Vasl

At some point in life the word “we” appears. At first it stands for conversations, shared plans, the joy of getting to know another person. Then come ordinary days: work, tiredness, disagreement, cares about the family. And gradually you understand that “we” is neither a festive promise nor a giving up of yourself. It is a new life that cannot be fully divided into two separate stories. For me this is where Vasl, union, begins.

I remember how we lost our home after a flood. There was no time then for lofty reflection: we had to decide where to live and how to build our familiar world again. Even now I see no consoling meaning in destruction. But we took the next step together. Closeness is tested not by beautiful words about eternity, but by whether you can stay beside each other when neither of you has a ready answer.

“Tomchi daryoga qaytdi” - “The drop returned to the river”. This image is not about one person having to disappear for the sake of another. The drop was water before, and the river does not create it anew. In the same way, in love we bring with us memory, habits, fears, the roads we have travelled. Another person cannot be invented to fit your expectations. Even after decades, beside you remains a person you can come to know again and again. Among the signs, the Qur’an names that God created spouses for people, so that they may find rest in them, and placed love and mercy between them. Elsewhere the soul at rest is told: return to your Lord. These are different meanings, and I do not want to merge them into one. Human love does not cancel boundaries and responsibility, nor does it make a person part of the Divine. It demands something very earthly: to give way, to admit a mistake, to hold out a hand in time, not to turn another’s weakness into a final verdict. But the Sufi language of returning to the source is clear to me because I know what it is like to return home, to one person.

“Vasl, bu oxir. Vasl, bu boshlanish” - “Union is the end. Union is the beginning”. Over our years together I have not learned to understand everything without words or never to make mistakes. But I see ever more clearly how much it means to be able to choose each other again after a hard day. The drop returns to the river without any fanfare. The water simply keeps flowing. And ahead the sea opens up.