Part II

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
-- Wordsworth

At the restaurant, they both concentrated fiercely on their menus until they had ordered, but gradually they began to talk. He told her something of his adventures on the island, speaking in Arabic because the waiters and busboys seemed to hover too near. Yet he did not mention Shannon. It seemed, somehow, too intimate a detail. It was odd, he thought, that anything should seem too intimate to share with this woman who had once succeeded in exposing his soul.

Now that he was in the presence of the incarnation of the photograph he had so often admired, the volatile excitement he had expected to feel failed to materialize. And this was not merely because he still mourned the loss of Shannon; for he suspected that if Flight 815 had landed safely in California and he had met Nadia with a free heart, he would have felt much the same as he did now.

Sayid had long believed that finding Nadia could somehow deliver him from his own inner demons, but this unexpected encounter—far more than the merely rational decision he had made to let go of his old attachment—exposed the naivety of that fantasy. Here the object of his one-time idolatry sat, beautiful in her way, but certainly not the goddess his mind had fashioned with the aid of time.

The woman who sat across from him now, nervously fingering the stem of her water glass, was a stranger to him. He knew her face well enough, but the passage of more than seven years could not be erased in a single meeting; time, he realized, must have worked its change on both of them. The lips that had once implored, “Come with me” no doubt belonged now to a different woman, just as the hand that had once caressed her cheek belonged to a different man.

When his steak arrived, Sayid could not prevent himself from cutting into it greedily. There had been bland food on the boat that brought them back to civilization, and they had been shuffled almost immediately onto a flight to California. Airplane fare was no match for the meal that now rested before him. It was the first decent food he had been offered in months, and in his fervor to enjoy it, he almost forgot his company until he heard Nadia’s subdued chuckle.

He glanced up, and for the first time that evening he caught her eyes. They were lighter than he remembered, or, more accurately, lighter than they had seemed in the photographs, lighter than he had imagined them in his dreams. The heaviness that had refused to leave him since Shannon’s death lifted just a little, and he smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s only that I have been surviving on peanut butter and…”

“Peanut butter?”

“One of Dharma’s staples.”

She smiled in return. It was not the nearly bitter, satirical smile she had offered him when she was his prisoner, nor even the teasing smile she had flashed him in childhood; rather, it was an uncalculated expression, genuine, and quite common. He took some comfort in the very ordinariness of the moment.

“You know, Sayid,” she said, “For years I assumed you were dead. I believed I was responsible. When I could discover no news of you, I thought the Republican Guard had uncovered your part in my escape and that you had likely been executed for treason.” She moved her glass in a gentle circle and watched the melting ice swirl. “When I saw your name in the paper…I felt relieved. I didn’t know yet if you were among the survivors, but I knew that if you were dead, that I was not to blame.”

Sayid’s eyes widened slightly when he heard this. It had never occurred to him that she, too, might have walked through the years bearing a weight of guilt.

“I did not know if I should come to meet you at the airport,” she continued. “I did not know if you would want to be reminded of your past, of that old life. I do not like to think of it myself. Sometimes, I recall my childhood, and I mourn for those simple days when I was young enough to believe I understood everything and that I could have anything…But the bitter times…the clouded fight against tyranny, the interrogations, my flight across the continents…I have moved beyond all that. I am not a rebel anymore. Would you believe I am a complete conformist? I have a house and a nine to five job. I even have the picket fence. It’s brown, not white, but…well.”

“The next life,” he muttered.

“Yes, the next life. Is it anything like you imagined?”

“No,” he admitted, and they went back to eating their food.

She tried to take the check when it came, but he fought her for it, and he won in the end. He drew out several bills from the collection of hush money Oceanic had given each of the survivors. The crash had not been the airline’s fault, but the lawyers weren’t taking any chances.

“Did you earn much on the island?” Nadia asked with twinkling eyes.

“Surely you know,” he replied, “I have sold my story to the New York Times. Serialized in six parts.”

She laughed. “I would have saved it for Harper Collins. There’s far more to be made from books.” She took the napkin from her lap and dropped it, crumpled, on the table. “In all seriousness, what do you plan to do now?”

“In all seriousness, I do not have the slightest idea. But I will begin by walking you to the corner and hailing you a cab before I go on to my hotel.”

When he opened the door to her taxi, Sayid was uncertain how to bid Nadia farewell. What were they to each other now? What had she expected them to be? She paused, awaiting something, but he did not know what. The driver clicked the meter on and raised his eyebrows.

“Will I see you again?” she finally asked.

“I do not have your address anymore,” he said.

“Anymore?”

“Ah, yes…another story.” He drew in his bottom lip and bit it slightly.

“Sayid, do you want to be rid of this ghost? Do you want me to get in this cab and simply move on?”

“Do you want that?”

“We do not know one another anymore, do we? And yet…it’s a lonely country. It’s an even lonelier world. And we knew each other once. I think, perhaps, we both could use a friend.”

“Do you have a pen and paper?” he asked.

She dug in her purse and drew out a pad. In blue ink, she wrote down her telephone number. She tore off the small page, and he folded the ragged paper before placing it in his pocket. “I’ll call,” he promised.

She nodded, and before she turned to enter the cab, he took her hand and brought it to his lips. Her flesh did not sear him, but it was soft, and it was warm. And that was enough.

The End