After breaking up with my beloved, I was deeply sad over what had happened between us. The sorrow lingered to the extent that I refused to meet or get to know any other girl. Years after making that decision, I met the one who changed everything, shattered apart all my decisions and turned my world upside down.
Out of my intense fear of another heartbreak, I kept some distance. I remained conservative about the relationship, however, that gradually changed, too. Yet, I was captivated by her. My mind was enchanted by her beauty. We would discuss the strangest things a person could think of. I often told her about my peculiar desire to pour tea over rice and taste it. We imagined together how it would taste. She always told me how much she wanted to “open up” my heart and “clear it out”. She described me as the strangest creature anyone could ever meet.
Years passed until one day I felt very depressed. I kept myself distant. Her lively spirit was probably behind the reason I isolated myself from her. Perhaps, I didn’t want to engage her with my miseries. She loved life so much. She always wanted me to wear pink so that to assure the world that I, too, adore life like her.
After all these years, I remember her, but I haven’t dared to send her a message even though we are friends on social media. Her photo kept pressing on my heart, urging me to restore that beautiful connection.
Today, I opened her profile and found all her friends mourning her. At first, I couldn’t believe it. Then I came across her sister’s post mourning her. She had been killed by the brutal machinery of war last December.
I couldn’t hold myself together. I broke down and cried. I wept for her the way I did that night when my lover left me. I felt awful for letting the connection fade away. She was so delicate. She enjoyed listening to songs by the Egyptian band “Cairokee”. She was so full of life that my heart couldn’t handle it back then.
Oh God, this sorrow is unbearable. Why her?! This harsh separation is more than I could endure. She was too beautiful to die; too beautiful to be buried in a barren graveyard filled with everything that opposes life.
The last message she sent me was a reworded line from her favorite band’s song, saying, “No matter how long your night is, get up and wear pink”.
I never expected that the songs we shared would one day become a painful memory, nor could I have imagined that a line from a song would turn into a nightmare.
Her name was Leen, and truly, she had the softest heart. I am overwhelmed with sorrow as I write about her in the past tense.
We will wear pink my dear. We will no matter how long the war lasts.
We will wear pink in the end.
Bahaa Raouf
October 5, 2024
