The Summit of Longing

They say time can heal longing, but Khalsum knew that wasn't always true. Some loves come alive again whenever the night wind whispers the name of someone long gone.

That night, a cold breeze brushed gently against Khalsum's cheek.

She was still waiting at the top of the hill where she and Jauhar used to sit.

He had once told her that if longing ever grew too heavy, she should come here and let the night breeze carry half of it.

But somehow, every time she came, the breeze brought back only memories, never Jauhar.

They had first met here too, when both of them got lost while searching for a phone signal.

Two strangers who had lost their way, yet somehow found peace talking beneath the same sky.

Laughter came first.

Then love followed.

But life is rarely as simple as a romance novel.

Jauhar left without a word, leaving only a letter behind.

“If I disappear one day, look for me at the summit of longing.”

Khalsum thought it was just a sweet line.

Then he truly vanished.

Months passed.

Then years.

Khalsum kept coming back.

She brought a flask of hot tea and Jauhar's favourite biscuits.

Sometimes she grumbled to herself.

“Jauhar, do you know this tea's gone bland? I still make it because you used to like it. Maybe I should just brew tears instead. At least they'd suit the mood.”

Sometimes she laughed quietly to herself.

“If anyone saw me, they'd probably say I'd lost my mind. But that's all right. Even madness can be happy when you get to miss the right person.”

At other times, she would sit in silence for a long while, gazing at the sky.

“God, if he cannot return to me, let me find peace in his memory.”

The villagers had grown used to it.

“Khalsum is in love with a shadow,” they would say with sympathetic smiles.

One night, rain came carrying a strange unease.

She was about to leave when she heard a man singing softly from beyond the mist, voicing a line she knew by heart.

“Oh, summit of longing, setting the soul aflame…”

Khalsum froze.

That voice…

It was impossible.

But as the mist shifted, she saw someone dressed entirely in white standing beside the great rock.

She called his name once.

Then twice.

The man only smiled and waved.

The moment she stepped toward him, lightning split the sky.

In the blink of an eye, the figure was gone.

The next morning, after the night's rain had washed away part of the soil along the hillside, the groundskeeper noticed something hidden among the bushes near the great rock.

An old grave marker, almost completely buried beneath earth and tangled roots.

One name could still be read.

Jauhar.

The date of his death was the very same day he had disappeared.

Khalsum stood before the marker for a long time.

Strangely, she didn't cry.

She only smiled.

“No wonder I couldn't find you in this world. All this time, I was searching for someone who could never come home.”

She placed a packet of biscuits beside the stone, then shook her head at herself.

“I don't even know if you can eat these. But I've been carrying them up this hill for years. Seems like a waste to take them back down.”

Khalsum laughed softly through her tears.

That was the last time she came to the hill to wait for Jauhar.

After that night, she learned to return to her memories without asking anyone to come back.

Yet whenever the night breeze whispered mournfully across the hilltop, the villagers still claimed they could hear a man's voice singing somewhere in the distance.

And every now and then, like an echo from an old memory, the laughter of a woman seemed to answer him.

Perhaps it was real.

Perhaps it was only the wind.

Khalsum no longer needed to know.

The longing was still there.

But at last, it had found its way home.