09:50 AM

The coffee was too strong, she thought to herself in bed. It’s been nearly three hours since she laid down, but there was no sign of sleep anytime soon. Something kept bothering her – a letter she forgot to reply to, the laundry she had left outside, a sudden craving for brown crunchy biscuits. Worse, even when she was done taking care of them, her heart kept pounding, thump, thump, thump, a noise that made it impossible for her to go to sleep. Only when the wall clock pointed at midnight, she realized the real cause behind this insomnia — it was the coffee she had with her friend at a beautiful, invitation-only cafe early this afternoon.

Surrounded by large glass windows and many delicate artworks, the cafe had the look of a magnificent museum rather than a cafe. Her friend often took her to such places — places where the wealthy and powerful went to socialize with people alike. To the outsiders, the cafe was totally invisible: the building kept its old, greying facade, and the first few floors were disguised as a fine china showroom. The cafe appeared only when they reached the top floor, which required climbing steep, spiral wooden staircases, and getting their names checked at the reception. Luckily they were offered the best spot, a green velvet sofa in the left corner that had the view of the entire city. Their iced coffee cost more than a small sack of rice, which arrived in a beautiful white porcelain that had a handle of a cat. A life of a bourgeois, huh? She wanted to tease if possible. But no, of course she didn’t. She simply smiled and said to her friend, It’s beautiful. The friend smiled back, placing her hand on her protruding belly; her second child was to come out in less than two months.

For the next couple of hours, they talked. They talked about the friend’s baby, many complicated and serious issues and concerns she had as a young mother, thoughts and resentment on politics, the economy, social welfare, their love of literature, arts, films, and so forth.

After leaving the cafe, they took a tram together. They smiled kindly as they parted ways. They’d meet again in winter, they said, when the baby is healthy enough to greet his new aunties and uncles. The thought made her smile. She got off at the train station, took a train back to her town, then a bus to reach home. Altogether the trip took nearly about three hours.

When was it that she began to feel deflated? She tried to think in bed, although she failed. Once she got back home, she was too busy to think: she had to feed the chickens, sweep the floor, and make dinner for the family. There was no time to process her feelings. Maybe that’s why only at night, in bed, her heart began to unravel its true emotions.

She felt sad again, she realized at last. Why? She asked her own heart. The friend was a great person — nothing to complain about at all. The coffee was strong – and maybe too expensive – but it was okay, and she liked that she tried somewhere new. Their conversation provoked her intellectuality once again, and they promised to pray for each other while they were apart. There was no reason to feel sad about this interaction.

But in fact, she did. And now that she began to name it, the emotion kept growing inside her. 

Her friend was a daughter of a man who owned a trading company. Her father traveled often, and brought his family along with him if possible. Her friend, unlike herself, learned German in Germany. Both were top students in college, and when the friend learned that she had never been abroad, she gasped, and did not say anything further. She was such a kind of person: someone who knew not to make people in front of her embarrassed. Even when she had to drop out of school to send her younger cousin to college, the friend simply said that she will be missed. Months later, she got married to her elementary school sweetheart and got pregnant. She was now working as a preschool teacher in the city, and she was planning on leaving the job if the work took away too much time and energy from her children. My children are my priorities, the friend said, her face beaming with quiet pride and elegance. 

What about me? The question suddenly came to her mind. The ceiling looked dark brown without the lights on. She wanted to argue God — although she knew well she shouldn’t — because this life of hers often felt like a curse from the heaven.

In college, and perhaps even now, she secretly believed she spoke better language than her friend, her fashion taste more outstanding. She had great public manners and read many books and prayed earnestly. But why, why God, she wanted to ask, should her life be so different from her friend’s? Jealous, maybe she was jealous of her friend. The way she got her work, her husband, and now the baby, reminded her of the times she had dreamt of getting them for herself too. Once, she was an ardent believer of life; she believed if she worked hard, things will fall on her. But now . . . she had nothing. Her hands were empty. Did her friend think of her in this way too? Or did she even sense her arrogance, then decided to forgive her because she was already living such a miserable life? Was it possible that her parents abandoned her for that same reason — because she was so unlovable? She wondered. God, what a humiliation. 

A little after she finished naming her inner thoughts, sleep finally came to her. In the morning, she woke up earlier than her alarm. Another day to go through.