Guest writer: Nour Bahgat
“It has happened a long time ago.” A phrase that never fails to make me wonder. They say time heals. They say life goes on, you get carried away by life and eventually things that traumatize you get pushed to the back of your brain and their details get lost in the sea of thoughts that is your mind.
It was 9 years ago, a long, long time that should’ve already healed my aching heart, but how is it that after 9 years, the image of him refuses to leave my brain? His green-tinted blue eyes staring lifelessly into the void? His scrawny little body floating on top of the water and the bracelet with our initials floating beside him? How is it that after 9 years, I still feel my stomach drop and my heart stop whenever his lifeless eyes pop into my brain?
His eyes, oh how beautiful they were, made me feel two ultimately opposite feelings. At a time, I used to stare at them with childish adoration, and at a time -the last time- I stared at them with ultimate and pure horror. At a time, he used to make my heart beat a thousand times faster whenever I saw him, and at a time -the last time- my heart stopped completely, and I doubt it ever recovered. A goofy, mischievous, blue-eyed 8-year-old left an unfillable void in my heart, and I wonder how a voided heart can feel so much pain. I wonder how it still flutters when I remember the times he would hold my hand while crossing the road, or the times he would pick a lily from the garden we used to play in and place it above my ears telling me “it looks better here”.
With a heavy heart, I put on my sweater and go to the place where I last saw his smile. I’m standing at the bank of the river, staring into the water and waiting for him to surface, splash me playfully and challenge me to race him to the other bank. I wait and wait. It isn’t until I feel hot tears running on my cheeks and falling into the river that I realize that the last time this happened, he didn’t reach the other bank. I look at the beautiful river with its water sparkling in the sunlight and its banks decorated by green trees filled with chirping wrens, and I wonder how something so beautiful could be so merciless, how something so beautiful could take the life of someone so precious.
Unable to hold myself up, I lay down, stare into the blurry blue sky, and reach for my bracelets -his and mine- as I feel my eyelids become heavier by the second. I dream of a blue sea with waves that turn green as they approach the shore, a beach filled with lillies, and a young boy laughing and running into the horizon. I still see you in my dreams; you’re burried within my soul.
