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Where I went, the reflections followed.
I sat in the house in silence for weeks after the funeral, my vision blurred, my mind empty. Reality sometimes would come back into focus and I would take a shower, cook some food and grab a book. But looking at the words on the pages, the usual rhythm of the letters I would get lost in, was lost to me.
My hands gripping the pages, my vision swam and my eyes closed. My grip on the book became crushing, I probably tore a few pages but I didn’t care.
The world I knew was gone.
My sun, was gone.
I’m not sure when, but Tighnari came to visit for the first time after the funeral. In the weeks leading up to the funeral he and Cyno had been at the house often, helping with the preparations for it while I sat like a husk, only rousing for the minor details, the details I knew Kaveh would nag me about, if he was still here, if it wasn’t his funeral that I was organizing.
I didn’t remember much from the funeral, I remember the many people there that day, I remember Faranaks wails, Mehrak’s still robotic form sitting by the casket next to Kaveh's dull vision.
I remember the bright sun on that day, cloudless sky.
Tighnari had brought food it seemed, I could tell by the smell of something savory and the clinking of plates and utensils coming from the kitchen. How he’d gotten past me so fast confused me for a minute, but it made sense, time felt so liquid nowadays, flowing past me without a care.
As the house fell silent again, a hand came over mine. I didn’t move. I heard words but did not hear what was spoken. I closed my eyes and tried to shift away from the noise. The hand left.
A while later I felt a tug and an angry voice. Surprising myself, my first emotion was anger, anger at being moved and disturbed, anger at who was in my house, anger for not giving me peace.
Anger for not letting me wither away.
I opened my eyes and yelled to let go, before I paused.
It had been Cyno who had tugged me to my feet, and Tighnari that now came to hold my hand in place of his.
Their expressions were similar to the ones I had seen at Kavehs bedside after the accident, hours before he died. Those hours were the last of his life, and mine as well.
I closed my eyes again but didn’t block out the noise, I didn’t want to see but I knew I needed to listen.
“We are worried” Cyno said.
“Come, we brought some food” Tighnari followed.
My gaze fixed on the floor, I followed Tighnari’s hand to the table.
We ate in silence, the food and water had brought more clarity to my mind, which made me realize that I had not indeed eaten in a while. The sweat on my back from the sleepless nights become known to me. When had I stopped trying to continue on my normal routine?
The answer came easy, when I realized Kaveh had been my guiding light in that routine. Without him, I was swept under the waves, lost in the fog.
Still, even with food, everything felt dull. I still did not have the strength to meet their eyes.
“How about we go out to Lambad’s? It’s been a while” Tighnari suggested
It has been a while, the last time was when Kaveh had gotten the big project he’d been planning for a while approved, he would be going out to the dessert the next morning.
He would come back a corpse the following week.
I shook my head and sat on the divan again.
“Alhaitham, please, you can’t just stay here” Cynos voice was different from Tighnari’s, where his was gentle, Cyno’s was laced with frustration. But they both held equal amounts of desperation.
I waited until they would leave, and they did.
The night I entered the Bimarstan and saw Kaveh laying on the white sheeted bed, his chest rising and falling. I felt hope.
But when I saw his lifeless eyes, void of light, I knew.
I barely remember anything but holding his hand, rubbing over those still warm knuckles, pressing kisses on his hand with soft murmurs of love.
I closed my eyes and thought of his bright smile, his ruby red eyes dazzling with laughter and mirth, his eyes filled with anger and frustration, his eyes framed with tears and anxiety. I thought of every shade and hue.
I held a hand over his chest, I felt every last rise and fall. My hand resting with the final fall.
I never opened my eyes, I didn’t want to see the reality in front of me.
Instead, I dreamed of the morning sun, a cloudless sky, the love of my life rushing out the door with a smile.
His final words,
“I love you, goodbye”.
Months after his funeral, the morning after a dinner at Lambad's Tavern with Tighnari and Cyno, I stood in front of The Palace of Alcazarzaray.
My eyes fixed to the ground.
At Lambad's the day before, the last words spoken from Tighnari had been:
“Kaveh wouldn’t want this”,
before I had gotten up and left. I knew every eye was on me as I walked out of the tavern, if it wasn’t because of the fact my cup of untouched wine had fallen to pieces on the floor from my rough handling on the table, it surely was because they hadn’t seen the acting grand sage in public since the Light of Kshahrewar’s funeral.
I had slept at an inn for the 6th time this month after I left.
I had started sleeping at the inn after I realized I would never be able to sleep in the walls of my house again.
The inn was new, it was noisy, it was easy to pretend that nothing was amiss.
Something I couldn’t do with the quiet of Kavehs room.
I let my feet drag me away from the palace, a fragment of Kavehs soul, and landed myself inside Puspa café, my eyes once again finding the floorboards.
I knew why I couldn’t look up, I knew why I couldn’t meet the eyes of anyone I knew.
I would find reality reflecting back at me, and the empty air of where my heart once stood.
I knew why Tighnari’s words at Lambads caused me to lash out.
It’s because it was true, but it had to be Tighnari to tell me this.
Kaveh wasn’t here himself to protest my actions. Kaveh wasn’t here to lash out at me for skipping meals, he wasn’t here to talk off my ears with everything new to try at the café, wasn’t here to talk about this new wine he tried, wasn’t here to drag me to market to only end up with more overpriced trinkets, wasn’t here to show him the marvels of his magnum opus again.
Kaveh wasn’t here.
For the first time in months, I looked up to face the shadows on the walls.
I knew I loved Kaveh since our Akademiya days.
Ever since I first met him on that bench, where I sat alone, quite bothered by his appearance in front of me at first, disturbing my peace.
But I soon learned he was more than just a nuisance.
He was my mirror.
Where I was calm, he was rash, where I was uncaring, he was kind, where it was dark, he showed me the light.
He showed every shade and hue of life I would never have seen if he had not shone it to me.
I fell in love with him soon after.
It had been a long day, we had been studying under the roof of one of the gazebos, and like always I was more focused on the words on the paper in my hands than the words of my naïve senior.
But what caused me to pause in my usual tuning out of Kaveh, was the sudden silence that fell. As he caught my attention, he also stole my heart.
The sun reflected off his hair in blinding shades of gold, giving him a halo of light befitting of him. His eyes shining with amusement, like two red Ruby’s under the sun.
“You only pay attention now when I’m done my rambling? Jeez Alhaitham.”
His laugh rung through my ears and stayed in my mind for days.
I knew I loved him more than a friend from that moment, and I was ok with never sharing it with him.
I was ok with what we were.
My thoughts changed during our fall out during the project.
I didn’t want him out of my arms reach, and when I caught him again, I made sure he wouldn’t go too far.
I never spoke my heart, but I showed him every kind of way of love I knew.
Only in the silence of the night did I whisper ‘I love you’ to his sleeping form.
But one night, he wasn’t asleep, and my words were repeated back at me.
I never thought those words would affect me in such way, but after hearing it once I couldn’t help but crave to hear it a hundred times more.
Our actions were timid, but passion grew with the days. Soft kisses turned to searing heat and sleepless nights.
It surprised me how our domestic routine didn’t change, like we had just always been this way, and I guess we had. All that changed was the kisses with our hellos and goodbyes.
And how empty my bed felt when he worked into the night.
He had cleared his debt and told me he had gotten the approval for a big project in the desert, which he had been planning and working on for months.
His smiles were infectious, and I couldn’t not be happy for him. He had worked so hard, and it had paid off, everything in his life was going right for once, and I was there to help with any doubts.
The night before he left, I had never seen Kaveh so happy. Him in my arms, laughing away, drinking the wine he had bought with his newfound wealth, free of the worries of debt. Cyno and Tighnari there to congratulate him and wish us well in our relationship which we had decided to share with them that night as well.
That morning he left, he left with joy and peace in his soul.
And as I looked at him in the casket, I could still find that peace there, and I hope he still held that joy in his soul.
After a day of travel,
in the desert, I found the last piece of Kaveh, unfinished.
The beginnings of a palace, one with promise of life, stood empty and unfinished.
Panes of glass, reflecting the golden sands of time.
By the time I reach caravan ribat on the trip back from the desert, barely a sliver could be seen of the setting sun. The dark of the night had come with its stars of light.
Cyno and Tighnari stood at the side by the entrance from the desert, they had waited.
My hand was taken, gloved fingers tracing calm circles on the back of my hand.
“He’s gone” I whispered
“Not in our hearts”
A broken wail left me, shook my body to its core. Arms surrounded me from both sides, hushes of affirming words i could hear at times between my pain filled sobs.
The night breeze blew, carrying my cries up above, to be heard by the stars.
In the rain I would hear our soft murmurs shared between us in the silence, when no one else in the world could reach us.
In the river I could hear his words, the words carried in the ripples from our first meeting to our last goodbyes we said.
In the wind I could feel his soft touches, his hands brushing through my hair, his soft kisses on my face.
In the sun I would hear his warm words, his ‘love you’s, his words of return.
In the bitter cold, even then I saw him shining through, the warmth in the snow.
I saw him in every breeze that passed me, in the reflection of every drop of rain.
He was there in every breath I took.
I knew I’d be chasing after the light he cast on my life, all my life.
But I knew that there had to be someone there to catch those left behind rays of light, to appreciate it, to not forget to admire what we were given, and to be sad for what we had lost.
I knew I would never see the light shining from him again, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t chase the reflections.
My mirror in every way, Kaveh.