Chapter 4
Reluctantly, I stopped and replied, “Sorry, I don’t have time,” as I prepared to leave. But he stopped me with, “I desperately need these few minutes, especially if you care about my friendship with Hossam.”
I answered sharply, “What does Hossam’s friendship with you have to do with this?”
“Brother Faisal, I never imagined your thinking could be this narrow.”
He surprised me by raising his hand in front of my face, signaling me to stop speaking. Shocked, I was at a loss for words as he took control of the conversation. Speaking calmly, in a tone fitting for our location in the middle of the sidewalk, surrounded by stores selling school supplies, he said, “Don’t base your judgments on assumptions you’re not sure of. Believe me, I didn’t create this coincidence to meet you—it’s a real coincidence sent by God to save my friendship with your brother, which I value deeply.”
A voice in my head whispered that the rejection I gave him…
I glanced at him coldly when he said that, but he ignored my reaction and continued.
“…it felt more like a rejection from your family than from you, which implies that there’s an objection to me personally. Therefore, the years of friendship I’ve shared with Hossam, and the fact that he knows me and my family well, weren’t enough for him to accept me as part of his family.”
I tried to defend my brother, but he quickly continued, “Believe me, there’s a real internal struggle within me that I want to resolve, and I hope it doesn’t end with losing Hossam’s friendship. There’s been a coldness between us since your rejection. Give me one convincing reason, other than what I’ve been told about the ten-year age difference and the distance from your homeland. After all, ten years doesn’t make me an old man—I’m 32, which is a suitable age for a man to marry. And as for distance, I can solve that by promising your family that I’ll bring you home every weekend or every ten days.”
“A girl studying away from home, in a field that will likely give her a job far from her family, shouldn’t find it strange to be away from them for a week or ten days.”
“To be honest, I couldn’t find a single logical reason in the excuses for the rejection. So, give me that logical reason.”
He finished speaking while I stood in shock, every cell in my body trembling. I was facing a smart man, difficult to deceive with excuses, yet I felt he was pretending to be ignorant, playing with me while knowing the real reason.
So, my dear “ignorant” one, here’s the logical reason, a sharp blow to your brain to make you regain your intelligence.
I started speaking without caring, eager to end this cursed coincidence.
“Brother Faisal, why this pretense? If you were smart enough to realize that the reasons given for rejecting you were illogical, you should also have figured out the real reason that I couldn’t voice. What should I say? The man who was in love with my friend, who was in love with him, came to propose to me, and I rejected him because I wouldn’t stab my friend in the back. I gave those so-called ‘illogical’ reasons to keep her reputation spotless in a society that shows no mercy to girls.”
“And then, this man, with utmost simplicity, asks me for logical reasons?”
I spoke while trembling, staring at the ground, feeling it shake beneath my feet. I couldn’t bear to look him in the eye. It was the first time I had spoken so harshly to a man. Worse, he was a stranger, and the disaster was that he had proposed to me, and the catastrophe was that he was my brother’s friend. May God have mercy on me for this audacity that had overtaken my tongue.
I stopped talking, and he began, his tone calm yet mocking.
“Who is this friend of yours that you don’t want to betray?”
His words stunned me, my eyes widening, and I tried to walk away to end this ridiculous conversation. But he blocked my path.
“Be smart,” he said, “and finish this confrontation, so you can find peace.”
I told him, “You’re playing games with me.”
He replied, “Tell me who your friend is. Maybe I’m involved with all of your friends and want to know who betrayed our relationship.”
His words, spoken with confidence, hit me like hammer blows. What kind of man had Ahlam fallen in love with?
Then I said, “She’s Ahlam, the daughter of so-and-so.”
He seemed to drift off, a sad, mocking smile forming on his face before he said, “Ahlam?!” He let out a short laugh and then continued, “Ahlam and me, a love affair, and you’re the traitor?”
“She mapped out her path with me, while you distanced yours from mine, and I, the clueless one, was left to God’s mercy.”
I begged him, “Please, stop mocking. Ahlam is a girl anyone would wish for, but unfortunately, she…”
I hesitated to finish my sentence, so he did it for me. “Fell in love with a bad guy like me?”
He then said, “Go, may God protect you, and tell your sleeping friend that I’m not her prince charming who will wake her up. Tell her to realize her age. What she’s thinking is just the fantasy of a teenage girl, not the thoughts of a woman about to turn 23. And as for you, stop playing the self-sacrificing friend for your friend’s happiness because her happiness doesn’t depend on you.”
He walked away, waving his hands in a dismissive gesture, mocking the absurdity of where our thoughts had led us.
And there I stood, left in confusion, wondering how I would deal with this and how I would wake Ahlam from her slumber.