Dear Zara!

Thank you for having a heart of gold. That’s what I came up with while writing the first line of this note for you. Zara! You have no idea how grateful I am for having a friend like you. Unlike others, you never said what I wanted to hear but always told me what was right. I’ve never had a friend who gave me such sincere advices. Thank you for restoring my belief that real people do exist. Thank you for being real. You’ve made my spirits lift higher so many times and it makes me ever thankful for the friendship we share. Thank you, dear Zara, for making the university bearable for me. If it weren’t for you, Aysha, and the library, it would have been a 100 times harder for me to survive at that place. You are a great human being, Zara, and I’m proud to call you my friend. I can even proudly flaunt you off, telling people that you are my friend. I’m amazed that we have people like you in this world. You should know that you have a beautiful mind and it contains so many comforting and sincere words that can become a person’s savior. Two years and a few months of bonding and an everlasting sweetness and sincerity is what you gave to me, Zara! You know you are my kind of person, right? The kind of person I can actually talk to without worrying about getting to hear the things that my mind won’t accept. You should be grateful for the maturity you carry in your head to handle things.

Your parents have raised one wonderful daughter, Zara! And I am thankful to them and to Allah for presenting you to me. All of my good wishes are for you.

From the scrumptious food to the words of wisdom, thank you for everything!

And a very, very happy birthday to you!

May you enjoy many more with your loved ones beside you.

Also, did I mention that I really, really like you?

Hurts Like a Sore Lip

It is not very important, or big, or major like a fractured leg or a broken rib. No. It’s just a simple dry sore skin on your lower lip. You know, the appearance of a sore patch, when the skin on your lip gets dry so that particular area becomes stiff or sore. Like when you don’t have a glass of water the whole day or when you have a walk outside in a windy weather, you feel a small stiff crack appearing that oddly feels firm on the softness of your lips. That area receives a minor throbbing pain in little packages as you move around with your work. But it is not important, you see, because if it were important, you wouldn't be walking around so comfortably. I mean, nope.. very insignificant! So, well, you let it recover as you keep yourself busy running errands, and doing your chores forgetting about the stiff layer of dryness on your lips. And while you do your work, you also see people in your vicinity. I mean, there are people around us, right? They greet us by saying hello, asking us about the weather, not really interested in the answers. You know, because it’s a busy world and people are busy and it’s not like they really care about your opinion on the pregnant clouds up in the sky waiting to rain down or the blistering hot sun forming beads of sweat on your brow. They only try to build a quick small talk just for the sake of a decent conversation, yeah? Sweetly or out of habit, they are trying to be polite. We have people like that around us. So, yeah, you receive a similar greeting by a similar person around you, and you turn around to greet them back with a smile, and then, the moment when you smile, stretching your lips, forgetting its chapped patch, opening and breaking apart the dryness on the lip so swiftly there’s no turning back. A very tiny drop of blood oozes out of the sore area and sends you a deteriorating pain for a few moments making you feel like someone has stabbed an awfully sharp splinter in your sore lip. That’s the moment when you receive a pain that turns your whole body cold for a few seconds. You might gasp silently or say a little “ouch!” under your breath, but you don’t scream, shout or cry because, well, it’s not a fractured bone or a broken rib, you see, but just a small layer of skin opening up with a carelessly stretched smile sending a chilling pain making every cell of your body responsive to it. That is the kind of pain that’s personal. You endure it, and you experience it while plastering a smile on your face for the person that’s almost turning on their heels half listening to your greeting which, they didn’t realize, came out of your mouth with a silent impediment of an opened sore patch.

Well, you know it hurts, right? And that’s exactly the kind of pain I’m talking about.