The car rolled on for a while with its own power and then stopped at some distance along a footpath. Sarah placed her head on the steering. I gently shook her. “Are you all right Sarah? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you all this.” “No, the fault is mine. I was so much absorbed in your talks that I lost my control over the car.” “If you wish, I can drive the car for the rest of the way.” Instead of saying anything, she left the steering seat and came towards me. I opened the door and went towards her seat and started driving the car. Sarah was still sitting silently looking outside the wind screen. While she was still lost in her thoughts, she began to speak in a low tone. “How is it possible for you to smile despite having such a huge sorrow in your heart and without ever letting someone share your pains and griefs? You are undoubtedly a unique fellow, quite different from all the other people. You don’t belong to this world.” Without saying anything, I went on driving the car. While we were on the third road near Piccadilly at a short distance from the Westminster Bridge, Sarah told me to turn towards a wide but rather unknown road. Without asking anything, I turned the car towards that long desolate road. At some distance, there was a large cross roads in the centre of the road. It was so large that in order to go around it, I had to turn around the whole steering. From that point, the road was divided into four sections. In the centre of that cross roads, there was a fountain but the sprays of water coming out of it had frozen due to severe cold. At the end of the road, there was a magnificent old Jewish synagogue made of white stone. Covered with snow that white building resembled some palace in the fairyland. I parked the car in front of the synagogue whose wooden door had a very large image of Moses. Big lamps were emitting light on both sides of the door. As both of us got down from the car, Sarah looked towards me and spoke. “It’s my favourite synagogue. I come here only on special occasions. There’s a special reason that has brought me here at this midnight hour today. I’ve come here tonight to pray for the sake of your love and for your beloved who may not be alive in the physical sense but is still very much with you in your words, feelings, emotions and memories.” I was amazed at her words. She stepped forward and then turned to say something to me. “You may wait here for me for a while. I’ll be back soon.” Perhaps she had thought that I was not willing to accompany her to the Jewish synagogue. But as she turned and went forward, I followed her footsteps and entered the synagogue in which dim lights could be seen on the shelves projecting from the high walls. There was a light fragrance in the whole building. Over the dais that had been made for the standing of the Rabbi, there was a wooden platform on which several candles had been placed and lit. Walking on the wooden floor, Sarah reached a particular spot where she stood and started reciting some verses from the Torah. I silently sat at the end of one of the long wooden benches which had been placed on both sides. There was such a strange silence in the synagogue that one could even hear the hissing sound produced by the burning of the candles. In the pin drop silence of the night, with her tearful eyes and her hands placed on her chest, in an inspirational mood, Sarah was reciting her supplications most devoutly for the sake of an unknown girl who was buried in a graveyard in a distant land thousands of miles away. While watching her doing all this, I suddenly missed Iman most intensely. The feeling that I would never be able to meet Iman again in this world began cutting through my heart as if with a sharp dagger. Overwhelmed with this feeling, I began shedding tears. As Sarah turned and saw my tearful eyes, she said, “O Hammad, what’s all this?” She almost ran to me, held my face in her hands and began wiping away my tears. Her tender and affectionate touch broke all the barriers that had hitherto been holding back the flood of tears in my eyes and then, for a long time, tears went on gushing forth from my eyes and she with her delicate hands went on wiping them away. In her desperate attempts to console me, she herself seemed utterly exhausted and finally, she pressed my head against her shoulder and decided to allow all the water stored up in my eyes to flow out. At last, she spoke in her soft soothing voice. “I regard your pain as my own and wish to remedy it as much as I can. If you like, you may open out your heart to me.”
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