Lara the silent star

Prologue: To the silent chamber… to the star that descended from the sky of legends… to Lara, who remains silent, yet whose silence speaks louder than any words.

I tried to gather my scattered words. I do not know whether to write or to remain silent, silent as she is, as she always remains.

Usually, in such moments, I define the beginnings and the times with precision, yet here I abandoned clarity, surrendering myself to the shadow of mystery.

I understood part of her silence, but the rest still escapes me…

She is now asleep. I do not know: is she angry because I did not speak to her in the quiet hours of night, as in the tales of One Thousand and One Nights? Or is she serene, dreaming of a brighter tomorrow? Or is she simply resting, gathering strength for another day filled with toil and fatigue?

She sleeps, while I try to decipher the codes of her silence, her endless silence at night, or before, when I asked her to reveal the secrets of her sorrowful walls. She smiles, but one cannot tell if it is joy, or if she dances in pain, as the Arab poet once said:

"Do not think my dance among you is joy; the bird dances in agony when slain."

Our acquaintance began in some shared space. I asked her name, her work, as she did… I dared to touch her with my gaze, linking my eyes with hers, and I saw a spring filled with winter and storms that seemed harmless at first.

I tried to lift the veil, to ask about the change in her weather; then the storm raged, sweeping our words away, sending her ship far from me. She told me her vessel does not hold two.

Suddenly, my language became foreign to her, and she ordered me away. Anger and frustration burned within me: first, because I feared she was hurt by my attempt to breach the walls of her city; second, because I only wished to save her, as if she were bound, unable to speak or move.

After being cast out of her fortress, I wandered through my library, and my words turned into a story. I had not intended to send it, yet I did. She read it, perhaps it touched her, and she asked to speak again, to begin anew. Perhaps the coming days will bring compensation, an act of healing for what has passed.

The next day, our walk was sweet. We spoke of food, of music, of suffering, my suffering, not hers, for that was a red line she never crossed. Then we returned to our separate lives. She went back to her fortress, awaiting my return so that we might converse, so she could fall asleep like Scheherazade.

And I, instead, tried to rewrite Scheherazade’s tale: to mirror her silence while she slept, rather than converse with her while awake.

I searched for the meaning of her name in Roman mythology. According to legend, Lara, or Larunda, was a beautiful nymph, famous for her beauty and eloquence. But the god Jupiter, angered that she revealed his secrets, cut out her tongue and condemned her to eternal silence. She later became the protector of spirits, her name bound to light and protection.

In European literature, the name Lara gained fame through Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, where she symbolized deep love, the woman who inspired the hero despite the harshness of war, where victory always belonged to love.

I understood why she helped me speak about the pain, why her smile inspired me, yet she remained silent. Speak, Lara, break the threads of silence that bind you. Rebel. Be free. Do not fear. And still, she remained silent.

Is she a deaf stone? Or does she truly not understand my language, as she said when she first left me?

I turned the pages of her name in Hindi, Bengali, Arabic… yet I found no answer to soothe my restless heart.

Is she a treasure whose code cannot be broken? A lost treasure? She shakes her head and says, “No, I am only an ordinary woman.”

But I see her as something else: a brunette who illuminates a civilization of unfolding beauty, an enigma difficult to unravel. My stubbornness drives me to try, again and again, to circle her palaces and walls, to speak to her even while she sleeps. Speak, Lara, speak…

Everyone sees her as they wish. But I see her as a city of light, and I revolve around her as the earth around its eternal star.