Short Story: Onlooker

It was so many years ago, but I still keep that picture in my head. I wear it like a tattoo engraved on the back of my eyelids so I see it every time I close my eyes.

I was sitting at a bus stop, not quite sure what I was looking for, for it was my first time in that foreign and so exotic country; I was both looking for everything and nothing in particular at the same time. I was just sitting, resting, and waiting for something to happen.

It was a burning hot day. At the time I was at that bus stop it was about noon and the sun was blazing relentlessly. I could feel the small drops of salty sweat drip down my forehead, or break out around my neck. I used a small brochure for a local restaurant as a handmade fan to try to cool down a bit, but unfortunately, it turned out useless.

And then I saw them on my left. A girl wrapped in a long grey trench coat, her head covered with a veil and only her face visible. For a moment there I could not help but wonder how she could not be hot. I was dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and shorts and could die from the great heat, and she was wearing a bloody coat! But then I noticed the young man standing beside her, looking her in the eyes and gently caressing her skin. And then it was all clear to me. The weather was of no importance to those two!

What struck me most, however, was how very young they were. And they looked so in love. In a place where their love couldn’t be showed, couldn’t be screamed out loud the way every love should be, couldn’t be introduced to the world without meeting rejections, false expectations, and rules to stick to, they loved each other. It was as simple as that. Every their move expressed that love in the most sensitive way. They talked in whispers as if their words were too precious for anyone else to hear; or maybe they didn’t speak at all, for maybe their looks, their endearments were just enough to talk louder than any word ever coined in any language human race’s ever known.

“We have to go,” my friend called from my other side. He was a sort of my guide there and he was going to show me some amazing view and sceneries that day. What he’ll never know, however, is what I remember best. It isn’t a museum, or a church, or a mosque; it’s not a building at all. It’s one moment shared with two strangers. I’ll never get to know them; I’ll never find out their names, and I’ll never hear their stories. They’ll never know me either. But they’ll always be special to me, because they shared not just one simple meaningless moment of their lives with me – they shared their love. And that has to mean something.

Right?