Longing in the Sacred Land | Shortstory
This evening, like countless evenings before, she gazed through the narrow window of her small room in Riyadh. Slivers of sunlight filtered in, brushing gently against the fatigue etched upon her skin after twelve relentless hours of nursing duty. Two years had passed in this foreign land. Two years of swallowing her longing for home in Aceh. A father left paralyzed by an accident at the harbor. A mother battling the slow cruelty of diabetes. Two little sisters—Phonna and Rina—still nestled in the fragile innocence of elementary school. Her wages were their lifeline.
Each night, she wrote letters—letters that never found their way home. For Ulfa refused to let her yearning become her parents’ burden. “Father, Mother, how are you? I miss your voices,” she would pen tenderly. And yet the pages slept in the darkness of her drawer. Last Eid, she had wept silently over the phone, listening to Rina’s cheerful tale of how Mother had baked pineapple tarts despite her frailty. “Sis, when are you coming home?” Rina had asked, her voice as pure as morning dew. Ulfa swallowed her pain, smiling through tears. “Soon, little one. Sister must keep working.”
At the hospital, Ulfa’s name was spoken with respect. She was warm, gracious, enduring—the nurse whose patience outshone hardship, whose kindness cloaked the fractures within her heart. Every paycheck, she wired home, sparing just enough for rent and the simplest of meals. Often, dinner was nothing more than bread softened with water. “This is for Mother,” she would whisper to herself, picturing the light of relief in her mother’s eyes.
Then, one day, the phone rang. Rina’s voice trembled like a leaf in a storm. “Sis, Mother is in the hospital. The doctor says… it’s her kidneys.” Silence devoured Ulfa. Her chest tightened, a thousand bricks collapsing within. She longed to fly home—but the price of a ticket was a mountain she could not climb. Her savings had all gone to her sisters’ schooling. “I’ll find a way,” she vowed, though hope felt as distant as the stars.
That night, Ulfa fell upon her prayer mat, tears drowning her whispered supplications. She begged Heaven for a miracle. Then it struck her—the small fund she had set aside for her old age. “This is for Mother,” she breathed, surrendering every last coin. She wired the money with trembling hands, clinging to the fragile hope it would buy time. But dawn brought the cruel toll of the phone once more. Her father’s voice came thin, fractured:
“Ulfa… Mother is gone.”
The world caved in. She screamed into the emptiness, but no sound could bridge the abyss between her and the home she ached for. Two years—two endless years—she had borne the weight of loneliness for her family’s sake. And yet her mother departed without her final embrace. Guilt gnawed like fire through her veins. If only I had gone home for Eid… If only I had spent less on thrift and more on time… But “if” could not resurrect the dead. Only silence remained—and sorrow, deep as an ocean.
A week after the funeral, Rina sent a letter:
“Sis, Mother left this for you before she passed.”
Ulfa unfolded the fragile paper, her hands quivering. In the wavering script of a woman who had given all her life to love, she read:
“Ulfa, the heart of my heart. I am so proud of you, my child. Do not weep when you learn I am gone. Care for your sisters. I am happy here, waiting for you in paradise.”
The dam within her broke once more. But this time, the flood carried warmth amid its ruin. Clutching the letter to her chest, Ulfa swore an oath through her sobs—an oath to fight, to endure, to rise—for the little ones who still looked to her, and for the mother who now waited beyond the veil of eternity.
