SAMA

  Some people enter our lives so quietly that we scarcely hear the sound of their arrival. They do not announce themselves. They simply appear, a presence among countless others, a passing voice, a gentle gesture, a pair of eyes that somehow sees what everyone else has overlooked. And yet… they leave something behind that time cannot carry away. They touch your heart without ever laying a hand upon you. A word spoken at the right moment. A kindness offered without being asked. A presence that stays when others disappear. A compassion so genuine that, for one brief moment, you feel truly seen. And something within you moves. Something awakens. You walk away from that moment still carrying the same face, the same body, the same name, yet somehow, you are no longer entirely the person who arrived. Perhaps they will never know. Perhaps they will never understand how deeply their words travelled, how far a simple gesture reached, or how a few minutes of their life quietly became a turni...

  I passed by you that evening. It had been a long day, and I was already tired, but the sun was still awake, so I thought I would make one more journey for nectar. I was busy. My mind was elsewhere. My wings carried me forward without much thought. And then— **your fragrance.** It stopped me. Not slowed me. Not distracted me. **It stopped my heart.** There are scents one remembers, scents one enjoys, scents that linger for a moment and then disappear into the air. But yours? There was nothing like it in a million flowers, nor in a billion. It was something I had never encountered before, a fragrance so profound it seemed to have been waiting for me alone. I wanted to breathe you in again… and again… and again. For a moment, time lost its meaning. I forgot where I was going. I forgot what I was doing. I forgot the world around me. And perhaps that is why, since that evening, I keep coming back to you. And every drop of my honey carries a trace of you! Year after year. Season after ...

There are hands that turn the wheels of machines, hands that tighten bolts, press buttons, hands that repair what is broken and send it back into motion. There are hands that work with numbers, with screens, with steel and wires, where a mistake may stop a machine, and a machine can simply be replaced. But then there are hands that touch a human being. Hands that lift a trembling body, adjust a blanket, hold a vein still, wipe a tear no monitor can measure. Here, the machine is not the patient. The machine only watches. The monitor can count a heartbeat, the pump can deliver a drug, the ventilator can breathe, but none of them can feel the silence of a frightened family. And so, the nurses and doctors stand with their backs to us, their faces hidden in the work, surrounding a fragile life in the bed. Yet one turns toward the family, not with a machine, but with a human touch. And perhaps that is the greatest difference between this work and all the others: A machine can be fixed withou...

They say that no one has truly lived without, at some point, passing beneath their wheels; no heart has escaped the arrows they so mercilessly cast. We close our doors, yet they slip in through the windows. We surrender to sleep, and their embrace casts its shadow across our beds. We close our eyes, only to find them waiting for us in every image, every scene, every sound that wanders through the chambers of our minds. And as though that were not enough, they creep silently into our souls with every colour, every fragrance, every familiar scent. Who are we to stand against their armies? We have nothing but stones and spears, while they carry every weapon known to the human heart. Yet they are not enemies like the others. There is something far more treacherous about them. Who else can wound you with the edge of a sword, then rejoice at the sight of you fallen, secretly wishing that death might come and release you from it all? Some among us believed that hardening their hearts would be...

  They did not ask me to save him. They ordered me to. A gun rested beside my hands, another watched from across the room, and between them lay the man whose name had made others tremble. He was their leader. A criminal. A man whose life had carried violence into the lives of others. But beneath my hands, he was bleeding. And somehow, in that terrible room, I was still a doctor. I have known fear before. But this was different. This was the kind of fear that does not shout— it freezes the blood, silences the breath, and makes time slow enough for you to hear your own heart asking whether it will beat again. I looked at the guns and understood something I had never truly understood before: death can become very close. Close enough to feel its breath. Close enough to make you wonder whether the next few seconds will be the last seconds you ever own. And then my mind betrayed me with everything I loved. I thought of their faces. I thought of home. I thought of the people I had promise...