Dear Nuff,

You called me baby, you called me hayati, you called me habibi then you called me Casanova. Casanova with a chuckle but that was the first sign. The seeds had been sown.

We shared a great love for everything Harry Potter,  
we shared dreams of touring and partying together in Europe post pandemic, we shared and swapped our individual migrant stories. We shared briefly a rebellious but wholesome, unbridled love. We shared body coursing laughter. We sometimes shared your cozy apartment with a view of the Oresund bridge.

But

We couldn’t be any more different on the surface (perhaps deeper), different races, different mother tongues, totally different cultures, different religions, an endlessly different orientation towards life.

Differences that  tailed us from the start, gaining on us whenever we had to ease our love pedal to navigate the complications of opposite cultural orientations. Eventually we were caught, rammed and totaled.

You made the correct call in saying we couldn’t be salvaged but knowing it’s the correct call doesn’t make this any less painful. We both fought several internal and societal battles to be with each then we stopped fighting after we had each other.

Thank you for giving me a respite from this cold, humdrum, unforgiving migrant life. Thank you for quarantining  with me during the pandemic, those days we lived, oblivious to everything else will live with me forever. Thank you for showing me around that magnificent but unsung City you live in, thank you for showing me the football legends home. Huge thank you for making me understand and fall in love with a culture and people I had been raised to be wary of.

Thank you for sharing a little bit of your time on earth with me.

You’ll always have a spell on me and i’ll never see another elephant without remembering you.

Groetjes lieverd,
🙂