It was 11:55 p.m. when he stepped out of Moscow’s Lefortovo Metro Station. His whole body ached; his legs trembled. His eyes were sleepy. He felt surrounded by unknown souls, all in a hurry to reach their destinations. He looked at the disappearing faces for a while. He wished he could speak to the person he loved most — two thousand kilometers away — without using any means of communication.
He knew such self-talk was futile, yet Mirza Ghalib’s verse echoed in his mind: “To console the heart, Ghalib, this thought is a pleasant one.”
It was just a short walk from the metro to his room, but it always turned into a conversation with an invisible person — invisible to the world, but not to him. Whenever he started speaking in the middle of the night, the world around him seemed to freeze; the pulse of life halted for a while. He lost all sense of place, as if a magical spell of memory had taken hold of him. These few minutes felt like his only peace in the exhausting routine of Moscow.
As he turned the corner of the street, sudden words escaped his lips without thought:
“Listen, among the few people on this earth, you’re the one whose absence I never truly feel — because even when you’re not here, I find myself talking to you. Your absence never really feels like absence. Yet still, I wish you were near, because the void you leave behind can’t be filled — not even if some random Russian surrendered herself at KFC.”
He smiled faintly. “In the fight between heart and mind, I always get crushed,” he whispered. “But sometimes, at 2:23 a.m., when the white night of Moscow wraps the city in its cold silence, and a gust of wind brushes my face while I work beside the window — if your thought suddenly visits me, my heartbeat reaches my ears in a millisecond.”
He paused, half amused, half sentimental. “There’s so much to say, but sleep rises like waves in the sea of my eyes. Still, I must write…”
He thought of his day. “Today I arrived an hour late to class. Afterward, my friend Akhtar said, ‘Jani, you look unusually happy today. What’s the reason?’ And that’s when I realized — maybe the affair between the heart’s delight and the face’s joy has finally been confirmed.”
Then his tone changed, teasing yet tender:
“But wait — what’s wrong with you? Since when did you start wearing your heart on your sleeve? It’s good to be honest, but are you some prophet who reads people’s hearts? No doubt your new friends must be nice, but, my dear, this world — it’s tricky. Don’t be too sweet, or people will engulf you.” He laughed, remembering his mother’s Saraiki saying.
“Jokes are fine,” he continued, “but keep your distance. Don’t share too much of your personal life. You yourself once said, ‘Women are the real troublemakers.’ So either you don’t consider yourself a woman… or you don’t consider them as such.”
He chuckled softly, then his tone grew protective. “Anyway, when you told me today that a stranger sent you a filthy message, you should’ve seen my face. I tried to hide my expression, but it was useless. Please take care of yourself. No one here truly cares — from teachers to clerks, they’re all wolves.”
He wanted to say more, but suddenly a thought struck him — tomorrow morning’s shift.
That single thought hit him like a bullet through a flying bird, pulling him down from the sky of dreams.
He fell — not to the ground, but onto his bed — hiding beneath the blanket, afraid of the torment that tomorrow in Moscow would bring. He closed his eyes, his lips still murmuring a fading goodbye to the unseen, waiting for another cycle to begin.