Letters that arrived too late

 


Letters That Arrived Too Late

By Faraz Parvez
Professor Dr. (Retired) Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty Member, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA

The first letter came on a quiet Thursday afternoon in Lahore. The winter light was fading, turning the old city into a painting of dust and gold. Amina had been returning from her teaching job, her head full of unfinished lesson plans, when the postman handed her a thick ivory envelope.

It had no return address. Only her name — written in an elegant, looping hand that felt strangely familiar.

She tore it open absentmindedly, expecting a bill or an invitation. But the words inside made her sit down on the stairs before even closing the gate.

"I have loved you for years, Amina. Loved the way you tilt your head when listening, the way you bite your lip when hiding a laugh. I know your hands smell faintly of books and sandalwood soap. I know your heart lives between poetry and silence."

She froze. No one had ever written to her like this. The letter was not only romantic — it was personal, frighteningly so. Whoever wrote it knew things no one else did.

She dismissed it as some elaborate prank. Until the second letter came.

And the third.

Each was more detailed, more intimate. They spoke of things she had never told anyone — the secret garden where she sat as a child, the blue scarf she lost in 2011, the fear she carried after her father’s sudden death.

Whoever this was, they weren’t guessing. They knew her life.

By the fifth letter, she felt herself slipping into the words, reading them late at night with her heart pounding. She began to imagine the man who wrote them — his face, his voice, his scent. It was as though she was falling in love with someone she had never met.

Then came the day she decided to find him.

She kept the next envelope unopened and took it straight to a friend in the postal service. They traced the ink, the paper, the postmarks — and the truth cracked her world open.

The letters were postmarked 2014.

They had been sitting in an old post office sorting room, forgotten behind a cabinet for almost ten years.

The sender? A man named Salman — a poet and her college acquaintance. A man who had died in a car accident nine years ago.

Amina sat on her bed that night, the unopened final letter in her hands. Her fingers trembled as she broke the seal.

"If these words ever find you, Amina, know that I loved you quietly, without expecting anything in return. I hope life gave you joy, even if it wasn’t with me. If I could wish for anything, it would be one conversation — one where I tell you everything, and you smile the way you do when the world feels safe."

She cried until dawn.

The next morning, she went to the old university courtyard where they had once sat as students, and for the first time in ten years, she whispered his name to the empty air.

And maybe it was the wind, or maybe it was something else, but she swore she heard someone whisper back: “I’m here.”

Why We Tell These Stories
Love is not always about timing. Sometimes it’s about words that survive when the people who wrote them no longer do. And sometimes, those words arrive just late enough to change everything — even if only in your heart.

Read more unforgettable tales at: farazparvez1.blogspot.com


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