By: Manal Rabiey
I closed my eyes, and suddenly her voice rose from within me—so much like mine it ached. She said:
“I am your shadow on the day you played in the narrow alley behind your grandfather’s house, when the dust swirled beneath your feet like dancing particles of light. You chased the little chickens, laughing so loudly that the cramped walls seemed to open into a wide courtyard that belonged only to you. I am the scent of mangoes in a faraway summer, and the colors of cotton dresses fluttering in the wind as you spun like a tiny ghost of joy.”
She paused for a moment, then continued:
“I am you on school mornings, when you held a fresh notebook that smelled of blue ink, writing the first letters with a strange passion, as if signing a secret covenant with yourself. I am the winter nights when you pressed your cheek against the windowpane, watching the rain fall in silence, dreaming that the world might grow wide enough to hold all your questions.”
Her voice drew closer, deeper:
“I am the secret you hid in your old notebooks; heroes born of your imagination, to whom you gave faces and names no one else ever knew. You painted them with words and granted them hearts, then laughed quietly because they lived with you alone, as if you had invented another family made of letters.”
I opened my eyes and saw her not outside, but glowing within me. In her eyes was the green of gardens I had once walked, and in her smile the warmth of an old yellow lamp that lit our balcony. When she embraced me, I returned to the smell of my mother’s bread at dawn, and to the stillness of night when all sounds fade and only my heart whispers.
At last, she said:
“Do not seek me in passing faces, for I have dwelled in you from the beginning. I am your twin, your hidden half, the companion who will never leave you. I am the soul God placed within you, to remind you that your existence is a destined path, woven from light that never fades.”
