Ashif slips a finger under the flap of the envelope Arzeen gave him and opens the email from Shafina.

From: Shafina Dawood [mailto: [email protected]]

Sent: Thursday, January 22, 1998

To: Arzeen Walji

Subject: For Ashif

Dear Ashif,

I’m really sorry that we are reconnecting over such sad news. Arzeen told me about the passing of your father. I’m so sorry for your loss. Please give your mother my deepest condolences. I’m sad I never had a chance to meet your father. But I remember how fondly you spoke of him. How much you missed him. He was living in Rocky Mountain House the years we were together.

I have such good memories of our time together. I hope you do, too. Remember the list of must-visit cities we made on our study room wall after reading Around the World in Eighty Days? New York, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Isfahan, Luxor, Cape Town, Aleppo, Paris, and on and on! (Five down, a zillion to go!) I still have the library copy of The Conference of the Birds. Imagine the fine on that! And here’s what’s crazy: the B.S. cover is still intact and so is our insert of the Faiz poem. I wonder if our sweet old librarian-in-arms, Mrs. Sims, is still there? She’d be 105 by now! All of that seems like so long ago. Yet so recent. I wonder how you are. Where you are. What you’re doing.

You’ve crossed my mind so many times over the years—and sometimes at the most random moments. Like the other day on the subway. Through the gaps of bodies on the packed train, I spotted this guy. He had his back turned to me. All I could see was his head, his neck. Then I noticed he had the same stubborn cowlick as you. The same Q shape. The same darkness. The same thickness. It made me smile. It reminded me that wherever you were in the world, we were still under the same sky.

I wasn’t sure if I should write to you but I decided I needed to. I don’t know what happened for you that night, in the park. That night broke everything I knew about you, about us. About me, too. At first, I wondered if it had really happened or not. I was hurt and confused by it. Angry, too.

I was sure we would talk about it—work through it together. We could always speak about anything. Everything. But you shut me out—and that added to my pain and anger. You wouldn’t even take my phone calls. Then I heard you moved to Toronto for business school. None of it made sense and when my heart softened, I came to a new thought. There must have been something going on for you at home that I didn’t know about. My heart broke for you even if I knew what you did was wrong.

Soon after, I was on my way to the Sorbonne. In Paris, I thought I could forget about that night, but I haven’t been able to shake it. It’s followed me all these years. Haunted me, even. Affected some of my relationships. I had a hard time trusting men after.

I’m hoping you might be open to speaking to me about that night and the things that followed? I want to make sense of it and let it go. Maybe you want that, too?

You can write to me at this email. Or if you’re planning to be in NYC, let me know. I’m going to be here for a few more months covering the Abdul Rehman case. I’d be happy to meet you here.

I’ll sign off with a poem. Rumi, of course. ☺

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is afield. I’ll meet you there.

I hope we can find a way there,

Shafina

Shafina Dawood, Photojournalist

Aljazeera News (Cairo Bureau)

9 Mathaf El Manial St.

Cairo, Egypt