One

Ramadhan is here

again. I feel myself in

in a different skin.

--

I saw her from outside.

I already stepped out but decided to take off my shoes, go in again, and head inside to salam her.

She was sitting against the wall with two girls on her left and right looking at her quite intently.

She's this petite lady pulling off aviator glasses really well. Her face is small, jaw quite square, eyes big. I saw her a few years ago. We looked at each other like, Hey you familiar, but couldn't pinpoint where we had seen each other. I remembered then how she looked like without tudung and remember now still when I look at her again. She looks the same just aging a little.

The first time I met her, she had just come back from a faraway place. She, her husband, and their one child, dropped everything and left Singapore in pursuit of something better...in a desert. When I met her, she did have an air of a traveller about her, just stopping by again at the place she once called home. We switched numbers even though I'm usually averse to that. That year, she wished me selamat hari raya on whatsapp and made doa for me. After that, I didn't see her again. She disappeared.

Until now.

She's back again, from that faraway place. Her baby is a grown boy. The moment she saw me she recognised me with a sparkle in her eye, "I remember you."

When I came in to salam while she was talking to the two girls, she said,

"I was just telling these two, that I'm planning to do some sharing after terawih. Just short one, half an hour."

I'm sure she has much to share.

"Maybe here, maybe at the house opposite."

The house opposite? Okay.

The two girls, she, and I all had to be going off, so we started packing. She went off first. One of the two girls started tying her niqab back on. I was all set so I salamed goodbye and left.