A Midsummer Weekend (The Extended Version)

5. The Berlin Trip

Kamran

"You did what?", I sat up in my chair.

"I convinced Uncle and Aunty to let Farah go to the medical conference in Berlin. She was so excited about going, I couldn't dampen her enthusiasm", Komal shrugged on the video call.

"But she'll be all alone in a city she has never been to before"

"She'll be with a friend..."

"Has the friend been to Berlin?"

"Well no, but..."

"Then she is effectively all alone. Komal what were you thinking? You said yourself it wasn't that easy of a city to navigate and you went with a whole slew of people from your company. How could you think it was ok for a young, shy girl like her to be there surrounded by strangers"

"Kamran, do you hear yourself?", Safdar spoke from somewhere behind me, "She is not as young and likely not as shy anymore, and I am pretty sure she would not appreciate an overprotective, unsupportive husband"

And of course my sister had to agree, "Thank you Safdar, that's exactly my point. You're not even married to her yet, and her parents are ok with it, so what's eating you"'

What was eating me was that I hadn't seen her for two years and while most of the time I had been too busy to think much about her, it was times like these that I had this intense urge to drop out of my university, go to Karachi, pick her up from college and take her to a mosque to get our Nikah done. Then, finally I could get rid of this constant nagging feeling that my life was incomplete, and I could let go of my fear that the fabric of desire and a patient longing that I had woven around me would unravel leaving me empty and alone.

I needed her presence to consume me again, just like that weekend, when time stood still as she spoke in that soft voice. The vision of her standing in front of me was etched into my memory, her slender hands pulling away errant strands of brown hair, her eyes averted, that shy smile on her pink lips, her demeanor dripping with innocence. And when she did look up at me, I felt myself drowning in her brown eyes with flecks of gold that resembled rays of sunshine at the break of dawn.

That weekend she took my heart forever. And I had spent many a night dreaming that she had given me hers.

Since then my days may have passed by quickly, courtesy of my busy schedule. But the years seemed to be stuck in a perpetual time warp, where everything moved at a frustratingly slow pace. Yet, there was nothing I could do about it, other than continue to play this waiting game that fate had put me in.

"Fine, you two have made your point. But I am going to email her and neither of you are going to stop me or tell anyone", I declared to my sister and roommate who seemed to have gone off on some tangential discussion on their world travels.

"Email her about what? Are you going to tell her how you feel about her?", Komal frowned.

"None of your business", I shot back, still slightly irritated at her for encouraging Farah's first solo international trip that I was beginning to get a queasy feeling about.

I couldn't tell Farah how I felt about her, because if I did and she didn't feel the same way, I knew I would be devastated. So as much as the time and distance between us irked me, there was a something to be said about the solace in a destiny unknown. If I didn't tell her I was desperately in love with her, she couldn't rebuke my emotions, and therein lay my continued ability to dream of a future where we would one day be two parts of a whole.

Farah

"You have your passports and tickets?", Abu asked Ameerah and I again as we both stood at the entrance of the airport, surrounded by a sea of travellers pushing and pulling carts around us, at 3 am in the morning.