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Salah Elewa - Egypt
I went to the pinpointed place and waited for her there. Her letter which was delivered to me by my youngest sister Madiha in which she requested that we meet under the fig tree at the outskirts of the village had an air of urgency about it. I sat there waiting for a couple of minutes until I saw an elegant figure approaching in the dusk. Her steps were determined though awkward and unsure on the narrow road beside the water canal as she walked towards the place she named in her letter. She wore a long black dress and her head was covered by a black tarha which would come handy if she wanted to cover her face and conceal her identity from the intruding eyes. She kept looking around like a scared sparrow as she drew nearer. I felt sad for her, that sweet fifteen -year old girl who had to go through all these troubles and pains to see me. My heart started to beat a little faster. I had no clue as to what made her arrange for this risky meeting. Normally we would meet outside the village, in the nearby town where we attended secondary school, sometimes we would meet in the train, or we would skip school at times and ramble along the streets of the small town, two strangers happy to be together under the sunshine.
The air was getting cooler and the breeze was heavy with fragrance of clover and lemon as it came towards us passing over the fields. The nearby road was empty. All the farmers had left the fields and gone home with their cattle. Darkness was settling now among the leaves of the trees and above the water of the stream and was creeping into the streets of the village. The whole atmosphere made that meeting look so strange, so lovely, so dangerous, and so sweet and for some reason I felt that I was meeting her for the last time.
When she reached me she put her hand in mine and a little sigh issued from her chest. A fleeting smile played on her lips and seemed to illuminate the trees and the silent fields around us for a moment. We had not met in the village before and this made me see her in a different light. Being surrounded with dangers, with the prospect of being seen together, these little moments were so precious, and so dear like the moments in which soldiers waive good by to their families or their young wives as they head into the battlefields to get killed or die. I loved her at that moment more than any time before. It seemed as if we were two different persons now, far different from the two young lovers who walked hand in hand in the nearby town, happy and secure away from the gazing eyes of the people in the village. And now the darkness and the sense of fear and danger generated new feelings in my heart towards her. I felt happy to see her beside me, that girl who had undergone so much troubles and pains to meet me. I remembered a poem by Walt Waltman I had read couple of days before in which he said that the man to be envied is not the president in his presidency or the rich man immersed in comfort and luxuries , but the man who is truly loved.
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