That One Person – Part II (The Zahir)

According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness. (FAUBOURG SAINT-PÈRES Encyclopedia of the Fantastic (1953) Excerpt from The Zahir by Paulo Coelho)



I first came across this term “Zahir” when I read a book of the same name by Paulo Coelho. I am using it here in this article because The Zahir defines the ultimate obsession for me. The state of absolute and final madness, from which there is no return.

Yes she was The Zahir for me. She still is. And perhaps she’ll always be. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe I am just too weak to think of anything else. Maybe I’ve surrendered my mind, body and soul to her memories. Maybe it’s a phase. Maybe time is a perfect healer. Maybe all “Maybes” are just lies that we feed to our sad little souls to keep ourselves from falling apart.

I vividly remember the moment I first saw her. The color of clothes she was wearing. That look on her face. It runs like a film in my mind. As a matter of fact all her memories do. And If you ask for my honest opinion on the whole film-like memory process, it is quite painful. Painful enough to bring me to a state, which even by my standards, far exceeds madness.

I am sad and I’m hurt. I can safely say that my soul is battered and bruised. My heart is broken into pieces. I sometimes cry when I’m alone. Sometimes I have to hold back my tears when I’m around people. Sometimes I have to kill myself to stay alive. Because I believe pretention is worse than suicide. In pretending to be happy, we are punishing ourselves more, as we are hiding our true emotions and feelings, just for the sake of others or perhaps for our own good. Yes I have died. Or at least something inside me is dead. And I know it will never come back. The aura of those times, is gone forever…

Do I hate her? No I don’t. I have no reason to. You never hate “that one person”. You always love her. That is the mysterious power of love. You keep loving the person who hurts you. You try and condole yourself and give justifications to your mind for that one person’s sake. Justifying her actions to be right. And her actions were right, at least in the end they were.

So I will write no further parts to this article in the future. Because I know that there is no end to it. Also I believe that the beauty of writing (good writing) is to leave some room for the reader’s imagination, to deliberately leave certain things open to interpretation.

But the problem is that The Zahir can’t be forgotten. It stays with you. I believe it stays for all eternity and I truly hope for that. Because what you can’t get in this world, you hope to achieve in the next. So Maybe “That One Person” will be there in everything I write or do… Maybe… at least so I choose to believe!