I was coming back from Saudi Arabia, still carrying the noise and warmth of the world cup, when I returned to university with no real plan for the semester except to grind on my projects and disappear into the work. and then they told me about that day, how can I help you program, an open day / a session for the new 022 batch who needed guidance. I wasn’t going to do it. I hate the spotlight, and you know that about me. but Abdalqauem insisted, and so did everyone else, and I couldn’t let them down. I was also genuinely drawn to helping younger people find their footing, and in that room, there was no one else they could rely on the way they could rely on me when it came to computers. so I said yes.

I can’t remember if I saw your face during the presentation. but after it ended, you told me I had said hey and called you by your name, though we had never met before that day. maybe I had been paying attention. maybe I already knew, in some way I couldn’t name yet.

When we finished, it had been a long while since I’d seen my colleagues, and they gathered around me the way people do when they’ve missed each other. and you were there, across the distance of that assembly point, with two other girls, standing a little apart from the crowd. I saw all three of you. but the focal point was you. because you were looking directly at me. you didn’t say a word from where you stood, but I could read it clearly, the way I’ve always been able to read people, that you wanted to say hi. so I called you over. I interrupted the conversation I was having, and the three of you walked toward me. if I’m not mistaken you were in the middle, and you were wearing something white on top.

I felt the chemistry before I had words for it. the smile, the politeness, the curiosity, the generosity in the way you carried yourself. maybe it was that I felt seen. but I had always been seen, everyone acknowledged my existence, so it wasn’t that exactly. it was that I felt seen by someone I might actually want to be known by. and there was something else, something specific: you three were the only ones from your entire batch who came to thank me in person. and it was obvious you were the one who decided to do it. you were leading. you chose to reach out. the eighteen year old version of me standing there didn’t have the full vocabulary for what he was feeling, but he knew something with certainty. he knew you were different. he knew you were special. he knew he wanted to keep talking to you.

You mentioned you had a headache. I don’t remember the exact scenario, only the will I felt, immediate and unfamiliar, to have another conversation because the first we had as not enough, to not let you disappear into the evening. you went by yourself a bit far away, and I have seen you, I reached out to check, I’m not kind with everyone to this level, and I asked if you were okay, and I asked if you’d walk with us to the bus station. you said fine. and we walked with my batch mates. I don’t remember much of that walk except one thing, your smile. affiliative, subtle, not performed. your face was shining out of something genuine, some quiet happiness that had nothing to hide. and in that moment something settled in me, not in my subconscious, not stored away for later, but right there on the surface, clear and declarative. I want to keep this smile going. I want to see it forever. I want to keep it.