But Then Again

The thing I remember the most being said about you is that you were good-looking. Perhaps, close to jaw-dropping and drop-dead gorgeous. Honestly writing, I am not sure how true that is, but she always said it in a very convinced manner whenever she launched into one of her passionate talks about you - and it just so happens that I have known her long enough to know that she seldom tells lies. Not if she can evade it and the situation does not call for it. To prove her point, she would robustly tell me how girls would be giggling sheepishly whenever they set eyes on you and the reasons were plain to see. You could date any girls you wanted, with few exceptions of course, (rejection is part of life, no matter how charming you are) and judging from the way she ranted about it, I doubted her not.

I believed everything she said about you.

You could be real egoistic too, she had told me. I remember one time she confided in me, teary-eyed about the way you had treated her. It was so dismissive and cold-shouldered it hurt her so much. She was crying a little while she was telling me this with another friend of ours by the lake early in the morning - our eccentric routine. I tried to be a good listener to her that morning - because she rarely sheds tears - and then I realized that you must have meant something to her, or else she wouldn't have spared her tears for you. She ruled this little theory of mine out, so I did not broach the subject any further.

I believed everything she said about you.

Yet, on myriad occasions, she had told me how she would ring you whenever she needed an ear to listen to her moaning and cries. She said you were a good listener. Now that I think of it, I do not exactly know the things she whined about to you. Knowing her, it could have been about how she did not do well in her test papers, leaving one or two instructions unanswered. It could have been about how someone had annoyed the hell out of her - it could have been me, fat chance - and how fucked up her day was. Whatever it was, this only proved how much you meant to her that she could totally turn to you to lash out her anger and dejection and indignation at. You cooled her off. You toned her down. You made her feel better and relieved - simply by listening.

I believed everything she said about you.

It would be endless to recall everything about you she once had told me - how stunned she was when you met her one day wearing Hawaiian-themed short, your laid back comportment and easy going demeanor and most importantly - how sweet talker you were! I do not know if it's appropriate for me to unfold this one particular memory of hers here- but I hope she would not mind - that you once told her that her sheer slow-wittedness had won your heart. I was even always getting on her nerves, teasing her that she was lucky to have got a boyfriend who had had literally everything - the good look and fortune most guys - me included - could only dream of having.

I believed everything she said about you.

But I did not believe her when I received a text from her earlier today, reading "He's gone". In fact, I did not want to believe it, so I asked her to clarify her ambiguous message, hoping for a different meaning I might not be able to retrieve at the moment.Yet I knew that I was kidding no one but myself.

I knew that you had departed into the great beyond.

Dear you, it's just odd to state the fact that I never met you. I would love to, but there was no way she would let me. I knew you through words. In tears that she dropped and laughter that she roared. Now that you are up there, you might be able to see that she is beyond devastated that you have left her for good. You were a good friend to her, and in a peculiar and inexplicable way, a friend of mine too.

She bridged us, and I am glad to have known you in this borrowed life.

The Almighty says, "When their specified time arrives, they cannot delay it for a single hour nor can they bring it forward," (16:61)

Al-fatihah.