Who Am I?
(by Afsana Wahid)
🌌 "Bayaan: When the City Became a Dream"
It wasn’t a rainy night.
Yet droplets still clung to the café window —
as if they had fallen from someone’s eyes,
or from fingers brushing along the café’s wall,
carrying the warmth of some unspoken memory.
Elina now sat there every evening —
at the same old table where Uzayfa once sat,
but with a new notebook each time.
Sometimes yellow in colour,
sometimes just bound by threads,
and sometimes nothing more than an old envelope,
with someone’s breath sealed inside.
📮 "Bayaan was no longer just a place to write — it was a place to lay down your exhaustion."
People came now with weary thoughts,
with scattered hours in their hands,
and they left — a little lighter,
a little more whole,
and sometimes, a little older.
One evening,
a girl walked in without saying a word.
She simply opened the café’s cupboard,
pulled out a piece of paper,
and on it was written:
“I never made a promise to anyone,
yet every time… I was the one who broke.”
And she left the note there.
Elina didn’t read it.
She simply folded the paper and placed it
at the very back of the cupboard —
right beside Uzayfa’s blue diary.
💬 "Now, Bayaan didn’t echo with words — it floated with feelings."
The walls no longer carried fresh writings.
They faded and reappeared
with the rhythm of people’s breaths.
One day, an old man came and asked:
“Do you still have the letter my wife once wrote?”
Elina pointed to an old cover —
inside it was a letter tied with a pink ribbon.
He took it in his hands and said:
“I never replied to her back then…
but I’ve come to read it to her today.”
🕯️ "Bayaan was now a temple — of emotions, silences, and belonging."
Every Sunday, a corner was reserved.
People would just sit quietly there.
No one spoke.
No one asked.
But in every pair of eyes,
an entire book floated silently.
📜 "Then one day, when a page drifted into Elina’s lap…"
It read:
“I spent my whole life
searching for the answer to one question —
and that question is still incomplete.”
That day, Elina didn’t stay late.
She walked out quietly from the café —
without the blue diary in her hands.
🌙 "The night Bayaan saw itself for the first time"
A shadow paused outside the café window.
Perhaps a traveller —
or someone left behind by time.
He peered in,
looked at the tables,
and then walked in with an old register filled with ink.
He wrote:
“Do you still have room for someone new?”
Elina looked at him and smiled:
“If you haven’t come to speak,
perhaps you’ve come to listen.
Sit here — someone, somewhere,
is still writing for you.”
🕊️ "Bayaan now belonged to everyone who couldn’t shape themselves into words"
A new corner had been made there:
“Chup Diaries” (Silent Diaries) —
where people didn’t leave stories,
but their fears.
Each diary bore the same line:
“Leave here what you couldn’t say.
No one will read it.
No one will judge.
But your heart will feel lighter.”
🌸 "One evening, Elina wrote for someone for the first time"
She wrote:
“Before you came, there were only stories here.
After you, there’s a ‘you’ in every story.”
She didn’t place that register in the cupboard.
Instead, she left it on the table
where someone always sits for the very first time.
🧷 "Bayaan was no longer a story — it had become an identity."
Now, if someone in the city lost themselves,
people would say:
“Go to Bayaan —
maybe someone there still holds a part of you.”
📘 And the blue diary?
It now rested inside a glass box.
Beside it, a small board read:
“This is the diary of words
that were never spoken —
only felt.”
And Elina?
She was still there.
But she no longer wrote.
Now, she let others write.
Sometimes she laughed at a child’s first poem,
sometimes she simply placed her hand gently
over the trembling hands of someone broken.
🌌 And Bayaan?
It was no longer just a café —
it was an era,
a voice,
a home for all those
who had never met themselves.
If you ever go there,
perhaps a blue diary
will still have a page left open for you…
🧭 Where is Uzayfa now?
Uzayfa handed her place to someone else,
but she didn’t fade away.
She was now in every table of the café,
in every unfinished page,
in every silence still searching for words.
💙 Where did she go?
She went to that turning point
where a character grows bigger than themselves —
where they are no longer a name, but a feeling.
People no longer search for her —
they feel her.
🕊️ Will she return?
Perhaps yes,
when Elina can no longer stay still,
or when a new soul becomes afraid of their own story —
then, one evening,
she may appear again by the café window.
But this time —
there will be no blue diary in her hand.
Only a blank page,
and a smile that says:
“You write… it’s no longer my turn.”
💙📖✨ "Some stories never end…
They simply wait for someone to read them again."
Hello, I am writer Afsana Wahid, my dear friend.
If you enjoy my story — or should I say, if the magic of my words has touched your heart — then please, please leave a comment.
Also, share this story with your friends and relatives.
I have tried to write something different, and I truly want to know your thoughts.
To all those reading this — whether from India or outside India — please do let me know in the comments how you liked my writing.
Thank you.
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