COLUMN: TAHA KEHAR: The lover who broke your silences

I saw what they couldn't see. You always told me that you felt emotionally naked in front of me, as if your words would perform a striptease each time you overcame your fear and paid me a visit.

'I can see your nipples,' I'd quip. 'Emotionally, of course.'

Your thin mouth would open in a throaty guffaw. I wonder if you saw through that rough exterior, the sheen of sarcasm that disguised an amorphous love. Maybe you did. Maybe your silence was an armour; it shielded you from the truth.

I can't write about you without context. I'll need to peel back the layers of our decade-long romance if I'm to justify your role in the story of my destruction. 

How melodramatic, you might say. Why can't he save the drama for his novels? You're mistaken. This was a calamity that came on the cusp of tragedy. I hadn't even recovered from Tara's death and Sahir's treachery when you returned to me with hope. 

Grief makes you perceptive; mine flung me into your embrace. The day I brought you home, my grief retreated into a chamber of my heart and I accepted my new status as the lover who broke your silences. For seven hours, we spoke endlessly about our triumphs and failures in love, and carved out an affinity so chaste that nothing seemed to rival its intensity. That night, I allowed my thoughts to tread without caution, throw open the bolted doors of an old passion. 

I remembered our first meeting, in the same drawing room where we were destined to meet again. Sara was getting married and you were teaching me the intricate steps of a dance I can't remember. I didn't dance as well as you did, but you were convinced that I was a star. Ramiz thought you were flirting with me and I'd simply brushed aside the thought. I didn't want to be drawn into another deception. (Jeremy was dating Lina by then and my infatuation for him was no longer a secret.)

Four days later, we had our first hug -- an unusual feat to celebrate, a quiet victory. I asked you to attend Sara's wedding ceremony the following day. You didn't turn up and I tasted the tyranny of your first silence. It lasted a few months until I broke it with a confession over Facebook. I told you about Sohail, the Jeremy-rebound, who'd cheated on me. You told me something in exchange for that morsel of information. I forget what it was. The thrill of sharing confidences with you came with a selective amnesia.

We didn't speak for another four years. I broke the silence again and suggested that we meet. You readily accepted my invitation, as if you were waiting for it for a long time. We met, 'clicked' and the unspoken dialogue began. Your silences came and went, but I was much too preoccupied with the business of living to raise any objections.

When you returned after Sahir and Tara's departure (I see it now as a single stab-wound and nurse it as a collective pain.), your silences terrified me. I knew by then that they too were prodded by fear, but I didn't have the courage to break them. The last time I saw you, I was relieved that the spell of quietude had been lifted. The striptease began and you seduced me with the only body-parts that I couldn't resist: your words. In your emotional nakedness, you told me things that I shouldn't have heard, but cannot now dream of unhearing. A genial smile, a playful voice and the words you'd tucked into your heart until now unleashed an excitement I hadn't known in a long time. 

All that changed with a phone call from your friend who had promised to pick you from my house. Your tone became grave and more masculine -- an alien presence that introduced a barrier between us. I knew then that the trance was broken. It was time for you to forget the oasis and return to wandering through the desert. You didn't hug me like you used to when you left.