3

Noon approached, and the Friday sermon had just begun; the voices of preachers rose from the mosques. She sat in a quiet corner, away from the clamor, idly fiddling with her mobile phone, a radiant smile lighting up her face.

She gazed intently at his photograph on the screen, devouring every detail with her eyes and committing his features to memory—features already etched deep within her heart.

She scrolled through his F******k profile—a page where she knew every single character by heart—checking it tirelessly night after night. She would sit for hours, lost in contemplation of it,

oblivious to the hands of the clock or the passing of time.

She was aching to see him in the flesh; five days had passed without a glimpse of him—and yes, she counted every minute and second. She lifted her gaze from the photo filling her phone screen—capturing him in a formal suit with his rugged,

masculine features—and glanced at the clock. Why hadn't he come down yet?

Could he possibly still be asleep? It was already one in the afternoon—Daylight Saving Time—and he usually came down early. Damn it... could he have left before she did? No, he wouldn't go out on his days off; he spent the entire week at the

company, shouldering the burden of running the whole business himself...

"Slow down, Radwa,"

she told herself, trying to soothe her spirit and calm the heart that yearned to see her beloved. "You have waited five days; surely you can manage five minutes?"

Using a pseudonym on a burner account, she penned a brief message—words straight from the depths of a heart utterly, bone-deeply in love: "I never intended to fall for you, yet it happened—just as names become ours and lands become our homelands.

How, then, could my small heart refuse to make you the home to which it belongs?"

She pressed the send button after a moment’s hesitation, her face flushed with shyness—as if he were about to discover that she was the one sending him those anonymous secret

messages every night. Immediately after sending a message, she would block him so he couldn't reply;

she had been doing this for some time, as if these messages were her way of unburdening her heart rather than bottling everything up inside. Yes, it was a secret—he didn't know her identity—but perhaps that was for the best...

She let out a startled cry the moment she felt a shadow loom directly over her while she was engrossed in checking her phone. She looked up in alarm to find Nader standing right there,

gazing down at her with a look of mischievous curiosity, puzzled by the panic etched on her face. Instinctively, she quickly turned off her phone, trying to conceal her clearly visible nervousness...

She snapped at him with exaggerated agitation—though she did so in an attempt to mask her own nerves—saying

: "You scared the life out of me, Nader! Couldn't you have just said something? Are you happy now?"

He kept looking at her with a puzzled expression and a raised eyebrow. To him, her reaction seemed completely