The Story of Layla
August 02, 2021
inspiration
Layla approached the house slowly, but with her heart beating fast and her breathing accelerated. It took her a while to gather strength to call the people inside the house. She called and waited for someone to come out.
Like a fast-forward film, while waiting, she remembered the many times she wanted to come home and hug her parents and siblings, but she always stayed far, just watching them from the corner at the other side of the street.
Images of her siblings, getting thinner year after year, began to pass through her mind, but she wouldn’t approach them because she was ashamed of having “abandoned” them. She recalled how she tried to erase that thought by saying to herself that they “deserved” to be like that, because “they could have left the house like she did.”
Layla called again, louder. As she continued waiting for someone to come out, she thought of her father, remembering the time she saw him picking vegetables in the garden with his sore hands and soaked in sweat that run down his forehead and back. She wanted to go to him, hold his hands and kiss them, but she was having a good time, making good money, and enjoying her worldly life, which she was not then willing to give up. When she returned months later, she saw her older brother picking vegetables in the garden instead. And she wanted to run and hug him, but the thought of having to explain to him where she had been since she left home stopped her; likely, neither him nor her parents would approve it. So, she turned around and left, immersed in her thoughts.
Layla called much louder for the third time, this time by their names, her heart escaping through her mouth. A passer-by, an old man wearing torn clothes and a broken straw hat, approached her and asked her:
— Miss, whom do you call? There is no one in that house –
— What do you mean? I’m calling my parents, my siblings… I’m back home! – Layla said, looking straight into the old man’s eyes.
— I’m so sorry, miss. The family that lived in that house died completely… the last ones 2 months ago. Nobody lives there now –
Upon hearing the news, Layla fell down to the ground on her knees. With her face decomposed and exorbitant eyes, she looked at the old man again, trying to assimilate what she had just heard. Her heart wasn’t beating anymore, she wasn’t feeling it, it seemed like all inside her body stopped functioning. She tried to breathe, but in an airless environment.
‘Why? Why didn’t I come earlier? I could have saved them … what happened?… Mom, forgive me, forgive me.‘ Layla, left alone in her inner reproaches, sat for a while staring at the floor, not seeing anything in reality, and when she could take a breath again, she began to cry inconsolably.
Fixed in her mind was the memory of her mother the last time she saw her, as always from the street corner. She saw her in her ragged clothes, sitting on the house’s ramshackle porch, staring at the shrubby garden. She observed her for long time, but she could not tell whether she was crying or praying. That’s when she decided she could not take it any longer and that it was going to be the last “visit” from the corner. Next time she would enter the house and would bring them clothes, money, food and many gifts for all. And the next time came… today, her excitement almost uncontrollably. She would get inside, hug her parents and siblings, enjoy a meal with her family – something she had longed for so long! -, and with the commitment to never leave them again. But… but it was too late. Layla could no longer hug her mother, kiss her father’s hands, or give gifts to her siblings.
Pride, insensitivity, judgment, selfishness, procrastination, indifference. Several curses bound Layla in such a way that they did not let her do what was right: repent, ask for forgiveness, help, love… causing her the greatest tribulation of her life, carrying it until the end of her days.
Are you tied up with any of those curses that are preventing you from approaching someone you love? It may not be too late.
Feature and banner picture: ‘Holding hands’, taken from Maxpixel.net (https://www.maxpixel.net/Hands-Old-Background-Yeng-Holding-Care-5017314)
Detail picture: John Conroy, taken from Unsplash.com
Please remember to take a look at the other articles as well!
Thanks!