“Waiting Has No Sound”
Three days had passed,
yet something inside Uzayfa was still paused.
That corner of Bayaan Café,
that gentle light,
and that one line—
“If you ever write again…
the reader will still be here.”
That one simple line
kept pulling her back
to the very place
where someone had once listened to her,
without even knowing her name.
That afternoon,
when the whole house was lost in the laziness of a nap,
Uzayfa quietly gathered her books,
opened the door gently,
and stepped outside.
There was an earthy fragrance in the air,
like an old letter that had been locked away somewhere,
and today, had been opened again.
Outside Bayaan Café, a board hung:
“Every silence is a story.”
Uzayfa sat down again
in the same corner where she had once sat.
The same register lay there.
But today, its pages seemed heavier.
She opened it—
there were fresh words on some pages,
and on one page,
that stranger had returned.
He had written:
“In your words,
I saw a home…
A home where no one lives,
and yet it was full of light.
Maybe because…
you are still there.”
Uzayfa paused.
These lines—
they awakened a part of her soul
that had been asleep for a long time.
With trembling hands,
she wrote in an empty space of the register:
“I am no longer a home…
I am just a closed door—
a door no one knocks on.
But today,
I felt that knock.
Will you knock again?”
Soft music floated across the café—
something like an old, lost note of Raag Yaman,
as if a lover was waiting quietly in the distance.
At that very moment,
a cup of coffee was placed on her table.
The waiter smiled:
“Someone said—
‘Give this to her, if she ever comes back…’”
Uzayfa picked up the cup.
Underneath it was a folded slip of paper.
Only two words were written on it:
“I’m here.”
That day, she sat there for a long time.
Sometimes looking out the window,
sometimes running her fingers over the edge of the register.
She didn’t know who that stranger was,
what his face looked like,
or what his name might be…
But she knew one thing—
Waiting has no sound,
but its presence…
reaches the quietest corners of the heart.
Before leaving, Uzayfa closed the register,
and wrote just one more thing:
**"If you can hear me…
then one day,
in that same corner,
we will both sit quietly—
and speak nothing.
Just listen…
to each other."**
Evening was falling outside.
The shadows of the people walking on the street
were growing longer.
But in Uzayfa’s heart,
nothing felt small anymore.
Something… was beginning to connect.
Someone… was coming closer.
“Not by the body, but by the voice, we are known”
That evening, after returning home,
Uzayfa said nothing.
She didn’t talk to anyone,
didn’t open a book,
didn’t even touch her phone.
She just opened her hair,
leaned her back against the wall,
and kept thinking of that corner in Bayaan—
and those two words:
“I’m here.”
The next morning,
as if her heart had found its own way,
she returned to that café once again—
this time without hesitation,
without a reason.
But today, something had changed.
The corner where the register usually rested,
someone else was already sitting there.
That man—
a simple white kurta,
a faint beard,
twirling an old pen between his fingers.
Uzayfa saw him.
He said nothing—
just kept looking at an unfinished poem on the wall,
as though he was recognizing a voice hidden in it.
The waiter smiled:
“Ma’am, today the register is at that table…
If you wish, you can sit there.”
Uzayfa stood still for a moment.
Then, with slow steps, she walked to that table.
As she sat down, their eyes met for just a moment.
The man did not smile—
he only lowered his eyes,
as if to say:
“I recognize you, but I do not wish to know you.”
Between them was a register,
two cups of coffee,
and a silence—
but it was not a heavy silence.
Uzayfa said nothing.
She opened the register,
and wrote gently:
“I had heard your voice before,
and today I have seen your face.
But the bond that was created…
belongs only to a feeling.”
The man read it—
picked up his pen—
and wrote below it:
“Thank God,
you didn’t see my face first.
Otherwise,
I might not have been
what you felt.”
A little while later,
he stood up.
Before leaving,
he turned a page in the register
and added one last line:
“If someday,
you search for a voice again—
don’t come here.
Go somewhere else—
because by then,
I might have already made my home inside you.”
Uzayfa sat there for a long time.
She knew now
that this meeting wasn’t complete—
but it wasn’t unfinished either.
Because sometimes,
a person’s presence
is not tied to a name, a face, or an identity.
It is just a feeling—
one that builds a home
inside us.
“The one I never knew, and yet is part of me”
Time had moved on a little more.
Now, at Bayaan,
the mornings seemed to take longer to arrive—
and Uzayfa was no longer the same.
She didn’t come there just to hear someone anymore,
but to hear herself.
That day, she came without a book,
without a diary,
only carrying an old letter.
For that stranger.
The one she had never called by name,
but whose silence had become
her own voice.
That corner of the café—
now it felt like hers.
The register was still there,
but today she didn’t write in it.
Instead, she took out that letter—
the old paper wrinkled lightly,
as though words had been locked in it for years.
She placed the letter in the middle of the register.
Then, slowly rising,
she whispered as she left—
so soft, wrapped in silence:
“I never knew you…
but now…
you are a part of every piece of me.”
Some time later,
that stranger returned.
The same white kurta,
but now his eyes held
an old, waiting ache.
He opened the register—
and from between the pages,
he found the letter.
In the letter, she had written:
**"Before you, I was just alive…
After you, I began to ‘be.’
I have given every voice within me
to your name.
Now, if ever my heart beats—
know that someone is remembering you…
without a sound.”**
He stayed silent for a long while.
Then, on the last page of the register,
he wrote only this:
“You never saw me—
you only read me.
And more than being seen,
to be read…
was always my deepest wish.”
In that corner of Bayaan,
there are now only two chairs.
One of them is where she sits,
the other… always remains empty.
But sometimes,
when a soft breeze passes through,
it feels as if someone is sitting there…
and Uzayfa says nothing.
She just smiles.
Because some loves simply exist—
whole,
and yet incomplete.
Some loves simply exist—
whole, and yet incomplete.
— Afsana Wahid
A pen that shapes silent feelings into words… 🌸
"Hi, I’m writer Afsana Wahid. I have written this story with a lot of effort, keeping today’s times in mind. So, I request everyone reading this—especially those reading from outside India—to please leave a comment.
Thank you."😊😊
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