Kamal panicked for a moment when she saw a car moving at a distance.
She was afraid that someone might find her outside at midnight. It wasn’t the dark that scared her but the light from the street lamps and that of the approaching vehicle that could destroy her invincibility. The sharp light penetrated through the heavy darkness like a knife going inside of a bear’s skin. She hid herself behind a tree.
“What are you doing here?” She asked him.
“I don’t know, nothing makes any sense.” He said softly, as if he was
talking to himself. He walked farther away from the light and she
followed him. When he reached the shore, he sat down, pressing his
palm into the sand.
"I am as confused as you are. All I know is that I am dead and I know
there is no going back but none of this makes any sense, it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense" he kept on saying as the waves came and went one after the other.
His orange shirt was visible in the moonlight, his hair looked messy but
still suited his face. When a soft wind blew, it felt as if the trees around
them were whispering. She sat next to him, not knowing what to say.
They stared at the sea as each wave was desperately trying to hold
onto the shore.
“Hassan was right”, kamala thought. “His death did not make any
sense. He was so very full of life- energetic and vibrant. In fact, he was
the opposite of death.”
She stared at the sea for a long time. She used to sit here with her dad
before he went abroad looking for a better job. She had felt a heaviness
in her heart when he left. When her grandmother passed away that heaviness was replaced by a void and now that Hassan is dead, she felt like the curtains of her childhood was closing forever.
“Staying here is painful but I can’t make myself leave. There is always
something that we love more than ourselves that makes it impossible to move on - be it someone you love or a place filled with memories or passions that inspire you to live. When you are dead, when you are
sure that you have lost everything, you’ll come to realize what meant
the most to you.” He looked into her eyes and continued to talk.
"I need to find a way to tell the people that I love that everything is going to be alright, that things will get better, that they will find happiness again. Most importantly, I want them to know how much they meant to me. I want them to know how much I loved them, and I am afraid I have lost the chance to tell them this in person. " Tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke.
“May be that is why I can see you. Maybe I am here to help you. We’ll
figure something out.”, She said.
“You need to go back home, you are shivering”, she hadn’t noticed how
cold it was until he had pointed it out.
“Go home now but please come back again tomorrow.”, Said Hassan.
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she quietly got up and walked back
home. She crept inside her blanket to keep her warm but the cold
never left her.
