Chapter 3 - Episode _ 3 _"Nelly and Naomi are friends again, sharing the same pain, abandonment, and betrayal by their lovers."

“Nelly & Naomi: Toward New Hope… or Toward New Love?”

Naomi sat alone in her home, her chest weighed down by the pain Anas had left behind after his sudden disappearance—a disappearance that was not merely an absence, but a fresh wound driven into scars that had not yet healed. She felt as though Anas had entered her life not to ease her suffering, but to complete what others had begun: more breaking, more destruction. Samah and Ghada had already torn her heart apart, the nights had done their share of damage, and Anas came to deliver the final blow she never expected from a man she loved.

Her dream with him had always been fragile, like an unborn child—one that was extinguished before it ever saw the light.

One dark night, while depression closed in on her from every direction, a soft knock echoed at her door. She opened it to find Nelly standing there—her face pale, her eyes trembling with something unspoken. They embraced in a warm, heavy hug steeped in sorrow, then sat down together.

Nelly remained silent, staring at the floor as if the words were too afraid to leave her mouth. It was clear that something immense was storming inside her, something weighing on her heart and silencing her. She did not know that Naomi carried the same wound, and that fate had gathered them on this night to reveal each woman’s betrayal to the other.

Suddenly, Nelly’s tears fell without warning. Naomi reached out gently, touching her friend’s hand and asking why she was crying. That was when Nelly’s voice cracked open—she told Naomi everything: her story with Raed, his disappointments, his abandonment, the heartbreak he left behind. Every sentence deepened her pain; every tear exposed the vastness of the betrayal that engulfed her.

When Nelly finished her story, Naomi told hers—Anas, his disappearance, the pregnancy she didn’t know how to face, and the betrayal of the first man she had ever loved sincerely. The two women realized that fate had not brought them together by coincidence. Their wounds mirrored each other—one story told twice, but with different faces.

Nelly exhaled shakily, wiped her tears, and said in a tone woven from despair and a faint stubbornness:

“I don’t want to get rid of my baby… this child is the only thing I have left. No family, no one… I want to start over, away from this city. I’ll go somewhere where no one knows me, and I’ll give birth there.”

Naomi admired Nelly’s strength—her idea, her escape from the circle of pain. Nelly’s words opened a window in Naomi’s heart that had long been shut. Keeping her child suddenly felt like a beginning, not an ending. Naomi said, with more resolve than she expected from herself:

“I’ll do the same… I won’t get rid of my baby. I’ll keep it… and I’ll leave with you.”

From that night, their tears turned into a decision. Each of them began packing her bag—placing inside what remained of her life, a few clothes, and a great many broken dreams.

On another dark night, one that carried the same sorrow for both of them, Nelly left her home, and Naomi left hers. Their eyes met in the middle of the street. They didn’t speak—words were no longer necessary. It was enough that they were beginning the journey together.

They walked side by side, leaving behind a country that had given them nothing but pain. They searched for a new city, a new home, a new life… and perhaps, in unknown streets, each might find the love she had long sought—or find it in the children soon to be born, children who might change their destinies forever.

Would the journey give them what they had lost?

Would they find new love?

Or would new cities bring new wounds?

Only time will tell…

They walked down the street with hesitant steps—two women without a plan, without a destination, carrying only one certainty: that what they had done was, somehow, the right choice.

Each clutched her bag as though holding on to the last fragments of her life. Side by side they moved forward, carrying mirrored wounds and heavy hearts, searching for a new beginning in a world that knew nothing of them.

When they reached the outskirts of the new city, the dim lights shimmered across the asphalt, as if the road itself were welcoming two fugitives escaping their past.

At that moment, a faded yellow taxi pulled up beside them. A man stepped out, leaning casually against the door as he wiped the front windshield with quiet ease.

His name was Adel.

A man in his early thirties, with unmistakably Egyptian features—a face shaped by the kindness of drivers who have seen too much of life, and the calm of someone who knows the roads better than he knows people, yet understands people with a single glance into their eyes.

Adel opened the back door of the taxi and said in a warm voice touched with gentle human curiosity:

“Please… where are you headed?”

Nelly and Naomi exchanged a glance; the question was simple, but the answer carried a weight neither wished to reveal.

Naomi was the first to catch her breath. She hesitated, feeling the words slip from her grasp before she managed to say, in a soft yet steady voice:

“We… need a place to rent. A flat.”

Adel lifted his brows slightly, as if he had understood the story hidden between the lines. Then he nodded with a reassuring smile—a smile free of intrusive curiosity, shaped instead by respect for a grief no one had spoken aloud.

“All right… I know a few good places.

Get in—I'll take you.”

The two women climbed into the back seat, and as the taxi rolled slowly through the streets of the city that would soon reshape their destinies, Adel glanced at them in the small mirror—not to judge their appearance, but to make sure this journey would be a beginning… not an extension of their pain.

And so…

A new chapter opened in the lives of Nelly and Naomi, and with it began the story of Adel—who had no idea that these two passengers would become a part of his life.