Puranay Rastay ✓

chapter ‣ 11

I stared at the white sheet of snow spread over the campus grounds. Like a hand woven blanket, it looked soft and tempting to dig your hands in, but long winters from my youth in NY reminded me otherwise. The only time snow was soft was when it was sucking you in like quicksand.

I allowed my gaze to linger at it for a few more minutes. My first week of my last semester in an American university was coming to an end, and it was proving to be quite a different experience than what I was used to.

Adjusting to a new place was hard enough, but doing so in the last leg of your journey felt impossible. I did not have the foundations my peers had, neither was I familiar with many of the procedures and default formats that were practiced, and so most of my classes had been an attempt to keep up, rather than to excel.

I knew what I was walking into, and yet I was fatigued with all that I needed to do.

Letting out a yawn, I reached for my phone, where a text message from Aqib lit up the screen.

A: which train are you taking?

R: the 5:20

A: gr8, let's meet halfway?

R: deal

I pocketed the phone and started towards the subway.

Since the semester had started, Aqib and I would communicate our train schedules and take the same one if our times managed. If Aqib reached our home station before me, which had been the case mostly, he would wait for me at the platform so that we could walk home together. It was a nice little gesture, especially because twice now he had stood with steaming hot cocoa for us.

The hum of the trains in the subway was muted by the chatter of passengers going to and forth. Skateboard wheels hissed to a stop, footsteps pounded through the long corridor, rushing towards leaving trains. Whines and cries of children, insistent shushing of the mothers, and hollering of platform performers filled the area as I stepped off the train.

I hugged a binder to my chest, making sure to keep the documents straight and unwrinkled. My bookbag was strapped close, sashing with my abaya as I shuffled into the crowd. My eyes scanned the corridor, searching for Aqib.

His cropped brown hair was usually what set him apart from the blonde and eccentric colored heads. His briefcase, which usually weighed a tonne because of how full it was, would be gripped in his right hand. He would call it a toddler grip, because of how tight it was.

"Where are you, Aqib?" I whispered to myself, watching every guy mildly similar to Aqib walk by.

Unfamiliar face, after unfamiliar face with no trace of Aqib. I couldn't see him anywhere.

A panic filled me for a second. I had gotten lost in the streets of New York numerous times, but always with my family. Even with Aqib, when we had postponed our honeymoon, and decided to take a staycation to the local attractions, we had taken wrong roads and gotten lost. This was a first where I was alone.

I knew the way home, I told myself, I could just go. Yet standing there, unmoving, as the world around me shuffled forward, I felt alone.

Slowly starting towards our usual spot of reuniting, I found it empty. I then started up the stairs, scanning the area, hoping to see him. Loud shouting caught my attention, prompting me to look over my shoulder.

I saw Aqib running towards me breathless, calling out my name. Heads turned towards him in surprise, annoyance and contempt, but he walked through them like an arrow heading towards its target.

Relief filled every fiber of my being. I let out a breath I didn't know I had been holding.

"Where were you?" I asked once he stopped before me.