Longing For Paradise

Chapter 5

By the cluster of stars in the vast night sky.
There is nothing in this world holding me back from following you.
When the Preserved Tablet wrote us down to be separated,
I didn't think it would be this long and this painful.
I yell back into time to just catch a glimpse of you again.
If only the promised Day isn't the only time you'll be resurrected.
If only the Angel of Death came for me earlier.
If only the he took me along with you like I begging him to.

- Ghalbani bid Dhar

The scent of mud tingled her nose as she walked through the bustling market place. With pedlars shouting out prices to some fighting over customer, everything seemed in place. Noor followed the painted number measurements on the sides of the street shops until she reached the the fifty first one.

Peaking into the alleyway in between the two cloth shops, Noor's eyes met with a snotty child eating his wooden toy. The boy's eyes widened as he saw Noor's large overgarments and veiled face and fled, something Noor thought was best. She couldn't reveal her voice.

The gruff shopkeepers gave her suspicious side-eyes but otherwise ignored her, diverting their attentions to the fancifully dressed woman approaching them. Noor slipped past them and jogged before stopping to survey her surroundings.

This was the first time she was in such an alleyway, and Noor had experiences with alleyways. The buildings had rough outworks but upon closer examination, one could see they were done meticulously. The path too had settled dirt, not the kind that rose up in the air once a lot of people walked on it, at least not as much as the marketplace's one does. Noor remembered some of the people from her previous twilight gatherings, their garbs might look worn-off but their mannerism and certain way of speech betrayed them. Perhaps, she thought, one of them organised the gathering.

Burying her suspicions at the back of her mind, she walked until she found a group of children playing and eventually a neighbourhood of people carrying out their everyday chores. Noor slowed her pace and took in the green trees and flower bushes rustling quietly among the monotony of daily life. She wondered if she should've spent more time in the market place and bought something, after all she was going to a twilight gathering in the afternoon. In her defense, she would've never been able to leave the house at night under the eyes of the servants who were explicitly ordered not to allow her out of doors; she managed to get her parents to relax the rule to dusk time.

Strolling through the half-baked road, Noor's thoughts went to her letter sender. Who was he? She couldn't even be sure he was a he. He did use the male-gendered pronouns but adding an image to the words was different. She wondered if she should imagine him tall, with straight, wide shoulders and black hair. Are his eyes blacker than the night sky with nothing but the beholder to reflect or were they light coloured that demanded you melt into them? No, she should be realistic right? He's probably average-heighted with a beard and...what were average men like? She wouldn't know, it's not like she was ever allowed to look at men. But the men at her poetry gathering were quite average too. Did she feel anything towards them? A thought struck her. What if she doesn't like Ghalbani bid Dhar if he's ugly?

No. No, he can't be. A man with that kind of writing simply couldn't be. Plus, Noor wasn't shallow. She didn't care what men looked like...

Noor almost laughed out loud. Standing in front of her was a version of the man she imagined. Of course he was different than her imagination. Actually he was nothing like her imagination except for being muscular, for he was crouched and she couldn't confirm anything else.