When I was 18 years old, I said to the then 22 years old Eliyas:
_" I don't believe there's something such as selfless love in the world.. We are all selfish, either we want to be loved by others without loving them back, or we want as much love from others as we give them.. We always want to be in the receiving end, This is how the world works, take us for example.. If I say that I don't love you not even a single bit, would you still insist on wasting your feelings on me knowing that you'll never receive anything in return?"
At that age, I was in my last year in high school, and I wasn't in my best mental shape.
I used to be a top student in middle school.. But starting from the day my mother abandoned me .. I abandoned everything else in my life after her departure: my friends, my dreams, my studies.
I felt like everything was pointless.. And that people were frauds.
I moved from being the first student in the class to hanging just above the average, what saved my barely surviving grades was my exceptional talent in learning languages.. I didn't even need to pay attention while in classes for me to write my essays with total ease during exams, so it was natural that I chose the literature branch for the continuation of my dying highschool journey despite having O interest in literature either.
Besides my degrading life, I was quite rebellious myself at the time, I had no one to correct my attitude: my father was dead, my mother only god knew where she disappeared to, and my grandmother only made sure I slept under her house's roof every night.. The rest was my business.
So yes, I hardly put my head on a rug to pray to Allah at that time, I wore extravagant clothes, had a weird hair cut: I did it myself.. It was short, spiky, and my whole face was covered with edgy bangs, I didn't put make up because I just hated makeup, but I had a thousand bracelets from the end of my wrists up almost to my elbows, and my fingers were always painted in black.
For some unreasonable reason I thought U looked cool, and the trashy new friends I thought of as friends gave me this impression as well.
I had a boyfriend who I never actually liked at the time, he was simply the first guy to ever ask me out so I just accepted him, His name was Samir.. Actually he was pretty much the only decent person in my life at the time, he tried to advise me against whatever rebellous phase I was drowning through and to act sanely, to focus on the coming baccalaureate exams (national college entrance exams) and stop shutting the whole world out.. with time I figured out he was not just playing around with me the way I did with him and that he genuinely liked me, so I did what I honestly thought was better for him, I dumped him.
Well, Samir didn't exactly accept that happily.
That was when Mr Eliyas walks into my life again..
back then he was frequently sent by his father mr buelguassem filladi to check on my grandmother and to send her expensive deliveries that consisted of money, food, and clothes. Usually when he visits he'd spend few days at our house since D city was 6 hours away from our hometown and it was rather inconvenient to double cross that distance in one day.. I still wonder until this very day why he never thought of coming in a plane.
Anyways, I was in the middle of my breakup process when I walked inside the house oneday and found Eliyas sitting in the guests room with grandmother, he looked very surprised seeing the way I looked the moment his eyes fell on me, it took him long awkward moments before he finally asked:
_" how are you doing Noursine?"
_"good" I replied indifferently ..
then I went straight to my room ignoring him and my grandmother who immediately started scolding me for being improper.
Eliyas spent an annoyingly long time at our house during that visit in particular, my grandmother was so pleased with him that she cooked generous meals everyday just to lure him to stay for longer.. And that worked apparently.
Our encounters consisted of only the time we had meals together or the rare times I sat in front of the tv in the guests room to keep him company under my grandmother's persistent nags, we poorly spoke at these times, it was clear to the blind that we both didn't like each other at all.
I remember sitting on the rooftop of our house bathing in the spring sunlight and eating the hawthorns that I bought from downtown when I heard chaotic footsteps moving in the rooftop.
I naturally turned to check the situation, only to find Eliyas trying to fold his wet clothes on the rope to dry.
I was so amused watching the sophisticated Eliyas filladi handling his laundry.. After a bit, I decided to join in the fun, But when I walked close enough.. I noticed that his supposedly clean clothes were in fact still very dirty, Being the rightful person that I was, I immediately yelled:
_" Eliyas! Are you kidding me! They still even have mud on them.. Did you just throw them in the water and then brought them to dry?"
_" no, I used soap."
I looked at him very displeased then I started taking them off the rope and throwing them back in the basket.
_" just leave them to me .. I'll wash them for you.. But where did they get the dirt from?"
_" I fell" he explained.
I inspected him for a bit to look for any apparent wounds from the fall, and I asked:
_" did you hurt yourself?"
He looked at me pensively for long weird moments, I was thinking he was going to report a series of injuries after such a long thinking process, Unexpectedly he just replied:
_" No"
I looked at the basket and felt very lazy, we didn't have a washing machine at the time, not because we couldn't afford it, but because my stingy grandmother simply found it wasteful to buy a machine for something we can do by our own cost-free hands. I really had no heart to scrub and squeeze in such a beautiful weather, so I sneakily said to Eliyas:
_" how about we have a chat for a bit? We haven't spoken at all since you came.. I have sweet hawthorns too.. I'll share some with you while we chat!"
He nodded with an elegant smile, then he followed me to the bench were I was sitting.
We chatted for so long, it was mainly I who asked the questions while he kept answering my questions and eating the sour hawthorns, then out of the blue he reported like a police officer:
_" by the way, I noticed a boy walking around the house frequently lately, I saw you talking with him as well in one occasion and you looked rather displeased, I met him today so I warned him not to come around again because no matter who he is it's still inconvenient for him to frequently walk around the house of a young woman, he said his name is Samir"
_"aah, he's my ex."
Once I said this.. The police officer sitting beside me turned into a moral teacher, he started to scold me right away:
_" you already had a boyfriend!? How old do you think you are Noursine! How can you get a boyfriend at this age!"
_"I'm already an adult Eliyas, I'm 18.. I'll be even able to marry pretty soon."
He looked at me with a flushed face.. unsure whether his face turned red from embarassement or from rage I still continued mindlessly:
_" he's my Ex, I already dumped him"
_" why did you dump him though?.. Did he try to do someth_ ? did he hurt you?"
_"No, he's a good man, actually I dumbed him because he loved me .. He'd naturally want more from me in the future, and I can't give him anything.. So I let him go now to save him bigger heart break later."
I thought he would find my words dramatic and pretentious, I expected he was going to end our chat so I looked at the basket of the dirty wet clothes with an agonized heart and started to accept my sad fate with them when the man who remained silent for long moments suddenly whispered:
_" why?.. can't you be just in the receiving end? Is it that difficult to simply be loved?"
I casted him a serious look.. pushed my bangs off of my face and held them with a clip to have a more serious aura and then I said:
_" I don't believe that there's something such as selfless love in the world.. We are all selfish, either we want to be loved by others without loving them back, or we want as much love from others as we give them.. We all want to be in the receiving end, This is how the world works, take us for example.. If I say that I don't love you not even a single bit, would you still insist on wasting your feelings on me knowing that you'll never receive anything in return?"
The 22 years old him remained silent again, he ate the hawthorns .. Looked away in the distance with no answer.
I found his attitude very weird.. So I just spaced in the distance as well and felt thankful as long as he didn't say: " cousin, let's end our chat because I'm bored"
After a long time of staring at the distance I craved sourness, so I turned towards the bag of hawthorns that I had put in the middle between Eliyas and me, IÂ was attempting to take another fruit, that was when I noticed that Eliyas had long stopped staring aimlessly at the distance and was instead staring at me.
I always had this weird habit, whenever I catch someone staring at me.. I just engage in a staring contest with them and keep looking inside my opponent's eyes until they feel weird about it and look away, and that was what I did when catching Eliyas staring at me .. I looked back at him and blinked intermittently until he laughed and turned away.
While I was proudly taking the hawthorn from the bag Eliyas finally spoke:
_" when you truly love someone you just keep loving them, you can't simply stop, therefore when this person won't love you back you unconsciously end up compromising, and you try to be satisfied with the little you can have, even by making crazy impromptu decisions and doing things that you hate just to be with this person, there's no such thing as selfless love.. But there's compromised love."
He paused.. Looked at me for a bit then he called:
_"Noursine"
I felt strange with him calling my name although I was sitting right beside him, still I replied:
_" yes"
He took a deep breath.. then he said:
_" If you can't possibly love me back then I choose to have this with you.. A compromised love."
It was only many years later that this man honestly admitted: "actually I hate hawthorns.. I hate them the way you hate cabbages, I really can't stand their taste."
Yet, he forced himself to finish half a bag of them on the rooftop of my house that spring day when I was 18 and he was 22 just to keep me accompany.. Just to stay a little extra-time with me.
Wasn't that an obvious compromise which I simply couldn't notice?
In the main time, when he confessed:
_" I really .. really love you."
I couldn't even look at the man lying on the bed beside me because I was choking in guilt, it wasn't like his feelings were not obvious all along, I just chose not to see them, not to trust them, it took me so long before I finally asked:
_"Since when?"
_" I Always did." He replied without a drop of hesitation.
_" Even back when I was 18?" I asked guiltily.
He laughed.. He was so happy and totally oblivious to my guilty mood, then he replied:
_"I loved you even back when you were 16.. I always loved you Noursine"
_" then.. back then at the rooftop when you said you chose to have a compromised love.. You were sincere?"
He stopped talking because he was trying to recall what I meant, he finally admitted:
_" ah, I was rejected that day, quite ruthlessly as well, I was serious when I said I'll compromise, that was my decision."
Few moments later, Eliyas suddenly made me turn to look at him and he asked concerned:
_"why are you crying Noursine?"
Was I?
I slowly moved my palms to touch my cheeks.. They were indeed wet.
I was feeling that kind of guilt that made my chest so tight and heavy, made my heart hurt so much .. And my eyes cry unwillingly.
The sort of guilt you feel when you commit the biggest of sins, I was so sinful towards this man and towards us.
I reached my hand to touch his face gently, he cupped my hand with his the moment my tips touched his face, and he wiped my tears with his other hand.
I didn't have the heart to say:"I don't love you back".
Because I realised he didn't in fact want to hear my answer, he just wanted to properly convey what he felt.
So I decided to have a long chat with him instead, because that was what we lacked in the past: honest communication.
I asked him so many questions.. Like: "were you happy when we married?", "did you love me every time I kissed you?", "do you still enjoy being with me?"
I wanted to know all these details, the longer we spoke.. The lighter my guilt became, because I found out that he truly was happy and satisfied with the life we had before, that he had always loved my sincerity and cheerfulness.. I gave him loads of them.
We kissed while chatting .. Lots of kisses.. Lightly, and passionately, But we didn't go further than that.
I figured out that this brat confessed to me so purposefully after all, I showered him with kisses everytime he mentioned a certain event where his love was obvious but I was just too oblivious to see it, I believed his every word though, because that man truly had no gain in being with me, it was I who was in the receiving end for a very long time.
during one of those passionate kisses we were having I felt it was getting increasingly harder for Eliyas to restrain himself from going further.
His breaths were burning hot .. His touches were greedy to have much more of me, and I know all his little habits in the that field enough to realize he was getting too close to the point of no return, So I withdrew myself and pushed his chest gently away.
He kept looking at me with his eyes full of all sorts of desires.. Full of thirst and yearning.
But I had one last question for him before I stop offering all those exceptional kisses, I said:
_" I had already made my decision Eliyas, that is to leave, we can not undone the past .. you loved me so much but you hurt me folds more, I can not forgive you because what you did is not something that I can forgive, when I look at you although I'm happy.. I'm in pain too, when we kiss although I want it.. I still don't want it as well. What if I meet a man with whom I will only have happiness and desire? And I'd want to selfishly leave you incited by the bad past which I had never forgiven.. could you even blame me for that?"
_"of course I would." he replied bluntly.
He looked at me pensively .. His eyes losing all the light in them with every passing second and he continued:
_"to give your justice, when I saw how you still wanted to see your mother although she did you so wrong I realized how selflessly forgiving you are, then when you said she died in your heart I understood when you can be heartlessly unforgiving at the same time, Noursine I understand there's a line you set for every close person, it breaks me from the inside to realize I crossed the line you draw for me, if you leave me for another man Noursine I will always believe that if I haven't hurt you the careless way I did you would have always remained faithful to me, and that you wouldn't have left me no matter what. So.. who do you think I'd blame more between us both?"
He kissed the tip of my nose then he stood up and walked to turn off the lights which were on during all this time .
He made his way back in the dark, lied on the other side of the bed creating distance between us and he finally added:
_"if you leave me for another man.. I'll blame myself more.. And I'll hate myself folds more, because it was I who lost you in every way."