1. Whispers of Love
"O soul at peace, return to your Lord, well-pleased and pleasing to Him." (Quran 89:27-28)
Ayzel clutched her tote bag tighter as she stepped onto the stony streets of Paris. The city buzzed around her — lovers, dreamers, artists. Yet her heart beat to a different rhythm, one strung by countless duas whispered in the quiet of her nights.
Three years.
Three years of loving someone she had never met.
Three years of praying — not just for love, but for his hidayah, his salvation.
"Ya Allah, guide him. Bring him to You."
Her prayer never changed.
Now, standing in the golden dusk of Paris, she wasn’t here for fantasies. She was here for a university conference — her final year project that had taken blood, sweat, and sleepless nights. Ayzel balanced her life between Deen and Dunya, between dreams and duties. And she was proud of it.
But fate — and Allah — had written a meeting she never dared to hope for.
As she wandered through the small book festival by the Seine river, flipping through old poetry books, her heart suddenly froze.
There.
Not a dream, not a poster, not a distant stage.
Kim Taehyung.
Right there, breathing the same Parisian air, casually looking through a stack of vintage records.
For a second, the world lost its color.
Her mind screamed, "Is this real?"
Her heart whispered, "Alhamdulillah."
The books slipped from her hand, crashing onto the cobbled street. Heads turned, but Ayzel couldn’t move. Her breath caught painfully in her throat as the man she had loved from afar, prayed for with every fiber of her being, stood merely a few steps away.
The prayers you cry into your sajdah?
One day, they rise like wings to the heavens — and return as miracles.
And there he was — a living miracle.
Indeed, when love finds you, it
Burns beautifully in every step.
--Ariba--
