The Well of Longing by Omayma Abdelaziz

By Tahani Elghazaly
Published May 27, 2026

Latest news on WhatsApp أجدد الأخبار على واتساب

I have always been everyone’s closest friend. The reverse has never been true.

I live inside a gap in time. A dark, empty gap made especially to hold me. A gap within me, like a black hole, swallowing my desire for love and embrace. It isolates me, even when everyone is around me, even when they trust my friendship. I often ask myself: am I right, or am I betraying the feelings they pour toward me with such warmth and affection?

Why was this wall built inside me? Why is my heart like a rock defying the fiercest waves?

Was it the past, and the rigid silence sitting on my chest? The day he left my bed, I thought it was only a passing summer cloud, one that would clear and return everything to calm. I waited for him for years, but he betrayed the heart that had clung to him. He betrayed our dreams. He left me to the ice, feeding on my weakness, until the dreams faded and the melodies fell silent. He left the oud moaning without music. Every night, I asked: why did he leave it, and why did he leave me, when we were the twin of his soul?

I stripped away my pride and went out, guided by the torch of hope, until I found him. In the same place, the light of sunset reflected on his forehead, as if time itself were an illusion.

In that moment, I felt neither anger nor the joy I had expected. I felt something stranger: the same emptiness I had lived with for so long. I looked at him, and he saw me. A faint astonishment crossed his face, then a strange smile, as if he had not been gone for even a moment.

I walked toward him with heavy steps and asked, in a voice I did not recognize: “Why?”

He did not speak. He simply took something from his pocket and placed it in my palm: a burned matchstick. Then he whispered, “Because I loved you more than you could bear, so I chose to disappear before I burned you completely.”

Before I could answer, he turned and walked into the falling sunset. This time, I did not run after him. I stood where I was, looking at the blackened matchstick in my hand, then at the wall collapsing silently inside me.

For the first time, I did not feel the gap.

I felt that I was the gap itself, and that this was all right.

I closed my hand around the ash and turned back. Not because I had forgiven him, but because I realized that some questions do not need answers, and some walls are not meant to be demolished. We simply learn how to draw windows on them.