The Absent One

Description

“The walls are around me, but you are with me. I feel your small, soft hand on my face, and I see your green eyes in mine, from which that new, imprisoned thing appears, wanting to speak but unable to. Don’t be sad, Fouada, and don’t cry, for words are in the air outside the walls, living and entering with the air into the chests. And a day will inevitably come when the masks fall and mouths speak again.”
Absent, and a story of absence behind which lies a secret shrouded in mystery, casting its miserable, bewildered shadows over Fouada’s life. Thus, Farid disappeared, and thus Fouada’s life unfolded… The events of her life are marginal, forgotten in themselves, and the absent Farid is ever present at every turn, at every gathering, and at every moment… How cruel is absence, and crueler than it is a person’s absence from themselves, in a marginality behind which lurks a soul panting after a hope that always appears in its last gasp. And even crueler than this and that is a soul that was forcibly absent at the turn of presence without any justification.