Where Absence Becomes Another Language of Presence
Not every loss arrives suddenly. Some slip in quietly and leave their mark deep inside.
In this text, Yasmin writes to her father, who passed away under the weight of the sorrow and strain left by the events of July, after having lived through the heart of those events.
It is a personal letter, moving between absence and memory, trying to build from words a bridge that does not break.
I will build from words bridges that carry me toward you, across every time and place.
— Yasmine Masoud
To my lost one… from a longing heart, I write to you after accumulated disappointments, piled up in my worn-out suitcases,
just like your torn coat, my father.
Yet I am the one torn from within, between the pain of my heart and your voice echoing in my ears like an unending reverberation.
I know that your heart, overflowing with love, would not accept this bitter cold of your absence for me — I know that well…
but fate drives us, without choice, toward misery, toward moments in which we collapse into exhausted silence, searching for a gentle trace that might ease the weight of loss and estrangement.
Let me write to you now…
From the new room, with its sky-colored walls, its round table, and its shelves groaning under books and papers.
A room on whose door is written:
I have nothing left but your memory.
As if it shares my solitude in its silence.
I sent you this address, hoping your sense of presence might return, walking through the corners of the place, restoring life and laughter to it, planting within it something of the longing I could not carry alone.
But emptiness…
Sometimes tightens around me until it suffocates me.
Yesterday, a vast loneliness struck me suddenly, and something within me shrank, as if my soul had lost a part of itself with you.
I ran into the streets of this city, where every corner holds a shadow, and every face is cold, as if it had never known warmth.
I remembered our stories…
And our unfinished dreams, still alive in memory despite the harsh silence.
Do you know, father…
I think places are more loyal than we are.
While we become preoccupied with our new beginnings, our old places were already absorbing exile long before us.
And I return…
To a house that no longer holds my wishes, carrying with me words that have not yet been written.
So many suspended letters still searching for their way to you.
I will write…
I will build from words bridges that carry me toward you, across every time and place.
Just to tell you…
That my heart has not forgotten you, and that you are still closer than you seem.
To my father…
May your soul rest in peace.
