You Have Seen the Light
I forgot the meaning of happiness whatever it was years ago. As we all know, time is pointless. When you stay in the darkness long enough, you tend to forget that there’s another side, a better one. Well, I forgot, I forgot about happiness, which was a good thing. You can’t crave for something you completely forgot about, right?
I saw feelings, but never actually felt them. I saw people laugh, cry, and I saw people cry out of happiness, which still confuses me. I saw people love, and I saw people force it. I saw people hate and I saw people hide it. I only found one feeling in the darkness; I found nothing, I found the emptiness, neither joy nor pain, just nothing.
So, here I am, I don’t know what day it is or what the time is, on a random roof under the rain trying to light a cigarette but its not working. I heard loud screams and laughter as the stairs door slams open, a girl runs in with such excitement as if she never saw rain before, she did, but she treats everything she loves like it was her first time. She was dancing while looking at the sky waiting for the rain to wash her face with more joy, her long curly hair was fighting to not get wet. It did.
It's hard to describe it but it was… different.
Then she noticed, she noticed that she’s not alone on the roof, a wet canvas of misery is standing there looking at her.
“Why aren’t you dancing?”, she asked. I still think about that question, in her joyful, fearless mind that’s what you should do under the rain, that should be the natural state of humans under the rain; dancing. I didn’t reply, she levitated towards me, at least that’s how I saw her move.
She held my hand and started moving my dead uninterested arm around...
She started spinning...
We started spinning..
Me and a random stranger are dancing under the rain.
1:32 Thursday 16th of April 2017. That minute I felt something stronger than joy and stronger than pain run through my body. Yes, I may be still in my darkness, and, yes, I may still have not seen the light but on that moment, I did feel it. I felt the light.
Khaled Mansor is a writer based in Jeddah.