Even If The Absence Lasts

Gaza, September 2023. In a quiet university library, two hands reach for the same worn copy of Wuthering Heights.

Maryam lines up her pens before she reads a single page, because she needs to know where everything is. Jawad counts the minutes she's late and never admits he's been waiting. Between coffee she pretends not to like, an umbrella built for one, and a blue notebook he refuses to let her read, something begins that neither of them names.

The day before everything changes, Maryam chooses a place to tell him what she hasn't said. "You'll know tomorrow," she promises.

Tomorrow never comes.

As war tears the city apart, Maryam is pushed south to tents on the sand while Jawad stays north with his ailing mother. Their love is reduced to a phone that sometimes connects, a roof where the signal is stronger, and messages that wait days to arrive. Then one day the messages stop.

Even If the Absence Lasts is a story about waiting without knowing, about carrying someone's name when there is nothing else left to carry, and about the people who search for us when we cannot be found.

Some people never leave us, even when they are far away.