Stargazing Across the Oceans

“Have you not put your phone to charge?”, she glared at him over the FaceTime although knowing he has charged his phone back and forth throughout the four-hour period of their conversation. Love does not see time nor distance, they knew, but only the true love between them felt how much they mourned every day, having their hands raised up to The Almighty to bring them close together, and have their hands held onto each other’s as tight as their hearts did. “Good morning”, he said before disconnecting the call for another night and she knew not to say ‘Goodbye’ for the morning wishes knew his parents would wake up to offer prayers and have him caught whispering under his thin summer blanket. Kisses exchanged, and this continued for days and or nights for love is blind to time.

The two hearts that witnessed love was unfortunate that the society and cultural practices kept their eyes from meeting each other. Love, at first sight it was indeed. Love of each other’s personalities. Love for the two pierced through all the common ices of modern day’s lust and struck them hard. As hard as the roots of a tree for no matter how much you cut a tree, some of its roots are still planted firm onto the soil. “It is time”, he cried over the phone on the night prior to the day where he was to leave to find a future. A future in which she was never meant to be in. A future, where he went to seek for his family’s sake. She cried to herself every night thereafter, but little did she know that being an Asian who was restricted to a taste of Western Culture, he continued having his hand held up to God making sure that he brings her back to him. Her words, the most truthful. Her smile, the simplest. Her love, the purest.

A year went by with silence between the two lovebirds that used to sing for the world their morning lullaby for their mornings was the night and their world was each soul for the other. With lost hope that she may have forgotten him, he greeted her with all the love that he wanted in his life. The love he has never felt before and the love that has never left him before hoping she was waiting for him. “I never stopped loving you Kahir.” The words that made him forget all the nights that he spent homeless, sleeping in the bus stop and the mosques, the countless hardships he had to face in ensuring his family made a worthwhile investment in sending him overseas, and the days in which he had cried craving for her love again for not a matter of detail went missing from his life without reaching her ears. The words of Noor brought back life to the heart that only seemed to be beating to serve the purpose of it being put in a human vessel. The words that made all their distances seem smaller, the hundreds of stairs he climbed to get a better network reception, so he could see her eyes for they defined the extent to which there was truth lying in the words, “I never stopped loving you…” The light in his darkness, the bearer to his heart.

Humaith Cassim

Drama enthusiast with a passion for screenplays and poetry.

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