Gulab's Longing

It had been a year since the feeling arrived—quietly, like a shadow slipping under the door. She had turned sixteen, and something inside her had shifted. Not loudly, not all at once. Just a slow unraveling. A soft ache that settled in her chest and refused to leave.

Since then, joy had become a stranger.

Even Eid, once a festival of laughter and henna-stained palms, felt hollow. The embroidered clothes, the sweet scent of sheer khurma, the clinking of bangles—it all passed through her like wind through a sieve. She smiled when expected, hugged when asked, but inside, she was untouched. Eid came and went, and Gulab remained unchanged. Her heart, like the desert around her, longed for rain.

She lived in a village stitched into the edge of the Cholistan Desert, where the land cracked open like old pottery and the wind carried the scent of longing. The homes were made of mud and memory, their walls painted with faded flowers and prayers. Goats wandered freely, and the air buzzed with the rhythm of handlooms and the rustle of ajrak drying on clotheslines.

But Gulab did not belong to the rhythm.

She belonged to the hush between verses. Her eyes were dark and distant, her voice soft as sand. She moved through the days like a question no one wanted to answer. Her sisters laughed easily, their bangles chiming like monsoon rain. Gulab watched them from the doorway, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on the wall.

At night, she climbed to the roof and spoke to the moon.

“O moon,” she whispered, “why do I feel like a well with no water?”

The moon listened, round and pale, casting its silver gaze upon her loneliness. It never replied, but it never turned away. Gulab imagined it was the only one who understood—the only one who saw the sadness blooming inside her like a thorny flower.

The desert echoed her emptiness. The dunes rose and fell like breath, but they never changed. The sky above was a cruel blue, endless and indifferent. She often stood beneath it and whispered, “Why am I here?” But the sky, like everything else, gave no reply.

One morning, when the wind was softer and the sun hadn’t yet sharpened its blades, Gulab wrapped her dupatta around her head and walked toward the shrine.

It stood beyond the dunes, nestled in a hollow where the sand seemed to hold its breath. The shrine was old, its white dome stained with time, its walls covered in faded prayers and the fingerprints of pilgrims. It was said that Baba Qamaruddin, the mystic who lived there, could hear the language of hearts. That he spoke to birds. That he knew the meaning of silence.

He was still alive, though no longer young. People said he had once danced with dervishes and wept with strangers. Now he sat beneath a neem tree, wrapped in a green shawl, his eyes closed as if listening to something beyond sound.

Gulab had never spoken to him before. She had seen him from afar—his silhouette framed by incense smoke and rose petals. But today, she felt pulled. By something ancient. Something aching.

She walked slowly, her feet sinking into the sand. The sun climbed higher, painting the desert in gold and fire. Her throat was dry, but she didn’t stop.

When she reached the shrine, the air changed. It was cooler, scented with rosewater and dust. The wind quieted. Baba Qamaruddin sat cross-legged beneath the neem tree, his back straight, his beard silver like moonlight.

Gulab knelt before him.

“I have a sadness,” she said. “It lives in me like a drought. I don’t know why.”

The mystic opened his eyes—two pools of still water—and looked at her. Then he closed them again.

She waited.

“I ask the moon,” she said. “I ask the wind. I ask the sky. But no one answers.”

Still, no reply.

She searched his face for something—recognition, compassion, even confusion. But his expression remained unchanged. As if her words had dissolved into the air.

She stood slowly, her knees aching, her heart heavier than before. Outside, the desert shimmered, unchanged. The wind picked up again, tugging at her dupatta like a child asking for attention.

Gulab walked back home, her shadow long and lonely.

That night, she did not speak to the moon.

She simply looked at it, her eyes full of questions, her lips sealed like a tomb.

The moon, for once, seemed farther away.