The Whispering Waves
“Azad, you can come in now”.
He turned to look at the source of the thick African accent and smiled. It was Laura, the finance manager, his usual point of contact.
Azad waited in the reception lobby. He’d been there many times—over seven years, to be precise. One of several clients his firm served in the UAE. They preferred his data analytics services because he had no sales team. He sold. He delivered. And he did it with a personal touch, paying meticulous attention to every client. They liked that.
As he stood up and walked towards her Laura noticed the slight limp in his right leg. Over the past 7 years they knew each other Laura has never asked. He knew she was noticing and he pretended that he did not.
“You have competition this time Azad. We are evaluating a few other vendors”
As they shook hands Laura said this with a naughty smile that gently touched the edges of flirtation. She liked to tease him.
“…As you rightly should”
Azad replied with a stoic smile. She knew the response beforehand.
“Hmmm…ever the ethical entrepreneur.”
She was mumbling softly, the kind of mumble that was meant to be heard.
Azad kept his smile intact as she ushered him into the conference room.
“Our new VP of Finance will be joining the meeting to evaluate your new proposal”.
Azad nodded as he connected his laptop.
“Good luck”.
Azad looked at Laura. He really liked her. Like him, an immigrant who landed at Dubai International with nothing but hope in her fuel tank and had worked her way up.
He smiled.
“Thank You. You guys keep challenging us with new expectations every time. I need it”.
“…and you have, shall I say, exceeded our expectations every time.”
Laura mumbled gently as she took her seat while Azad pretended not to hear and got busy loading the presentation and sample dashboards. His back was towards the door to the conference room. He could hear people enter the room. As they took their chairs he looked up and wished them all courteously. They nodded back at the familiar, trustworthy face.
Azad got the first slide on the large TV screen and glanced at his notes. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy, familiar vendor or not.
“Sorry guys….did I miss the beginning?”
Azad’s heart skipped a beat at the woman’s voice as the door was pushed upon.
She rushed in to take her seat at the corner of the conference table, diagonally opposite Azad. Everyone looked at her and smiled and while she returned the same Laura did the introduction.
“Priyanka, this is Azad, the CEO of Formidable Data Sciences, our long standing vendor”.
She turned her gaze towards him. Their eyes connected and she froze. His reaction was the same.
Then professionalism took over in an instant.
“Hello Azad”.
“Azad….”
Her scream echoed through the desolated beach.
“Please…don’t hurt him….” she begged through her broken, bleeding lips. The men around her did not care. An older man had held her in a tight hold….her father.
This was their quiet spot from their first year in college. They were now in their fourth and final year. Sometimes she would hold his hand and look into his eyes. She could smell the salt of the sea and also him - very earthy, uncomplicated.
And, he loved the quiet, dignified, dark beauty. Her kindness, smile, boldness…everything about her being had made him realise that if there was a life ahead it would be with her. She felt the same about this quiet, shy, introvert.
They didn’t have to speak much. In the silence they spoke. The waves whispered their secrets for them. For them that was enough.
They would remove their footwear and walk on the sand and look back at the footprints they left behind.
“How did your exams go?”
Before he could respond, the heavy hockey stick hit the back of his head. Priyanka froze as Azad fell on his knees to reveal the four men behind him - her brothers and Papa. All of them brandishing rods and hockey sticks. She screamed and tried to hold his head. As he turned around they smashed his face. Spittle freckled with blood flew out of this mouth. She tried to reach hum, but her father’s blow on her face reeled her backwards. Her lips cut open. Then he grabbed her and dragged her away. Her brothers got to task. They kicked and turned him over. Then hit him with the rods, raining blows on him.
“Papa…please…tell them to stop….please”.
He grabbed her by the hair and slapped her again. Once in a while she liked to buy a small jasmine garland from a woman at the beach. She would ask Azad to pin it on her hair. She felt shivers down her spine when he did it.
The garland came loose. The flowers fell on the sand.
He looked at her, in a daze, and raised his hands, trying feebly to stop her father. They lifted him and laid him on an old abandoned boat. Her elder brother stood over him, ready to smash his head with the rod. He was whispering…
”Please…let her go…”
Priyanka watched in horror. She knew what was next. Folding her hands…she begged her father.
“Papa…he’s still breathing…please…let him go…I will leave him…”
Priyanka couldn’t believe what she just said. Then she repeated….
“I will….I will…he’s still breathing…he’s still breathing…please….please…”
Then she fell on the sand, in a daze and her lips continued to mumble…
”He’s breathing…breathing…”
Then she lost consciousness.
Azad looked at her…she was being dragged across the sand. He raised her hand towards her…as if to protect her, beseeching her father to stop. He wanted to pick the jasmine flowers and tuck them back in her hair.
Turning back, her father nodded at her brothers. They understood. The blow that was aimed at Azad’s head now fell on the right knee. His kneecap split. He shuddered, stifled a scream and before he lost consciousness, the last he saw was her in the distance, like a mirage and then a solitary jasmine flower on the sand. Then darkness enveloped him.
“Hi Priyanka”.
The meeting room felt suddenly cold for both of them. Laura did not miss it. That one extra second they both took to say their hellos. The slight flutter in both their voices.
Azad stepped out into the warm gulf sunshine. The past hour, he was on auto-pilot. More than a decade of professional experience had clicked in. The presentation was perfect. The questions were probing. The answers were accurate.
Priyanka did not have any questions.
As he walked toward his car in the open parking lot, he felt weary. He had always been conscious of his slight limp and took great care to hide it while walking. But today, it wasn’t working. The three metal pins holding his knees together reminded him cruelly that they were still here and doing their job.
Priyanka was watching through her office window.
As he reached his car, an old, trusted Land Rover, he let his pride drop for a moment and allowed himself to lean on the car for support.
Priyanka gasped slightly.
He took a few breaths and opened the door. He sat down and had to lift his right leg inside, as if it was dead weight.
Something caught in her throat—then she swallowed it.
“Everything alright, Priyanka?”
Laura had walked in, and Priyanka was caught unawares.
“Yeah…”
Laura stared at her.
“Uhh… do you have a Panadol?”
“Gimme a moment.”
As she looked outside again, the sand-coloured Land Rover was exiting the car park. She kept staring as it turned at the next signal and disappeared.
That evening, as the sun set, Azad parked near the creek and took the Abra crossing from Deira to Bur Dubai. The ticket was one dirham when he first took it—and it was still one dirham, eighteen years later. As the old wooden boat gently creaked, he glanced at the people around him—people of all colors and creeds. He felt a sense of calm and peace as the boat crossed the creek. He looked back at the corniche as the boat cruised to the other shore—beautifully lit, like paradise on earth, offering solace to those broken but still giving their dreams another chance.
Until 9 p.m., he roamed the souks, exchanging hellos with familiar faces. Then he returned by boat.
There was still time to kill. He wasn’t ready to go home—not yet.
He drove to the old fuel station in Deira and parked.
Motassim Khan, that giant of a Pathan, came out of his tiny office and wrapped him in a hug. Azad glanced inside—it was still arranged the same. The accountant’s table sat in the corner, facing the fuel pumps. Only the computer had changed.
Eighteen years ago, it had been a PC. A powerful IBM for its time. Motassim Khan had taken a liking to this quiet boy. The man from the frontier could instinctively understand people—perhaps better than most. He knew this young man with a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce, a slight limp he tried his best to hide, and a deep intensity in his work wasn’t meant to fill fuel forever. He let him spend time on the PC when the workload on the pumps was light.
Azad was intrigued by a piece of software on the system—the one with the green bar on top when he double-clicked and opened it. The hundreds of empty cells seemed like they hid secrets. When he gave the cells numbers and allowed them to talk to each other, new values appeared in what had once been empty cells.
It was like composing a symphony. A great orchestra of numbers, cells, and equations creating new values, values with immense potential and promise.
He could be the conductor.
Azad felt liberated. Here was something he could make work without any hard capital—just his intellect and time. His journey had begun. Soon he discovered that his curiosity was the only limit. The world of open-source software and analytics was just a click away. All that separated him from others was initiative—that willingness to take one more step.
That fateful night, when the accountant was away on a month’s annual leave, the head office requested some urgent reports. Azad managed to collate and analyze two years’ worth of data and sent it out. The next day, Head Office called. He was posted to the accounts section. For the first time, Azad had a PC of his own, with a neat little icon on the desktop—Microsoft Excel.
But that wasn’t meant to last long.
With two years’ worth of savings and a small loan from the big Pathan, Azad set up his first virtual office in one of the emerging free zones. Working from small cafés in the souks, with a second-hand laptop, he built his analytics firm—cell by cell, worksheet by worksheet, dashboard by dashboard.
Almost fifteen years later, he had a small but smart team. Despite temptations, he resisted going big. He chose value. He wanted freedom—the freedom to create and innovate in his own quiet way, with a team he believed in.
But every single day, that dark beauty would return in his quiet moments. Then she would fade into a solitary jasmine flower lying on the sand. Then came the void, the silence - immense and sad.
The waves had stopped whispering.
He returned home and typed out the proposal. He knew the deadline was midnight. He waited exactly 30 minutes past midnight and sent it out.
Laura’s call came in at 0907 in the morning. Azad was expecting it. She avoided the usual pleasantries.
“Are you tired of us?”
Azad replied gently.
“Why would you say that?”
“First, your proposal comes in after the midnight deadline, second you have quoted three times your usual rates….I almost had the contract ready for your sig….(she sighed…) forget it”
There was silence for a while.
“Azad…are you alright?”
“Yes, I am”
Again, silence. Azad took a deep breath and asked.
“The VP of Finance, do you have her address…?”
“What makes you think that we will give out personal details of our staff to stran….I mean external entities?”
“I am sorry….I didn’t mean to…”
Laura sighed. For a while they said nothing.
“Azad, you need a break….why don’t you take a long walk at the creek today evening. You’ve mentioned if before…”
“Yeah…maybe I should”
“You need something familiar…like the old building with the huge gold and green Rolex signboard…they switch it on at sunset…you know. So powerful and reassuring, looking over all the old wooden boats…they were there before we came, they are there now and maybe even after we leave”.
Azad smiled.
“You’ve seen that signboard, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have…thanks, Laura”
“You just lost this contract Azad…but enjoy the sunset.”
As she cut the phone, she knew she would miss him. But she did not feel sad.
Somethings end. Somethings will begin.
It wasn’t yet sunset when Azad stepped into the lobby of the building. No register to fill. No cards to swipe. He mentioned the tenant’s name, and the smiling security guard responded with the floor and apartment number, pointing to the elevator. It was still that part of Dubai—stubbornly clinging to the old and trusting past.
As he took the elevator to the 18th floor, he felt unsure. When he pressed the bell, the three metal clips in his knee echoed unpleasant memories. He had to press it a few more times before hearing a slow shuffle and the door latch turning.
As the door opened, he saw her — dishevelled, weak and unsteady. She looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, she sagged and tried to hold on to the door. He caught her before she fell and gathered her in his arms.
Suddenly she retched and puked on his chest. He didn’t flinch, but held her close. Her body was raging hot, eyes were bloodshot, the skin dry. She retched again.
“Sorry…,” she mumbled half-conscious, fluid bubbling around her lips. Then she fainted, right in his arms.
Without thinking, he lifted her into his arms and stepped into the unfamiliar apartment. A door to the left was open. Inside—a sparse, neat bedroom with crumpled sheets on the bed. He gently laid her down. From the adjacent bathroom, he wet a towel and wiped the corners of her mouth.
But it wasn’t enough. He propped her up carefully and carried her to the sink. Cupping water in his hands, he rinsed her mouth, wiping her face clean once more before bringing her back to bed. He tucked her in up to her neck, his movements slow and steady.
She looked older. Fragile. As if the years had passed harshly. The grey in her temples caught his eye—elegant, he thought. Then he felt guilty for noticing. Her lips were moving, mumbling something he couldn’t make out.
He stood there for a long time, watching her.
Outside, the call for Maghrib echoed from a nearby mosque.
Azad continued watching until her lips stopped moving and her breathing slowed. She was fast asleep.
He stepped out. There was a common bathroom in the corridor. He washed his shirt in the basin as best he could. Back in the living room, he spread it on the back of a chair at the dining table. Through the window, the sun had set. The green and gold light from the signboard lit up the streets and the creek beyond. He could see the Abras crossing. He stared at the scene—feeling sadness and peace at the same time.
Everything seemed to slow down.
He looked around the sparse apartment.
There was hardly any furniture. A small dining table, a few chairs, a low Japanese coffee table on a rug, and a cushion to sit. A laptop and a few books rested on it. Near the window was a small flower pot with a jasmine creeper. A solitary flower had bloomed. He stared at it for a while. In a corner stood a small altar with a wooden image of Goddess Saraswati.
“Azad, give me a few of your books. I’ll keep them for Pooja.”
It was October—the month of Durgashtami. For three days, devout Hindus kept their books at Saraswati’s altar, to be blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge. For the past few years, she had taken his books and hidden them beneath hers at her home altar.
Azad handed her a few notebooks from his bag.
“That novel too,” she said, eyeing it in his bag. The cover was familiar.
Azad handed over the book. She looked at it for a while and whispered:
“I wish we lived in times like that…”
“..And, catch cholera?”
“That’s not what I mean, you idiot…” she sighed.
Azad chuckled.
“…For us to be left on our own, in a boat, sailing up and down a river with no port stops… like Florentino and Fermina … forever.”
Azad smiled as she slipped Marquez’s epic into her bag.
Azad quietly slipped back into her room to check on her. She was asleep but the sheet that covered her had come off at her feet, leaving them exposed. The room felt a little too cold. He found the remote and increased the temperature. Then he sat by her feet on the bed.
Gently he lifted them and tucked them again, wrapping the sheet beneath the sheet. His fingers softly brushed the soles of her feet.
The footprints on the sand came rushing back. He held his breath. He let his fingers rest on her soles for a while.
She stirred, opened her eyes and tried to focus. They did not say anything for a while. Just the slow hum of life outside and their breaths. She saw him, in his vest and felt guilty.
“I am sorry…”
“It’s ok, I washed it…”
She sighed, then mumbled.
“That’s not what I mean you idiot….”.
Azad chuckled softly.
She turned to her side and closed her eyes. Azad sat there and watched again. For those moments, with every breath of hers, with her tummy slightly rising and falling, it seemed, time rewound itself and took them to a coastal town in Calicut, North Kerala.
When the call for Isha prayers rang from the mosque, Azad stepped out of the room. He knelt on her rug, turned toward the holy site, and prayed. With the solitary jasmine and the Goddess Saraswati as his witnesses, his forehead touched the rug.
It had been many years.
Rising, he pulled a chair to the window. As the Abras returned from their final crossings, Azad was dozing on the chair. His head slumped to his chest, arms dangling at his sides.
Outside, the green and gold of the signboard lit up the streets. A city like Dubai never sleeps—but it needs its rest. As the rhythms of the city slowed, Azad breathed softly, his breath in rhythm with a beautiful woman’s.
Azad awoke with a start.
She had leaned over from behind the chair and wrapped her arms tightly around his face, holding him in a quiet embrace.
It wasn’t dawn yet.
Azad looked into her eyes as tears welled. She bent and touched her face to his. The tears wet his forehead, then his cheeks.
“Don’t go away… ok?”
She mumbled, holding him tighter.
“Don’t….”
As Azad gently raised his arms and pulled her face even closer, her warm skin touched his. He whispered gently:
“I’m still breathing…”
A wave came to the shore and wet the solitary jasmine flower. Despite the 18 years, it hadn’t withered or dried.
She gasped and then sobbed. She pressed her face trembling against his. Almost two decades of pain and silence broke like a river in spate. As she kissed him all over his face, through his greying stubble he ran his fingers through her greying locks, clutching softly, afraid he might fall again. They held each other tight, breathing in each other’s presence, breathing in the scent of each other’s ageing skins, saying nothing.
Two humans, worn, scarred—but not broken.
As the sun rose over the creek, Motassim Khan relieved the night shift and handed over to the new team. Laura took the elevator up to the office. She knew Priyanka wouldn’t come in—and fever wouldn’t be the reason. A gentle smile flirted at the corner of her lips.
Azad and Priyanka were on the rug, asleep. Her arms wrapped around his knees, her face tucked between them. His fingers were curled in her hair, clutching softly.
The coast of Khor Fakkan holds some of the most desolate and beautiful beaches in all of Arabia. A shy, solitary man knew them like the back of his hand. Windy, untamed, and ancient—like a time that refused to change.
The waves came from across the Gulf of Oman, from the ancient cities of Iran like Bandar Abbas.
They alighted from the old, trusted, desert-coloured Land Rover. The beach was empty. The waves, magnificent.
They stepped onto the sand barefoot. He allowed himself to limp a little—to feel the pain. It was okay. She was back. She was here. Then, she wrapped her arms around him and he drew her closer.
They left footprints.
This time, they didn’t look back.
Some things had to be left behind. Events must become memories. Let them be. Let them find peace.
As they left overlapping footprints on the wet sand, new waves were forming off the coast of Bandar Abbas. The winds that guided them towards Khor Fakkan carried echoes of forgotten empires and lost battles.
But these waves had not come to remember the past—they had come to whisper new secrets to each other.