For Fasila

I never told you the order it happened in.

So here it is, from the beginning.

Begin
  1. Before

    I only wanted to learn.

    I was going to study computer applications. That was the whole plan, and it was not a very serious one. I am twenty-five and I already write software for a living, so there was nothing riding on it.

    I had not picked a college. I told my cousin I wanted one near home. That was as far as I had thought it through.

  2. Then

    A photograph.

    His friend had studied there. He pulled up a picture of the BCA students, just to show me what the place was like.

    I was not looking for anyone. I saw you in it and I stopped. I have no better explanation than that. I stayed on that photo far longer than a person needs to look at a college.

  3. The same week

    I rushed the form.

    Allotment was still open. I finished my registration faster than I have finished anything in my life, and I put that college first.

    The option came through. Nobody asked me why that one, and I would have said it was near home. That was true. It was not the reason.

  4. Months

    Then I did not know how to begin.

    I joined. I sat in your class. And then I did nothing at all.

    I kept my head down for days. I run systems in production for a living and I could not work out how to say hello to you. I knew where you sat. I knew what made you laugh. I said nothing.

  5. An opening

    An excuse.

    You were away for two days. My brother’s wedding was coming up, and it handed me a reason to message you — a real one, an actual invitation.

    I rewrote it more times than I want to tell you. Then I sent it. That was the first message.

  6. Onam

    And then you were there.

    The celebration, the noise, the food, everyone busy with something. For once there was no reason to be careful about standing near you.

    We talked properly for the first time. I remember that day better than I remember most years.

  7. The wedding

    You came, and I was needed everywhere else.

    You came. And I spent the entire day being pulled from one thing to the next. I barely got to speak to you at my own brother’s wedding.

    I have thought about that day more than I should. But the messages kept going afterwards, and that turned out to be the part that mattered.

  8. Then I did something stupid

    Ashik Zaman.

    I messaged you from my second number and told you my name was Ashik Zaman. It was a prank. I was going to break it in ten minutes.

    You believed me. So I told you it was me.

    And then, since I had already started telling the truth, I told you the rest of it. The photograph. The form. Why I was in that classroom at all. I came there for you. That was always the reason.

  9. Now

    So that is the whole of it.

    I did not join a college and happen to meet you. I saw you first and built everything after that backwards from it.

    Every step past that photograph was a decision, and I would make all of them again in the same order.