What Not To Do When You're In Love

17 | Maybe

17| Maybe

"Hasan, if you don't get up within minutes I'm going by myself."

The sky was the prettiest purple and the Fajr Adhan had just sounded in my phone a minute ago.

"What's this desperation," came his muffled voice from where he'd buried his face in the big hotel room pillows, "We're here for some time now."

"And we're catching every sunrise we can!" I cried. "Come on, Hasan, you've been sleeping since last evening!"

He didn't reply, and I figured he was unconscious again.

"Well then. Good night."

I stood.

I recited Ayat ul Kursi and blew it over both of us. And then, grabbing a towel, my backpack and phone, I left the room.

The walk from the hotel to the beach was barely six minutes, but I still couldn't deny the awkward loneliness that engulfed me once I was outside of the hotel's premises. I wasn't used to being outside without having Hasan or anyone else accompany me, much less in a completely strange city.

I loved it, but being by myself was very weird. And it was still fairly dark, which additionally made it somewhat creepy.

But I forgot all of that when I was at the beach again. The sounds of the waves drowned out everything else just like it had yesterday. At night, the beach seemed altered, yet the inexplicable peace it gave me remained the same.

For some time I just stood there, completely consumed by the smell of the saltwater, the moonlight overhead which made the waves glitter, the contentment of being here while Hasan wasn't and thankful there was nobody else here. Then I spread my towel across the sand to pray Fajr, a little far from the water.

Soon I was done and the sky was a beautiful wonder between pink and purple now. The sun would rise soon was what I was thinking of, almost giddy with joy, when I heard him.

"You ought not to be out alone at this time here, madam," said the voice of a old man from not very far from me. It was accented and I barely understood half of his sentence.

I turned around and saw his cart first, and then him, pushing it laboriously across the sand. "They find it peaceful. Not us."

"What?" I asked.

I wasn't doing the right thing, I knew. I couldn't just talk to a strange hawker at this hour, especially one that just told me I wasn't safe here by myself. But something made me believe he wouldn't harm me.

"The sea; they like it. It calms them. And you're one of them, I can tell. But not us."

By 'us' did he mean the people who lived in a town overlooking the ocean? Or the vendors like himself who spent more than half the day here, with hours of having nothing to look at except the water?

I watched him set up his business for the day and decided not to ask what he meant by that. Instead I asked, "But what's not to love?"

He smiled, but it seemed fake. "I didn't say we don't love it, madam. What fool doesn't love his daily bread!"

It made no sense to me. I walked some steps to hear him better.

"But then why isn't it peaceful to you?"

"Oh, madam," he smiled. "Not everything you love will give you peace."

"What does that mean?"

"Not everything you love will give you peace," he repeated. "And not everything that gives you peace will continue doing that forever."