to be the one who witnesses you through each age in life. I wanted your life to have all the colors in Basant. I wanted your everyday to be like Eid.

I now have an answer to everything. 

And with an earnest heart, I come to you. My love for you has finally brought me to Lahore. Take me in whole.

                                                                                                                         Yours,

                                                                                                                                  Ahmed

 A tear falls from my eyes as I fold my letter. Of all the belongings I pack, this is the heaviest one to carry. I put it on top of my truck next to a map of Lahore. I circle my fingers around the city, hoping through some magic the map will come alive and tell me where she is now.

But I have hope that if I’ve made it so far, I will track her down in the city too.