THE FIRST TIME HE SAW HER
ALM No.93, September 2026
SHORT STORIES
The first time he saw her, she had long brown hair. He didn’t know her, nor did she know him. Years later, he told her. “I remembered your eyes from that day. The day you were too shy to look at me.” She shook her head. She had no recollection of him at all. She was talking, and he was blind, deaf, and paralyzed. That was the first wound, and she never knew she made it. His dream ended. Banks sent messages, his family and friends called, but the one who bounded his life didn’t show up. He was too proud to follow her. Yet the breath of her perfume lingered. Her fingers never stopped holding his, and her silent drops of tears that never touched his cheeks brought her back to him. He swore to reject her, yet his lips took orders from her, and his heart wasn’t his to deny her presence. She smiled every time she saw him. But the smile was never his. It was hers, fully hers, a gift she gave herself that he happened to be just a witness to.
He told himself there was no way that he could forget her. Her smile. Her long brown hair. The sound of her voice. She once put her arms around his shoulders in a dark Tehran café. A World Cup match between Iran and Spain was playing on a large silver screen in the corner. His sister watched them across the table. She smiled. Spain pressed Iran into their own half. The café groaned at every missed chance. He remembered none of it. Only her hand behind his neck, brushing his hair. No World Cup ever matched that.
She was a decade younger, and he understood her eyes perfectly. Her hobbies, her love for dance and laughter, the things that made her bear her childhood that few could endure. But he never understood why she wanted him in it. His heart carried her beauty until there was no room left to breathe. His mind tried to count the times she left him. But his chest seized. It wouldn't let him finish the number. He bought her cigarettes from a nameless shop in a nameless street. He hated himself for it. A pack of Winston, original American-made, the brand she always wanted. Every pack felt like another nail driven into his hand. He could see each one pushed her further away. It wounded him. They could not ease her pain. They could not keep her close.
No matter what happened between them, whenever he called her, she would answer the same way: “Hello, my love.” He could decipher math, never her. He could talk for hours. With her, he often said nothing. There were words. He trusted none of them. They sat together in silence with little light. It felt more honest than any words they had ever spoken. She knew silence was not his strongest suit. He loved those moments. No questions flew.
He weaponized words against all. She never used void against him, nor did she need words. She would look at him and turn away, saying nothing at all, and he would crumble. Yet kindness was what defeated him. Oh, dear god, her wide smile was against all laws of nature. The cruelty of life came, dressed in love and laughter. He saw it coming. He knew from the beginning she was never meant to stay. She was the sea, never tamed, never held. He didn't fight. He just stood there, watching her disappear, bit by bit. Her betrayal, her love and her energy were the only things that made him go forward.
In the end, she left him with memories that he cannot hold, as his heart is already full of them. He reached for them, but the closer he gets, the farther they get. Her face began to fade as time is the cruelest curse. Only a shadow remains, a thousand stories he tries to craft. And he fails. And he fails again. Tears turn their backs on him. In the end, they both lost.
And this is his greatest triumph, not in understanding her, but in losing the man he was meant to be. The math doesn’t add up. The structure always fails and rubble is the only promise that remains. Maybe the past is written in the future of another, not in ours, and we are the scavengers of ruins, nothing more.
Then if this is the end.
She is the silence who sings in rhymes. I do not know how to understand. As he became me. Yet I’m still here. I write to keep her beauty alive, unrivaled by all the goddesses and angels combined. I write her in my math, in my novels, and in every corner of my notebooks. She is my ink and the guiding hand that pushes me where the morning sun lingers so I can finish my story. I write about her hands warming mine, her curving lips when she smiled. I write so she doesn’t disappear when I am long gone. No one knows but death. And he devised a chain of our love to pull me down to his kingdom. Poor death doesn’t know her words reverberate through the labyrinth of the underworld, calling me, “My love,” that even the god of death stays his hands. I am still here. Nothing more. And I write so I shall fail, and fail again, so it shall be my greatest achievement: my failure. my failure…
Siamak Fereidooni is an Iranian author and analyst working at the intersection of literature, philosophy, mathematics, engineering, and history. He has published four books in Farsi and written on political and conceptual discourse through a mathematical lens. His work explores the structures through which language, ideas, and meaning are formed. His fiction draws on memory, mathematics, philosophy, and historical consciousness, often examining the relationship between meaning, failure, and the limits of language.
Subscribe to FREE digital flip copy of the Adelaide Magazine printed edition.