In her dim room, Humaira deliberately left her window open. The night wind swept in, carrying the fragrance of ylang-ylang from the backyard. She loved the flower known by the Latin name Cananga odorata, a member of the Annonaceae family with symbolism all its own. Anjar had once told her that the ylang-ylang flower symbolized blessings, so when she planted a ylang-ylang tree at the beginning of their marriage, she had hoped their marriage would be filled with blessings.
The ylang-ylang flower also symbolized achievement and represented peace. It was also regarded as a symbol of love and affection, and as a reflection of emotional balance.
According to Anjar, ylang-ylang essence could help release emotional blockages and heighten feelings of joy, happiness, and self-love. That was why, in some cultures, ylang-ylang flowers were often used in wedding ceremonies as symbols of love and commitment.
The reality? Nothing had turned out as she had hoped. She didn't know who was to blame for the course her marriage had taken. Though she also didn't pin the failure on her marriage.
Humaira tried to remember the last time she had thought of her life as something that had a place, rather than merely a string of failures that happened not to have ended yet. That was when she felt her chest harden again, because the most painful thing about despair was not losing hope, but losing the sense that her life mattered—that it was meant to be placed somewhere, not thrown away.
She didn't know how long she had slept. When she woke just before dawn, it wasn't because she wanted to pray, nor because she wanted to be devout, but because her thoughts were too loud to let her sleep. Then, without planning to, she opened her curtains even wider and gazed at the still-dark sky, at the last stars holding on before the morning light drove them away. And for some reason, she remembered that word again: “position.” A simple word, yet it felt foreign, like a concept that should have been familiar but had been abandoned long ago.
If even the stars had positions, why did her life feel as though it had been put in the wrong place? The question did not calm her. Quite the opposite—it opened an even deeper layer of pain, because she realized that all this time, she had judged her life by the cruelest measure of all: comparison. Then she had demanded that she arrive somewhere outside her orbit, and called herself a failure when she didn't.
Humaira sat down on the edge of the bed again, hugged her knees, and for the first time honestly admitted, without defending herself or making excuses, that she wasn't merely tired. She was also angry at God, angry at time, angry at a life that felt as though it had tested her for far too long without ever giving her a sign that she was still on the right path.
“If there really is some measure,” she whispered into the empty air, “why does it feel as though everything is wrong?”
There was no answer, no voice, only the faint rustle of the wind brushing her ear. Strangely, for the first time, she wasn't offended by the silence.
The days that followed passed slowly. She returned to the shelter. Her situation didn't improve, but neither did it completely collapse. She still remembered Anjar's words, along with the words of Mr. Haris that continued to trouble her thoughts. They all raced after one another. She was only a listener, with no idea what she was supposed to do. Like someone who was still wounded but had stopped picking at her own wound. And amid the half-conscious routines, Mr. Harun's words kept appearing unbidden. Especially the part that frightened her most: that the stars now arranged in their places would one day lose their positions, that the sky would collapse, that this order was not eternal.
She understood why that part disturbed her more than anything else. All this time, she had thought her life was chaotic because she had failed to keep it in order. But perhaps chaos was not always a sign of wrongdoing. Perhaps it was simply part of a period that had not yet finished holding its course.
“If even the sky will one day collapse, why do I demand that my life always remain stable?” The question continued to hang there, in the silence that embraced her.