Rain fell lightly over the city of Bandung, soaking the glass buildings and sidewalks crowded with hurried footsteps. On the seventh floor of a publishing office, Aisyah Rahmani still sat in front of her laptop, her eyes tired and her fingers never stopping.
The wall clock read 8:45 p.m.
Most of the employees had gone home. Only half the room's lights remained on. Outside, the city looked beautiful beneath its glittering lights, its streets slick with rain. But inside Aisyah's chest was a hollowness nothing could illuminate.
She stared at the manuscript on her screen, but her thoughts drifted far away. For the past few months, her life had been nothing but deadlines, revisions, meetings, and faces talking about targets. Everything was going well. Her salary was enough. Her position was good. Her future, people said, was bright.
But her heart was like a house its occupants had abandoned long ago.
“Aisyah, you haven't gone home yet?” Raka's voice came from behind her.
Aisyah turned. He stood there holding his car keys, his shirt sleeves neatly rolled up, his face still fresh even though work hours should have ended long ago.
“In a little while,” Aisyah replied softly.
Raka came closer. “Come with me tomorrow night, okay? It's the launch event for a new writer. A lot of contacts will be there. You need a change of scenery besides the office and your boarding house.”
Aisyah gave him a faint smile. “I'll see.”
Raka chuckled. “That's always your answer.”
After Raka left, silence hung in the air again. Aisyah let out a long sigh, then reached for her phone. There were plenty of notifications, but one message made her hand stop.
Mom: Honey, don't forget to eat. If you have time, call Mom. And... don't forget to pray.
Aisyah lowered her head.
That last sentence felt like someone knocking on a door she had long kept locked from the inside. Not because she hated prayer. Quite the opposite—she was afraid of the guilt that came every time she heard that advice. As if some part of her knew she was drifting away, yet was too stubborn to return.
Her phone rang.
“Mom.”
She quickly answered.
“Assalamu alaikum, Mom.”
“Wa alaikum assalam, Aisyah.” The voice was gentle, as always. “Are you still at the office?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Is it raining there?”
Aisyah glanced toward the window. “Yes.”
On the other end of the line, her mother was silent for a few seconds. Then she said softly, “If you can, come home this weekend.”
There was something in her tone. Something that made Aisyah's heart beat faster.
“Are you sick, Mom?”
“It's nothing. Mom just misses you.”
A mother's longing could sound ordinary sometimes, yet hold so many unspoken things.
After the call ended, Aisyah stared at her phone screen for a long time. Her thoughts drifted to her father, who had passed away eight years earlier. He had once been the voice that woke her for the dawn prayer, the hand that guided her as she learned to read the Quran, and the gentle eyes that always looked at her with warmth.
After her father was gone, the house lost its sense of direction. Her mother remained strong, but Aisyah grew up with a wound that never truly healed. She was angry at fate, and then, in secret, angry at God too. Not openly, not in words, but through distance. Through worship that grew less frequent. Through prayers that stopped in her head without ever reaching her lips.
That night, for the first time in a long while, Aisyah stood in front of the office's small prayer room.
The lights were dim. The carpet was dark green. On a wooden shelf, several prayer garments lay folded neatly. The place felt strange yet familiar, like a childhood home she had not visited in years.
She picked up one of the prayer garments with trembling hands.
As she uttered the opening takbir, her tears fell.
She didn't know whether she was crying from guilt, longing, or fear that she had gone too far to return home.
But that night, in the middle of the noisy city, Aisyah understood one thing: the heart farthest from Allah is not the heart with the most sins, but the heart that feels unworthy of returning.
And she didn't want to be a heart like that anymore.