Saddiq didn't want much. Privacy and anonymity. It was all he had ever wanted. It was all he had ever needed. Until he met her.

"Why do you like me, Saddiq?" She had asked him once and his reply had been without any shadow of doubt.

"I just do!"

She had seemed unconvinced but she wouldn't push and he had no other words for her. Was there any reason why we like what we do? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But in the end, those reasons don't really matter, do they? Because in the end, what really matter is that we do. What really matters was he like her.

"I just like you!" He had felt the need for her to know, and perhaps understand. It was the greatest truth of his life. It had felt futile to let it be misunderstood.

Nothing had changed since then yet everything had changed. How was that even possible? Saddiq would know. He lived it. The echoes. The nightmares. The fears. The Kisses—, especially the kisses. He remembers the first but it is the second he liked best. The second kiss.

It's been a year and a half after that day in his office when she had confessed to wanting to kiss him, an ample time, it would seem, to finding that there is a thin line between heaven and hell, and despite not wanting to, straddling both lines in aching strides.

"Don't try to know too much, Saddiq, trust me, it's not worth it."

Would the outcome be the same if it hadn't happened? Saddiq was unsure. They had kissed, and he had realized his feelings, and he had acted on them, and he had lost her. He was unsure if there was anything he could have done to prevent the chain of events that had unfolded since that March afternoon when Aisha had crash landed on him.

Yet he was still mystified by the entirety of all he had survived since he met her. There was more he should know, more even he should understand but nothing. It was still a puzzle as to how he knew every inch of her body yet her entirety still remains a mystery? How can he know yet not know her? And despite wanting to argue that it doesn't matter, and it was impossible to know everything but even he knew that wouldn't apply to him, to them. In retrospect, he fears he might have fallen in love with an idea or perhaps a narrative he'd kept telling and retelling himself.

Aisha isn't a figment of his imagination. She was real. He had met her, married her and lived with her for a year. But his memory scorn him sometimes of their time together. There were too many parts that won't fit, too many that straddles insanity and like the toss of a coin he was still uncertain what parts were real and which was unreal.

Notwithstanding, there was his pain, and guilt, and nightmares, and fears which were beyond any doubt, real. He had loved. He had lost. That much was true. Real or imagined, it doesn't really matter. And to some extent, he could understand being left behind she had made no promises beyond what had been initially agreed even when he'd laid out his entirety for her in a silver platter despite knowing she could break him whenever, however, yet hoping she won't even if he tried not to show so as not to pressure her. He could understand her complicated feelings which despite wanting desperately to know, she had never trusted him with herself. It were as if the more he gave, the farther she gets from him. However, try as he might, he couldn't make sense of this particular scene unfolding before him.

He wipes his face amidst a slamming desperation to unsee, to be wrong but he wasn't seeing wrong. It is Aisha. Aisha and another man. Aisha is hugging another man. She would never let him hug her like that except under the cover of darkness yet here she was, smiling and hugging another man in broad daylight with an abandon which caused an acute pain in his chest suffocating each and every cell in his body.

What is happening, he holds the wall to prevent him from falling as his world crashes into a million unmendable pieces. She had left but she loves him, she'd told him so herself. And he believed her. Aisha loves him and leaving him, though cruel, was an inevitability even if the reason still evades him. He had known even if he had wished for a different outcome. It doesn't change the fact that he is loved, by her even if in this instant, he falters. He had gone to hell and back just to find her yet here she was happy with another man. How? Why?

"You keep trying to fix me, Saddiq. I know. I see your efforts. I acknowledge your hard work. But Saddiq, I am not something to be fixed. I think you keep forgetting. Yet thanks for trying."

Was it all imagined, the bond they shared? Could he have possibly be in love with a ghost? He had loved her despite knowing nothing about her, choosing to accept the past she wouldn't share for a future with her, and now he wonders if that might have been his undoing. Can you truly love a part of a whole? He had tried and it would seem, he had failed. The way she is with him, he had never known her not to be full of staggering melancholy.

But why do that to him? Pretend to love him? Why him? Why would she do this to him when all he had done is love her, desperately? And what had he expected anyway in those endless hours he had searched for her?

The morning she had left, he had woken quite happy; why wouldn't he be, she had confessed her feelings for him, only to realise he had been abandoned. What thought had passed through him in those miserable seconds when the realization that she had left him had sunk in? Fear. And more fear. And even more fear. There were no coherent words. There was just darkness and a mind numbing echo of what he was quick to realize was his heartbeat. She had left but that wasn't his greatest fear. She never promised not to even when she shared all those feelings with him but a part of him had hoped, beyond reasonable doubt, he had hoped. But what else was he to do? It was his best.

How can he live with her for that long and not know her? Even a little. Even at all.

'I told you so.' 'What were you expecting from someone like her?' 'Did you honestly think it would have worked out?' 'There was no chance it would have worked. She is a girl whom you chose despite the protests from your parents.' 'She is a stranger, do you think she'll fit into our world?' Saddiq had spent those trying months listening to these and more.

He had ignored it all. They were wrong. They don't know her as well as he does. But what does he really know about her? She won't talk about her parents except to say they died a long time ago and there were no other relatives in the picture. He had found it hard to believe that she was literally alone in the entire world but it had only made him want to protect her even more. He couldn't imagine a world where he has no one.

"I envy you your extended family, Saddiq, more than you'll ever know or understand." She had scolded him when he won't shut up about how taxing his family was.

"They just don't know when to quit!" He had exclaimed in those days when he didn't know when or where his grandfather's attack on his person would come from or if he would survive.

It had been rather grim; losing everything he had worked so hard for simply because he had displeased the old one but even during his worst times, he had no regrets. Not even when she had left him. He might have had a difficult time deciding if he could ever forget her or if he wants to forget her in those helplessly long days when he had no idea if he would ever find her but not once did he regret.

"Why her and not me?" Zainab had challenged in those lonesome days when she'd all but begged him to marry her if only to fix the growing rift between him & the entire Makama clan.

"I'm sorry!" Was all he could say to her as if he'd been possessed. It was the first time in his life when Zainab had asked for something and he had declined. It would later haunt him, the look in her eyes, but try as he might, he hadn't been able to think about anything but his love for Aisha.

Eventually, he had lost everything. Eventually, he had lost everyone.

There were moments when he'd blamed himself for the immense darkness he'd been forced to live. He had disappointed his parents after all. How could he dream of finding happiness after hurting them? And that's why he had accepted what he had regarded as his punishment in good faith. It was fitting. However, even in his worst despair, there was no moment when he could give up on her or wish he had never met her. So why was this happening to him? Why was Aisha with another man? Was he. . .could he possibly be. . .

. . .the stranger who got away?

"You can't resent or hate me later. Promise me."

He did promise. No matter what happens, he won't resent or hate her. And even now when it seems his entire world has been crushed, he was still finding it rather hard to break his promise. Perhaps there's still a part of him which was still holding to hope. Perhaps the truth of what had happened to him hasn't sunk in yet. Perhaps. . .

He was hurt. He was breaking. He was in misery. Yet all he could think of was why.

Why was she with someone else? Why did she disappear? Why did she approach him? Why say she love him? Why? Why? Why? And as he stares at them in all fifty shades of hell, he couldn't help but wonder he was breaking or was already broken.