PART SIX
23
Chapter Twenty-Three – Isn’t it time for you to speak, Muna?
The three of them looked at one another, eyes mingling sorrow and pride, hearts quivering with a subtle tremor that belonged only to the moments when nostalgia wakes you from an old dream.
Numan paused, his voice on the verge of betrayal, and murmured inwardly, fearing Muna or her father might see the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. Time seemed to freeze. Then he turned to her, his whisper heavy with longing yet tender:
“Is it not time for you to speak, Muna?”
He spoke, attempting to ease the weight of the moment, yet felt a strange tightness clutch his heart, as if the words had lodged in his throat.
After a brief silence, Muna answered, as if testing the air for her own words. She began to speak of her mother, of her maternal grandparents, and how everyone had treated them. Her words flowed with deep love and respect, carrying memories that could not fade. She continued, her voice alive with devotion:
“Mom… she was not merely a mother. She was a whole universe. She taught Arabic at the university, awakened poetry in her students’ hearts, made grammar sing, and let rhetoric cascade from her sentences like clusters of jasmine on a Beirut balcony.”
She paused for a moment, as if the weight of the words pressed upon her tongue, then added with a deep sigh:
“But at home, she was a mother as a mother should be… gentle, firm, companionable, with a mind both deep in thought, in fear, and in love.”
Muna’s eyes swam with longing. She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, then met Numan’s eyes, offering a faint smile that seemed to sweep away the fog gathering behind her eyelids. Gathering her strength, she resumed in a tone tinged with painful memories but steady with resolve:
“She treated me as her finest project—not merely as a child, but as a friend to listen and to teach. As one female nurturing another in life. She did not punish; she reasoned. She always said to me: ‘Freedom is not given, Muna… it is trained.’”
There was a peculiar magic in her words, and Numan’s silence seemed to burn between them. The quiet grew heavier, while her eyes brimmed with tears that had yet to fall. She did not surrender. With a steady voice, carrying the tremor of loss, she said:
” When she died… I felt as if a part of my soul had been gently wrenched away, painfully, as though I had been severed from a light I once breathed. All that I am today is an extension of her… I am, in truth, only a warm shadow of her voice, a pale copy of her great heart.”
Numan did not interrupt. He listened in profound silence, as if his tongue had frozen before the depth of her suffering. He caught each word with care, as though hearing a secret for the first time. In his eyes, there was an unfamiliar gravity, while his chest gradually expanded to hold this new realization: that a human being could be an imprint of a love long gone.
He murmured to himself, contemplative:
” How rare are those raised in pure love, and how pure are those who carry the warmth of the departed in their hearts.”
Muna had finished speaking, and silence still filled the room. He could not articulate the weight of her words, yet his eyes spoke what his tongue could not.
She looked at him, then, more softly, said:
” My mother was not just my mother. She was my mirror, my guide, my friend, and… she was always one step ahead. She knew what I was thinking before I spoke it. After her passing… I was forced to become the mother. But… to whom? She took my little brother with her, the one we loved… as if she had left me only a tattered piece of cloth, which I thought was just a memory. But later, I realized… she had intended—even after leaving—to teach me strength through it.”
Numan rested his chin on his hand, his voice a soft whisper from the heart:
” It is beautiful to be raised with such love… a love that gives you wings, and even if death breaks one, the other still soars.”
After a brief pause, he asked:
” Muna… do you write?”
She responded, surprised:
” I write?”
He smiled gently:
” I mean… this storytelling of yours, the way you describe, the way you summon memory, the way you bring her back… if you put it on paper, many hearts will tremble.”
For the first time, a pure, clear smile appeared on her lips—neither forced nor foolish, but the kind that springs forth when someone reflects back to you a value within yourself you had never noticed.
” Perhaps… perhaps I will start with her. She deserves to be written about more than anything else,” she said.
Numan rose lightly, walked to a side room, and returned with a small notebook bound in dark leather. He handed it to her, saying:
” Start with this. Now.”
She hesitated for a moment, then took it from his hand silently. Yet her eyes spoke volumes… It was a quiet moment, but in the hearts of both, it marked the beginning of something new—a feeling not yet spoken, but born nonetheless.
Across the room, Mr. Ahmed could no longer bear the weight of such honesty and emotion. He withdrew quietly, leaving them to rebuild together what time had frayed between them.
“Mr. Ahmed,” the narration continues, “shared with them, every evening, glimpses of his scholarly and professional concerns, letting his expressions reveal the great love that had shaped his life, and Muna was the finest fruit of that love.”
“His memory always held a story, brief words encapsulating a lifetime…” he would one day tell them, when the moment was right. Ahmed had been born in one of the narrow alleys, where houses pressed together like secrets and dreams whispered only faintly. He was the youngest of his siblings, carrying in his eyes a gaze unlike any of his peers. In his childhood, he was not known for playfulness. He was most often seen beneath the lantern’s glow, flipping through a worn book, as if touching a fragile dream.
Numan walked to school in worn clothes, yet each day he returned with words of praise inscribed in his notebook—more than ever spoken aloud in class. His excellence was never loud; it was a quiet diligence, a small lamp glowing in the darkness of poverty. And since life had never spread jasmine along the path of his dreams, Numan worked from childhood: delivering bread, typing pages in a tiny office, assisting a blind elder in organizing his study in exchange for hours of free reading.
Between work and study, Numan rose like a lantern in a shadowed rural night. By the time he reached high school, his name echoed in neighboring schools. A scholarship came—a first glimmer of justice in his life—a grant that carried him to France, to its venerable universities, where doors opened that he had never imagined.
In one of the library halls, he met her. She was Muna, daughter of a wealthy family, beautiful not with artifice but with an inner clarity. She cared for her studies as if mending something fragile within her soul. He, the young man from a modest neighborhood, had nothing to impress her with except his brilliance, his sincerity, and a gaze that spoke what words could not.
They met… and they loved.
Their love was no summer fling in Paris; it was a plant that grew between notebooks, in the silent corners of the library, on sidewalks that had known them before they knew themselves. She introduced him to her father, a man who trusted only what could be proven through action. And Numan was worthy of that trust. When he returned to Beirut and joined the construction company owned by her father:
“And oh, the irony… that very company had granted him the scholarship to pursue his studies, unaware that the threads of fate had been quietly woven since that time.”
Yet he soon transformed it. He infused it with the knowledge and understanding he had stored in his soul, pursued projects with rare passion, and lingered over details as though building a home for his mother. Through it all, he never forgot Muna; she was his reason, his companion, the light he followed. His love for her was not in words, but in tangible deeds, daily attention, unwavering fidelity, and a rare devotion to her father, who soon began to see him “…not merely as a young man bound by a scholarship, but as a future son-in-law to rely upon, and then as a son not born of his hands.”
One evening, in a scene that seemed to merge the “conversation of dawn” with Muna and her father, the sun rose slowly behind the hills, painting the sky in hues unnamed. Muna sat on the balcony, contemplating the silence of the trees and the awakening of the world, while her father stood at the edge, sipping his coffee in a quiet he knew well. It was no ordinary silence… it was as if something between them longed to be spoken.
Muna spoke, her voice carrying a mix of hesitation and curiosity:
“Papa… I love you! And I love you even more when you tell me about Mama.”
He turned to her, looked into her eyes, and smiled… that smile that does not rest on the lips but is felt deep in the soul.
“Ah, Muna! What is there that you do not already know about her? Or do you wish to know something specific, my little one?”
“Everything… but especially: how did you meet? Why did you love each other? And what made her choose you, out of all that stood before her?”
He laughed softly, then sat opposite her, placing his cup on the small wooden table.
“She did not choose me out of everyone… and I did not choose her either. What bound us together was what chose itself. There was something in it I tried to understand, yet she grasped it faster, interpreting it, justifying it, turning it into reality. Perhaps it was my brilliance, perhaps my sincerity, or perhaps… because I was poor, though my poverty never conquered me, never once broke me.”
He paused, his eyes wandering into the distance, as if speaking to a shadow of the past still warm in his heart.
“I met her in the university library in Paris. I was wandering between shelves, searching for something, a title that might connect engineering to philosophy, when I heard her voice asking about a book linking Arabic literature to philosophy. We laughed together… she knew I was studying engineering, I knew she was studying Arabic… yet each of us was seeking a deeper truth in our studies. We came to know each other more when our mother tongue brought us together, and the wounds of exile gave birth to another language between us. She came from a great, wealthy house, yet within, she carried a purity and simplicity untouched by appearances.”
“And I… found myself loving her quickly?”
Muna tilted her head slightly and said,
” No, it wasn’t love at first sight… it was love born of respect. The first admiration for care, for calm, for the passion each of you carried for learning.”
After a pause, she asked,
” And her? How did she love you? Didn’t she know you were poor?”
Numan’s features faltered for a moment, traces of the past gathering in his eyes, before he spoke in a quiet voice, where tenderness and caution intertwined:
“She knew. And she found that she loved me, even without either of us ever saying it aloud. Once she said to me, ‘You are rich, but in your own way.’”
His voice grew warmer, infused with love and deep feeling as he continued,
“My wealth was my intellect, my words, my heart… and my destiny. That was everything.”
He fell silent for a moment, his eyes wandering into the far reaches of memory, as if savoring moments steeped in wonder, before he spoke again in a softer tone:
“Muna… Mama was my dream, and I was hers. And our dreams met in your existence. The day you came into this world was the day our love truly bore fruit—it was the one truth that united these two dreams.”
Muna smiled, her eyes glistening with a soft, cloudy light. She reached for her father’s hand and held it.
” And I am proud of you both. And I hope, if I ever love, that my love will resemble yours.”
A smile of pure happiness spread across Ahmed’s face as he gently placed his hand on her head.
” And if it does, you will be wiser than all of us, for you are our daughter, the child of a love we never doubted, but believed in… until the very end.”
” Muna remained silent for a moment, and in that still air, drenched in the light of memory, a surge of hopeful beauty and the quiet pride of love welled up in her heart. ”
24
Chapter Twenty-Four – On the margins of reading
“On a quiet autumn evening, as the wind teased the yellowed leaves, Numan and Muna sat at the wooden table in the corner of the small library. The lights were dim, as if the night itself were weaving its silence with care. Before them lay open sheets of notes, and in their hands, cups of dark coffee mirrored a contemplative mood, each sip seeming to clear the mind and reorder their thoughts.
Each held a notebook inscribed with their personal reflections on a novel that had captured their admiration: ‘Anna Karenina’ by Tolstoy. Numan’s eyes roamed carefully across the pages, and then, turning them slowly and deliberately, he began:
‘ I have titled my notes: “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy, published 1877, Social Drama – a psychological analysis within a Russian aristocratic society.’
He paused for a moment, then continued in a voice both confident and compelling:
‘ The novel unfolds in a world awash with tradition and pretense, centering on the story of a married woman named Anna, who falls for a handsome officer, Vronsky, and embarks on a path fraught with shame and isolation… until her tragic end beneath the train’s wheels.’
Muna interrupted with a warm tone, as if her words were opening a new horizon in the conversation:
‘ But it is not Anna’s story alone; it is a tale of interwoven hearts… I added a note on a parallel line equally important: Levin and Kitty. Levin, a character who lingers like a reflective shadow behind every scene, is a man seeking meaning amidst the noise, finding in Kitty a companion who holds his hand toward the clarity of the countryside and the faith within it.’
Numan nodded in agreement, then resumed with focus, eyes tracing his own pages:
‘ In my reading, I felt that Tolstoy did not write about betrayal… he wrote about the tragedy of a soul with no place. Anna is not a traitor; she is a person torn between duty and desire, between being a mother and a wife, or living as a woman who loves.’ ”
Muna stood, lifted her page, and began to read with deep contemplation, as if the words slipped from her lips carrying a tide of complex emotions:
“Anna is a clever woman, captivating in presence, unfit for the cold life her marriage to Karenin imposed upon her. She chased the dream of love, yet paid its price: rejection, jealousy, a gradual unraveling of the soul… until she fell beneath the train, as one falls when no escape can be found between the rails.”
Numan raised a finger to another page in his notebook and added in a reflective tone:
“And I added an analysis of Vronsky… a nobleman who believed love to be a mere romantic outing, only to falter when responsible for a woman cast aside for him. He was not evil, merely fragile, lost between desire and society… and he failed, as did Anna with him.”
A quiet settled over them, the library seeming to float upon the echoes of their words, as if the story were being told anew before their eyes. Muna lingered on Numan’s words, while her father, listening attentively, closed his eyes for a moment, as though beauty resided more in understanding than in expression. After a pause, Muna asked:
“Dad, do you think Anna could have found another way? Could she have lived outside this struggle?”
Her father answered, choosing each word with care, a smile touching his lips, mingled with deep thought:
“Perhaps… but her struggle was purely human… between fear of the unknown and the courage to change. She might have chosen the path that faced her fate alone, yet the truth is she sought something deeper, and found only the gap between her desires and her reality.”
Silence fell again. As their coffee neared its end, their eyes held a quiet understanding, as if each word had illuminated a hidden corner within them, deepening their grasp of the story lying between the lines. Muna smiled, gesturing with her pen:
“And her husband, Karenin… he was the very chill itself… neither loving nor hateful, weighing everything with society’s eye, not the heart. He failed to hold Anna, did not save her when he could, yet never sought to destroy her intentionally.”
Muna and Numan leaned over the table, sketching out their shared conclusion:
Character Core Traits Role in the Tragedy
Anna Passionate, intelligent, tormented The tragic heroine in search of love
Vronsky Handsome, ardent, uncertain A wavering lover, victim of social shallowness
Karenin Conservative, rational, cold The embodiment of society’s power and tradition
Then Muna whispered, as if drawing out a hidden melody from the novel:
“Levin was something else… closer to Tolstoy himself. A man who asks, ‘Why do we live?’ and finds his answer in tilling the soil, in humble love, and in a faith that needs neither sermons nor cathedrals.”
They both fell silent, their thoughts circling the map of symbols they had just traced:
🚂 The train: fate, merciless modernity, passion that crushes everything in its path.
🌿 The countryside versus the city: the city as the stage of pretense and noise; the countryside as the ground of truth and calm.
♻️ The opposing pairs:
Pair Meaning
Anna × Kitty Destructive love × Balanced love
Vronsky × Levin The faltering lover × The seeker of wisdom
City × Countryside Fragmentation × Harmony
Suicide × Faith Loss of meaning × Spiritual discovery
Muna closed her notebook and said quietly:
“It isn’t only a story of betrayal… it’s a vast mirror of the human soul. As if Tolstoy is whispering: to love is to walk the edge of a blade… and to ask: why do we live?”
Numan replied with a reflective smile:
“And at the threshold of that question, every novel begins… perhaps even life itself.”
In a quiet corner of the café, where an old walnut tree stretched its shadow over them as if in gentle protection, they sat facing one another. Between them, two cups of coffee still warm, and a pliant silence that allowed questions to be born without restraint.
Muna looked at him, her eyes half-playful, half-reproachful, and asked in a voice as light as a feather testing the surface of water:
“Have you ever read who Tolstoy really was?”
Numan caught at once the teasing challenge in her tone, and the spark in her gaze that was less about doubt than about opening a hidden window of admiration. He smiled, lifted his cup, took a small sip as if summoning a distant presence, and said softly, as though unveiling a beloved scene:
“Leo Tolstoy—or rather Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy—was never just a great Russian writer. He was a breath from the very lungs of human literature. It was as if he had been destined to live more than one life inside a single lifetime.”
He leaned back in his chair, speaking to her and to himself at once, his voice carrying both fervor and calm:
“Born in 1828, gone in 1910. A novelist, a philosopher, a social reformer. He rebelled against his aristocratic class and descended to the soil, searching for meaning in simplicity, in manual labor, in the sweat of the brow rather than the polish of collars. In his final days, he abandoned his fortune and his literary glory, left his home in secret, and died in a remote train station—as if he wished to depart life without titles, without noise, only close to the earth.”
A shiver brushed lightly across Muna’s arm—not from cold, but from the weight of his words. She whispered, almost questioning:
“And was he happy, leaving all of that behind?”
Numan answered without hesitation, his voice lowered:
“I don’t know… but it seemed he only wanted to die in peace, not in triumph.”
He drew in a quiet breath, his fingers tracing absently across the wooden table as though sifting through some hidden drawer of memory, and then he spoke:
“His most famous works? War and Peace, that vast epic of Russia under Napoleon. Anna Karenina—the novel that made me resent the train, if only a little. Resurrection, where he tried to resurrect himself as much as his characters. And then the shorter pieces: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, The Devil…”
Muna broke in, curiosity alive in her voice like a child chasing a butterfly.
“And which did you love most? Which one stayed with you?”
A calm smile touched his lips. He looked at her as though confessing something private.
“Perhaps The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Because it teaches us to die honestly, not in denial.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, his eyes speaking more than his words, then added softly:
“But maybe the greater truth is this: in the last years of his life, he came to believe in what he called a simple moral Christianity—a call to humility, to nonviolence, to work done by hand, to resisting evil with good. His ideas shaped Gandhi, and later Martin Luther King. He wrote literature, yes, but then he lived his creed. And he died as he lived: on the margins, not in the palace.”
He tilted his head toward her, a touch of playfulness in his features, and closed with a half-smile:
“So, do you think I’ve read enough, my dear? Or was this only a test?”
Muna laughed—and her laughter was like the season’s first rain, light, clear, and unashamedly real. She looked back at him, her eyes glimmering with a satisfied wonder, and said:
“You read me before you ever read for me, Numan.”
25
Chapter Twenty-Five – Conversations That Never Grow Old
Muna twirled a small spoon between her fingers, as though she were digging through the layers of her memory.
“Well then… could you remind me of the greatest Russian writers?”
Numan smiled at her question, as if it were an ancient summons he knew by heart. He met her eyes, then spoke with the reverence of a man opening the doors to a grand hall of immortals.
“With pleasure… they are a world one never tires of visiting.”
He rested his face gently into the cradle of her hand. She leaned in with full attention, and he went on:
“Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) was the philosopher of the tormented soul, the master of the ultimate questions. Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot—no one, I believe, ever dug into the abyss of the human spirit as he did.”
“Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), the novelist-philosopher, who wove thought and morality into literature. From War and Peace to Anna Karenina, and the haunting Death of Ivan Ilyich, his spirit swung between faith and rebellion, between renunciation and contemplation.”
“Anton Chekhov (1860–1904), the physician who healed with words the wounds no medicine could reach. He gave us The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, and hundreds of short stories. With a simplicity that ran deep, he asked our own questions without ever pretending to answer them.”
“Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852), father of black satire. Imagine a man who wrote of a nose that fled its owner’s face, or a coat that changed a man’s fate. From Dead Souls to the absurd comedy of life itself, he blended imagination with anguish.”
“And Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883), the sorrowful romantic, the most open to the West. In Fathers and Sons, he recorded the clash of generations as no one else could. Even in prose, he wrote with the voice of a poet.”
“Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), the founder of modern Russian literature—a poet, playwright, and prose writer whose influence outlived his short life. Read Eugene Onegin and you will see: he was the one who gave the Russians their living literary tongue.”
“Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), a fearless voice in an age of fear. He wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and with daring honesty in The Gulag Archipelago he exposed the terrors of the Soviet camps. For this, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.”
Numan lifted his eyebrows slightly, then added, as if distilling an entire century into a single line:
“They did not write to entertain alone, but to ask: Why do we live? For whom? And how can we love while carrying the weight of this world?”
Muna smiled, and answered softly:
“You know… perhaps that is why their literature endures—because it questions us, it doesn’t answer for us.”
That evening was no different from any other in Damascus. Yet some evenings—though their details seem ordinary—hide within them what cannot be said, and inscribe what cannot be written.
Numan returned from his institute, where he studied architectural and engineering drawing, his steps heavy, as though the day had fastened weights to the soles of his shoes. The smell of paper and ink still clung to his hands, while the voice of his professor echoed in his head, repeating endless instructions, tasks devouring time like logs burning in a winter stove.
He sat in the living room, the house wrapped in a gentle silence broken only by the dim yellow light spilling from an old lamp in the corner, casting shadows that looked like memories.
He stretched out on the sofa and reached for the novel he had left on the table that morning: Anna Karenina. Opening to the page where he had paused, his eyes wandered over the lines without his mind following, as if he were gazing at pictures framed on the wall of memory rather than words pressed into paper.
At that very moment, Muna appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, wiping her hands on the edge of her apron. She paused when she saw his eyes sunk deep into the pages. She said nothing—just stepped closer and settled near him, as though waiting for him to finish a sentence… or a sigh.
Her whisper came like a breath, not to him exactly, but to the novel resting in his hands:
“Numan… would you have turned away from me if I were like Anna Karenina?”
He lifted his eyes slowly, as if returning from a distant world whose shadows still clung to him. His voice carried the weight of ink and vision when he answered:
“She was abandoned by those around her, Muna… she simply never found someone who could hold her fear.”
Muna leaned in, her gaze falling on the cover of the novel, as though trying to seize a thread of that paper-born woman.
“But she ran away—from her son, from her husband, from everything. Don’t you think she was selfish?”
Numan breathed slowly, as if rearranging his thoughts between his ribs, then said:
“Perhaps… but pain, at times, makes selfishness look like survival. She was searching for a warmth she had never known, for an eye that would see her, for a voice that would speak to her without condemning her.”
Muna lowered her head. Her whisper merged with her heartbeat, as though she were asking the world rather than Numan:
“And are we women unseen, unless we rebel?”
Just then, her father appeared silently at the end of the hall, a cup of tea in his hand. He stopped at the doorway, observing, without breaking in. His eyes made it clear: this conversation was not only about a novel, but about something deeper.
Numan looked into her eyes for a long moment, set the book aside, and said with a quietness laced with honesty:
“No… I believe some societies have mastered the art of closing their eyes to you—until you shout. And then, only then, they see you as a threat, not as a soul simply longing to be loved.”
Muna’s father shook his head with a faint sigh, then sat across from them in silence. He asked her, catching the slight tremor in her voice:
“Are you afraid of her fate?”
Muna answered, her tone carrying a transparent ache:
“Yes, I fear it… not because she ended beneath the train, but because she never found someone to hold her hand before she jumped.”
Numan spoke with a warmth that seemed to smooth the edges of her heart:
“If you were Anna, I would be Levin… the one who stays, not Vronsky, weary of love and powerless before it.”
Muna smiled, though her smile carried a shadow of solemnity, as if she were reading the end of a book she dreaded to reach.
“Then… read me as you read these pages, but don’t leave my ending unfinished.”
Numan reached for her hand in a long silence, then said, his voice like rain against glass:
“Love is not written with an ending… we are the ones who place the period, or leave it suspended.”
The three exchanged quiet glances. Yet the silence was no emptiness—it was a moment brimming with what could not be spoken, as if the next sentence had already been written, not in ink or on paper, but in a look, a breath, a heart that knows life, like the greatest novels, does not end when we close the page.
26
Chapter Twenty-Six – When the Night Grows Still
As the soft night breeze slipped through the window and the moonlight thinned, pale between scattered clouds, unanswered questions lingered in the air like shadows clinging to clarity. Numan withdrew quietly to his room after bidding Muna goodnight with a faint smile.
He closed the door behind him and drew a deep breath, as though releasing a fragment of peace into himself. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he let his weary body sink, trying to empty his mind of the thoughts that circled endlessly around him, like a whirlpool without end.
Numan, to himself:
“Did her words mean something more?”
Then he let a fleeting smile cross his face:
“Of course… it is Muna. She never leaves me without planting in me a surge of questions, as though her words open up a new horizon from which to look at everything.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling their conversation about the Russian writers—those names falling like raindrops into his thoughts, each one caught in turn, before he drifted deeper into their vast seas. He remembered Tolstoy’s meditations on good and evil, his unyielding passion for grasping the human soul. And he asked himself in silence:
“Were they all searching for the same answer I seek? Are we all simply trying to unravel life’s riddle through the taste of literature?”
Then he heard Muna’s voice again in memory, her question about the Russian masters. In his ears now, his own reply flowed with quiet ease:
“The Russian writers did not write merely to entertain. They raised the questions of existence—questions that belong to all of us. We are the ones who read them, and we are the ones who continue the search.”
But… was his voice really carrying the weight of conviction? Or was it only casting an idealized reflection of themselves, of those literary figures who had become, in his eyes, far more than names on a page?
When he lay back on the bed, the dim glow of the lamp beside him threw restless shadows across the wall—strange, shifting shapes, as if thoughts still unwritten were moving there. He pulled the blanket over himself slowly, letting a fragile calm seep into his chest. Yet other thoughts, uninvited, returned again.
Numan whispered into the silence:
“Will I always remain in this endless search?”
He sighed, and thought again:
“Have I reached a point where the dream is no longer just ambition? It’s a necessity now—a burning need to be more than a young man chasing after life… I want to understand! I want to become… something else, something greater!”
His gaze drifted upward to the ceiling, where a painting of a sunset stretched across the wall. It seemed to echo a long journey already behind him. Quietly, he wondered:
“Is this what remains after life passes? Endless questions, with no clear answers?”
And yet, even with such unrest, sleep claimed him at last. The horizon in his mind slowly dissolved, while the faint light on the walls left him in a hush of still astonishment.
Meanwhile, in her own room, Muna switched off the lamp beside her bed and sank into her pillow after a long day. Her thoughts wandered—between Numan’s words and the quiet resonance of feelings stirred by his voice.
She recalled the details of his expression when he spoke the names of Russian writers, names that had lingered in her memory more than once. But what drew her even more was that sudden brilliance in his eyes whenever he spoke of their philosophies.
Muna wondered to herself:
“Could it really be that this young man carries so many thoughts, all stored within him?”
She smiled shyly.
“Perhaps I misjudged him… He is more than just an ambitious young man. He is a soul overflowing with dreams, alive with unfamiliar thoughts.”
She remembered his laughter when he had said:
“Russian writers did not write merely to entertain…”
Even now, his voice lingered in her ears, the words repeating themselves as if echoing inside her head. She felt that his way of speaking about them was a kind of escape—an opening into a wider world, far removed from the routines of daily life. And yet, at the same time, he seemed to be pointing toward himself as well.
Muna wondered in silence:
“Is he truly searching for himself in literature, as he claims? Or is he simply trying to find a reason to go on living?”
She smiled again, then closed her eyes.
“Perhaps… perhaps the answer to everything lies in those very letters, in those books…”
At last, she allowed herself to sink into the rest she had long awaited. The night slipped by quietly, each of them drifting into their own thoughts, each searching for a self within the dream, for some new path that might lead them out of life’s whirlpool—waiting for a dawn that might finally bring an answer.
In his room, Numan closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep. Yet it was not a sleep of stillness. Before him opened a strange vision: he was standing on a high balcony overlooking a city shrouded in fog. Everything around him was gray, and people moved in crossing circles, never looking at one another.
In his hand he held an open book, but the letters slipped away like water—disappearing, returning, scattering again. He tried to read, to grasp a single line, but the pages turned of their own accord, too quickly for the eye to follow, as though time itself were at war with understanding.
Suddenly, Muna appeared from among the crowd, wearing a red scarf, watching him from afar without moving closer. He wanted to call out to her, but his voice betrayed him. He tried to run toward her, yet his feet sank into the ground, rooted as if by fear itself.
As he struggled, a soft voice rose behind him, saying:
“Not everyone who reads, understands… and not everyone who understands, survives…”
He turned, but there was no one there—only a vast mirror where the voice had been. In it, his reflection shattered into many faces, some resembling him, others not at all.
He reached out his hand, and the mirror cracked, breaking open beneath him, plunging him into a bottomless abyss. The same haunting phrase echoed through the void:
“Are you searching for life? Or are you fleeing from it?”
Elsewhere, silence had already wrapped itself around Muna. She had closed her eyes after a heavy day, but the dream opened a different door for her. She found herself walking down a long corridor lined with books on either side—books suspended in the air, orbiting around her like planets in motion.
Each one opened on its own, releasing radiant visions: Tolstoy walking alone through a field drenched in silence; Dostoevsky speaking with a jailer in a narrow cell; Chekhov smiling at a sick child, a smile tilted gently toward sorrow.
At the end of the corridor, she saw Numan sitting beneath a great tree, writing in a small notebook. His face was calm, his eyes shining as if he had found what he had been seeking. She drew closer, about to ask what he was writing, when he lifted his gaze to her and spoke in a soft, delicate voice:
“Questions are not answered by words alone… sometimes we must live them.”
And then he faded, as though he had never been there at all, leaving only the notebook open on the grass. On its page, in a hand that resembled her own, was a single line:
“Perhaps we write not to know the path completely, but to light the way for one another…”
And so the night withdrew gently over their weary bodies, while their spirits continued to wander through the dream, where meaning and imagination had no boundaries, and literature was indistinguishable from confession.
Each of them was drifting deep into reflection, into symbols that flickered between letters and shadows, searching for themselves in the mirror of the other, waiting for a dawn that might one day arrive bearing the answer.
Between night and morning, in that fragile instant where awareness teeters between sleep and waking, both Numan and Muna entered the same dream—as if their two souls had merged in a space unlike this world, a realm with no time and no place, only the pure presence of two shadows walking side by side.
They found themselves in a strange orchard. The trees stood with slender trunks and branches stretching high, their leaves hanging down like secrets not yet revealed. The air was so clear it unsettled the senses, and the light fell softly, like the first prayer before dawn.
They walked in silence, with no need for words, for every thought in one seemed to pulse in the heart of the other.
As they passed beneath an arch of jasmine, Muna whispered:
“It feels as if we have been here before…”
Numan answered without turning his head:
“Because it is the dream we’ve been weaving since the moment we met…”
They sat upon a white stone overlooking a still river, its waters flowing out from open books. Each book bore a familiar title, and each page told a fragment of their story.
When Muna reached toward one of the books, she found lines written in Numan’s hand:
“I was searching for myself, and I found it within the lines of your eyes…”
She smiled, as if she had already known what he would say, and replied with a voice like a passing breeze:
“And I was chasing the dream, until it turned and wore your form…”
The scene shifted suddenly. They were now on a train, carried along through paths of fog where nothing could be seen but the other’s face. They sat across from each other, yet the glass behind Numan reflected only a single image of them—two faces merging into one, like twin poems sung in a single language that could not be spoken, only felt.
Numan asked her, poised on the edge of that fragile dream:
“Do you think a dream can join bodies the way it binds souls?”
She answered without hesitation:
“Perhaps not… Perhaps the dream does not wish for bodies to cling, but for them to rise, to meet at a depth far greater than an embrace…”
In a fleeting instant, the sky turned toward the color of dawn. Light began to seep in, washing away the shadows of the dream, dissolving its shapes the way letters melt into the river of forgetting.
Numan opened his eyes slowly. The room was filling with morning light. His first impulse was to write it all down, but instead he smiled and simply drew in a long, steady breath.
At that very moment, Muna’s eyes opened too. She stared at the ceiling, then placed her hand against her chest, as though feeling the dream still beating softly there.
Each asked silently within:
“Was it only a dream? Or had our souls truly met in another place?”
There was no answer.
Only a gentle warmth moving through the heart, like a quiet certainty whispering:
“What the dream has joined, doubt cannot divide…”
And so they received the dawn—not in illusion, not yet in full wakefulness, but somewhere in between, where love is born not as possession, but as presence—radiant, recurring, like a dream taking the form of two hearts in harmony.
When the first ray of sunlight slipped through the windows of the long house, the scent of coffee drifted into the small kitchen, carrying with it the promise of a meeting unlike any before.
Numan sat at the wooden table, a cup before him, its rising steam sketching unwritten words into the air.
Muna entered quietly, her steps soft, her eyes heavy with half-sleep—yet lit with an unusual gleam, as if the night had not been an ordinary night. She sat across from him without speaking, offering only a shy smile, like the opening line of a poem awaiting its continuation.
Numan spoke at last, his gaze still fixed on the morning light spilling across the rim of his cup:
“I saw us together… in a dream unlike those that pass and vanish. We were in a strange place, where we both resembled ourselves, and yet did not… as though we were living outside of time.”
Muna drew in a soft gasp and pressed her hand against her chest, as if his words had stirred something long hidden within her.
“A garden? And trees bending low as though they were hiding something? And a river overflowing with books?” she asked, her eyes fixed on his with a deep, bewildered wonder.
Numan smiled, almost dazed.
“Yes… yes, exactly. And I was writing something for you in an open book, and you… you read it!”
Muna lowered her gaze for a moment, then lifted it again. Her eyes shimmered with something that could not be named, and in a whisper that seemed to slip out like a secret, she said:
“I saw it too, Numan… every detail. I was there. And you were telling me: the dream does not want bodies to cling, but to ascend…”
A long silence settled between them—one that did not burden the moment but clarified it, as though time itself had paused to listen to what could not be spoken.
Then Muna murmured, turning her coffee cup slowly in her hands:
“Can two souls meet in a dream, in the same shape, without ever arranging it? Could the dream be a message, passing in secret between two hearts?”
Numan answered, his eyes glimmering with the quiet light of thought:
“Perhaps what we saw is closer to truth than anything else, because it came from within us, not from outside. And perhaps we need the dream, so it can reveal what we’re too afraid to whisper while awake…”
He leaned toward her just slightly, his voice lowered to a register meant for her alone:
“In the dream I was searching for myself… and I found you.”
Muna lowered her head, her lips trembling as if she feared any word might shatter the spell of what she felt.
At last she spoke, her voice tender, unguarded:
“And I… I was chasing after hope, only to find you waiting for me.”
The coffee cooled slowly between them, but the warmth in the room burned brighter, needing no one else—no presence of her father, no intrusion of the world outside—only the dream stretched across the table, guarded by the light, affirmed by the hush that surrounded them.
And so they sat, sharing the dream as if they were recounting a memory they had always carried together. A conversation that needed no explanation, no defense—just words, like jasmine branches intertwining without effort, born only to belong.
That morning, coffee was not merely a drink but a secret ritual binding Muna and Numan. A moment unmoored from everything familiar, unseen by watching eyes, yet instantly known by the heart.
The silence stretched a little longer, but every word unspoken seemed to dissolve in the air, touching something hidden in their souls, carried lightly by the breeze drifting through the open windows. Muna studied her cup, as if the dark liquid might reveal a new secret. Then she let go of her thoughts, lifting her gaze toward Numan, as though she had just realized something that had always been waiting.
“You know, Numan… what I saw in your dream, what I felt in those moments—it was as if we finally touched what we had been searching for all along. Everything was clear, yet hidden deep in the folds of the soul.”
Numan smiled gently, lifting his cup and staring into the slow swirl inside, as though it mirrored his wandering thoughts.
“That’s the beauty of the dream, Muna… it doesn’t hand you an answer outright. It’s like tangled threads, urging you to find the larger picture.”
After a pause weighted with meaning, he added softly:
“I don’t think we’re meant to understand everything all at once… maybe because only the dream can tie the present to the future.”
Muna searched his eyes, as if the secret might be waiting inside his words. She remembered other places, other times, when she had listened to him as if he were telling a strange tale—one she had lived, but somehow forgotten.
“Do you think we are living the dream? Or are we simply living reality, with all it demands of us?” she asked, her questions curling inside her like a small bird aching to take flight.
Numan lifted his gaze toward her, a faint, shadowed smile on his lips, as if he were contemplating a world larger than the kitchen that now held them.
“Sometimes I think we live more in the dream than in reality. Because the dream opens us to possibility… while reality chains us to what is already defined.”
Muna stole a glance at her cup, then nodded softly, as though admitting to herself a truth she had long carried in silence. Her question had reached beyond dreams—toward something that belonged to her alone—but she chose not to name it.
“Sometimes I feel the dream is what gives me the meaning I’ve been searching for. Not only in literature, but in life itself,” she whispered, her voice delicate, as if afraid to release the weight of her heart.
Their eyes met, and thoughts seemed to flow between them like invisible letters written in the air. Each felt a quiet radiance stealing into the other’s heart, as though something had begun to take root—something like a dream, or perhaps more than a dream—swaying in the fragile space between waking and imagination.
“What if the dream is what we need most?” Muna asked, casting her gaze toward the widening blue of the morning sky.
“Perhaps,” Numan answered calmly, his words falling as though he were speaking them to himself as well. “But the truth lies in living between the two, between dream and wakefulness.”
In that moment, the world around them felt motionless, hushed, yet alive with unspoken currents. No talk of the future, no mention of fate—only the faint thread weaving their spirits together, making time itself hesitate, stretching the moment into something that felt eternal.
The sun poured a fresh light across the sky, filling the room with a quiet sense of expectancy, as if this morning were the beginning of something unnamed. And though no words could capture it, both hearts knew: something had changed between them, and it was only the beginning.
The light that began to filter through the kitchen window danced gently across their faces, as if flirting with the shadows of their intertwined thoughts and dreams. Everything around them breathed serenity, yet within their hearts, there was a quiet tumult—a longing for something unknown, a pull toward each other as if they were walking the same path, unaware of where it might lead.
“Numan, do you think we… can live the dream the way we want?” Muna asked softly, leaning slightly toward the kitchen table, her gaze lingering on the white edges of her cup, as though searching for an answer in the silence of time and space.
Numan paused mid-sip, his eyes filled with questions. Slowly, as if weighing every word, he said, “I think we live the dream in many moments, Muna. But sometimes we lose it when we stop reaching for it.”
Muna looked at him, observing the glance that carried a piece of some distant dream, then smiled faintly and said, “You’re right. Sometimes, we try to live the dream as if it were something outside ourselves, something we can grasp… when in truth, it resides within, in our hearts.”
Numan fell silent for a moment, realizing that she was not merely asking about the dream as the mind conceives it, but about the truth that merges with that dream—the truth that may not be visible in the outer world, yet is painted on the walls of the soul.
“Yes…” he said, moving closer, the space between them seeming to shrink, and continued, “Perhaps we are searching for the moment when dreams meet reality. In that moment, everything becomes possible. Everything.”
Muna watched his words fall gently, as if illuminating the path they had yet to walk. Then, in a soft tone, drenched in the depth of feelings hidden in her heart, she replied, “I’m not sure if the real moment we seek exists in reality, or if it is just a dream that keeps living within us.”
Numan drew a deep breath, then met her gaze, seeing something in her eyes that transcended words. He knew that these moments with Muna were not merely spoken words, but profound shifts within the inner landscape of his world.
“Can we be together in this dream, Muna?” he asked softly, as if speaking first to himself before speaking to her.
Muna felt a strange sensation seep into her heart, that quiet stirring time had folded into their shared hours. She wondered silently, “Does this dream that Numan lives include me? Am I truly a part of it?”
But before she could find an answer, before words could fully surface, she smiled and lifted her head toward the sky, now blossoming with the colors of dawn, and said:
“Yes, perhaps we live the dream together, but we also need to search for it together.”
Her words carried an unspoken declaration, a subtle announcement of a new beginning, the start of an experience that could reshape everything between them. And this moment, though brief, was merely the first in a series of countless moments they would share—moments filled with questions, with dreams, with emotions too vast for words to capture.
In that instant, life itself seemed to decide to write a new chapter in the story of Muna and Numan, a chapter where dream met waking, where letters intertwined with hope, and where souls met in the depths of understanding.
On a quiet morning, the first threads of sunlight gathered across the college corridors. Muna and Numan were on their way to the Andalusian literature lecture, each seeking to place themselves on a new horizon, where heritage met the present, and the world revealed itself through the poetry of Andalusia—a mirror reflecting the hidden recesses of the soul.
After the lecture, they chose a secluded corner in the college café, where serenity and contemplation filled the air. Hot cups of coffee were set before them, yet their eyes were far from the mugs and the chatter of the day. Each carried within their chest a persistent longing to speak of the great heritage they had just encountered, the Andalusian literature that had already begun to mirror the depths of their spirits.
The air was heavy with the scent of books, illuminating the skies of their minds, and the silence that enveloped the room carried the weight of those moments, like a contemplative stroll through time between past and present.
Muna, who always leaned toward the profound meanings hidden in poetry, gazed at her cup and said in a quiet yet wistful voice:
“Do you believe, Numan, that Andalusian poetry was merely a play of words or decorative language? It was a cry from the depths of the earth. Poetry that tells the story of a civilization lost in time, yet the soul it entrusted to those verses still lives within us, whispering wisdom that transcends the ages.”
Numan smiled faintly, then replied:
“You are right. But Andalusian poetry, beyond being a mirror of civilization, was a mirror of the human condition. It spoke of hearts burdened with longing, of their ache for time gone by, and these emotions were the very seed from which the poets wove their verses.”
He drew a deep breath, as if feeling the weight of the words before releasing them, and recited to Muna lines by the Andalusian poet Ibn Zaydun, a trace of nostalgia in his voice:
“‘Separation has taken the place of our closeness,
And in absence it has stood in for the sweetness of our meeting.
I have been nothing but one who clings to hope,
And in the heart, even after parting, it keeps us alive.’”
Muna closed her eyes slightly, feeling the depth of the lines, as though they mirrored a state within her own heart, echoing Numan’s own. She sensed the bitter ache of longing, a flavor as rich as the letters she had read. That feeling hovered on the horizon of their thoughts, wrapped in unspoken memories. It was as if the words had made the coffee more bitter, even though it still rested in her cup; yet the taste of nostalgia enveloping the moment was richer than any flavor could ever be.
Then Muna responded, seeking a deeper understanding of the verses:
“Here, hope and pain coexist, and within that balance lies the power of words. The poet contemplates separation, yet remains tethered to hope. Under this canopy of longing, the light never fades, and time leaves no mark unheeded.”
She continued, recalling what she had once read, sharing some reflections of the Andalusian poets:
“But I see Andalusian poetry not only as an expression of sorrow, but also as spaces of optimism. The poets sought beauty in nature, in fleeting everyday moments. Like Ibn Khafaja, who spoke of Andalusia with a unique grace, when he said:
‘By your life, the drowsy beauties
Have only preceded you in my soul, O God, my noble ones.’”
Numan smiled faintly, listening with all his being to her words, then paused for a moment before adding:
“Yes, this poetry breathes the spirit of Andalusia, a spirit that smiled through pain, wept yet never forgot beauty. It reminds me of Ibn Zaydun’s words, describing his love for Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, where one feels that deep longing for hope despite separation.”
He then recited, his voice tender and melodic, some famous lines from the poet’s verse:
“O you whose eyes hold my heart captive,
My heart is yours, even if distant, it remains devoted.
O perhaps a sigh trembles on your lips, eager,
Yearning for union, and in hope it is enchanted.”
Muna added, her eyes shining as she followed his words:
“And in prose, I once read Tawk al-Hamama by Ibn Hazm, a book that remains a cornerstone in understanding love and human relationships.”
Numan asked, curious:
” And you, how do you see this book?”
Muna smiled and said:
” It is among the finest works written on Arab love. It does not speak solely of chaste love; it ventures into every facet of human relationships, distinguishing between pure love and desire, recounting true stories from Andalusia, which makes it closer to reality than any poetic imagining.”
Numan continued, astonished:
” I recall this book is considered a global reference in the literature of love. In its treatment of the pains and hopes of lovers, it is somewhat akin to Ovid’s Art of Love.”
Those moments between Numan and Muna were unforgettable, where the old Andalusian world intertwined with the present, and their souls met in a literary image that transcended words, as the river surpasses its banks to embrace the wider sea.
27
Chapter Twenty-Seven — Mirrors of Love Between Yesterday and Today
On a gentle gray afternoon, where the autumn dew caressed the college library windows, they sat at a wooden table overlooking the campus courtyard. Books and papers lay scattered around them, tossed by the wind, then reorganized by hands restless in search.
Numan, flipping through a page of Nizar Qabbani’s collected poems, his eyes lighting with a childlike curiosity, said:
” How much the art of love has changed, Muna… from Ibn Zaydun to Nizar, as if the poem itself has transformed, wearing an entirely new garb.”
Muna smiled, leaning toward him with a spark of enthusiasm, and replied:
” But the spirit, Numan… the spirit remains. It is the same, a hidden human longing, only the language has shifted, and the rhythm set itself free.”
They had been assigned a research project on “Comparing Love in Classical and Modern Poetry,” and now they were delving into the sources across the folds of time.
Muna, reading from a sheet penned in blue ink, said:
” Classical poetry, as you see, rests upon al-Khalil’s metrical systems and regular rhymes. In love poetry, it leans toward natural symbols: the moon, the flowers, the breeze… a chaste, delicate love, revealing only the purity of the heart.”
She then recited verses from Ibn Zaydun, her voice rich and resonant, as if summoning the shadow of al-Zahra:
” I remembered you, Zahra, longing,
And the horizon was open, and the face of the earth glowed.”
Numan whispered:
” It is as if he paints a scene in the color of longing… the horizon and the earth… both resemble the heart of a lover aflame with memory.”
Muna nodded, then added with a touch of analysis:
” Notice the meter, how it moves like a steady pulse, and the language, how noble and pure it is… yet it keeps the emotions behind a transparent veil.”
She turned to another page and said:
” As for Nizar… he is a poet who stepped out of the cage of meter and rhyme, letting the poem walk barefoot through the alleys of the city, carrying the scent of coffee and the sighs of lovers.”
Numan chuckled softly and said:
” He even makes it write on the walls, declaring revolution from the balconies of the heart.”
Muna read from The Coffee Reader:
” You will search for her, my son, in every place
You will ask the waves of the sea
And you will ask the turquoise of the shores.”
She said, her eyes diving into the distance:
” No sea, no shore… only love wandering restlessly through questions.”
Numan responded, taking his pen to write in the margin:
” Nizar’s love does not hide behind images; it casts off the mask and speaks in the voice of the bare heart.”
He pointed with his finger to the difference between the two languages and said:
” While the classical verse sings: O house of Abla in the wilderness, speak, Nizar comes to say: I love you… and the rest will follow.”
Muna laughed, then remarked:
” The difference is not in the language alone, but in the daring… Nizar does not settle for longing, he demands union, he challenges, he confesses.”
Numan added, flipping through his notebook:
” Look at this table… Classical poetry sanctifies loyalty and remembrance, portraying love as a celestial state, whereas Nizar’s poetry venerates the body, freedom, and fights against all constraints.”
He then pointed his finger to the title of the last chapter:
” Love as an existential matter.”
They paused for a moment… there was in the horizon a trace of personal contemplation.
Muna spoke, surprised by the sound of her own voice:
” Perhaps because love is no longer a poetic luxury… but a question we try to answer every day.”
Numan whispered:
” And we write it, in our silence, our fear, and our waiting for what we do not know if it will come.”
Then Muna added, taking a small book from her bag titled The Ring of the Dove:
” I do not forget what Ibn Hazm said: Love is the union of souls alike in their qualities. Sometimes I think we search in poetry for ourselves, not for the beloved.”
Numan looked at her for a long moment, then said, as if unraveling a poem within his chest:
” And sometimes, we write this search… to escape from writing our feelings in the margins.”
” The sun had begun to tilt, and the library filled with a dreamy golden light, while the two of them lingered on the ‘Threshold of the Dream,’ sparring with poetry as lovers spar with confession.”
” Morning light streamed gently through the tall trees, while the soft breeze carried the scent of damp earth. On the back porch, where roses scattered and plants bloomed, Numan and Muna sat together, each holding a cup of coffee, their eyes wandering toward the distant horizon.”
Muna, with a faint smile:
” Good morning, how did you sleep last night? Were you thinking of something special before you drifted off?”
Numan, raising his cup, inhaling the aroma as if it were a new perfume:
” Morning light, sleep was calm despite all the thoughts swirling in my head. But I felt I needed that silence that follows a long conversation. And you?”
Muna, placing her cup on the table, gazing at the flowers before her:
” I was thinking about our talk yesterday. Those names we mentioned… Fyodor, Tolstoy, Chekhov… Russian thought seems to carry a special flavor. I wonder, do we need thinkers like them in our time?”
Numan, staring at the horizon, his voice heavy with reflection:
” I think we need them more than ever. We may not have those who speak so deeply of the human soul as they did, but we need the big questions they raised. Questions about good and evil, about life, about suffering… In our time, it seems everyone runs from the profound questions.”
Muna:
” Do you think the world today cannot handle these questions? That people have become preoccupied with the superficial?”
Numan, with a measured smile, as if trying to decode reality:
” Perhaps… but I believe the answers come from within. I think we try to escape them, yet they are there. Those Russian writers faced them without mercy. They shouted at life, asking: what does it mean to live? Was Tolstoy searching for the meaning of life when he left everything behind? Was Dostoevsky questioning our daily suffering?”
Muna, after taking a sip of her coffee:
” I think they were searching for themselves through what they wrote. But… do we need to suffer to find an answer?”
Numan, smiling faintly, gazing at the coffee in his cup before replying:
” Perhaps we don’t need to live through suffering as they did. But… maybe we need moments of deep silence, like the ones we are sharing now, to face the hard questions. Sometimes, the answer lies within the question itself.”
Muna, placing her hands on the table, looking at Numan:
” So, you see literature as the key to understanding?”
Numan:
” Of course, literature—and the way we philosophize about life—is that space where we can see the world through the eyes of others. It is an invitation to live more, to think more, and sometimes, to feel more.”
After a pause, Muna closes her eyes, as if sensing a word he had just spoken:
” Perhaps that is what we were missing… to live more. To capture the beautiful moments away from the noise.”
Numan, smiling, watching her in a quiet that mirrored the depth of his words:
” I think you are right. Life is not merely a chain of days filled with events, but a collection of moments we choose to live fully, in all their detail.”
In that moment, words froze between them, like dewdrops on the leaves before them. The coffee was nearing its end, yet their conversation seemed endless, as if each of them were trying to glimpse a path toward an answer within these quiet exchanges, as though every thought opened a door to a deeper world.
Muna, with a gentle smile:
” Let’s drink our coffee to the last drop. Every day brings a new question.”
Numan:
” Of course, and every question is the beginning of a new dream.”
And now the sun had begun its climb higher in the sky, spilling light across every corner, heralding a new day brimming with dreams and questions.