July 30th, 2025. I don't know what compelled me to begin writing again after all these years. Maybe it's the quiet. Maybe it's the way the wind moves through these empty halls, reminding me of a voice I haven't heard in so long. Tasha. Her name still shapes the curve of my breath like it did when I was a boy. She's the first thought of my day, and the last before sleep overtakes me. This isn't a story for the world. It's just for me and
perhaps, someday, for her.
Tasha came into my life when I was eleven. I remember the day clearly: an overcast Monday in Nairobi, the kind of afternoon where the gray hangs low like a woolen ceiling. I was in the hallway, building a domino track with worn plastic blocks, when the front door opened. My father had told me we'd be having a visitor. I expected someone older, maybe a tutor. Instead, in stepped a little girl, soaked from the rain and holding a suitcase larger than her torso. Her eyes scanned the room quickly, sharply. Shy by nature, I retreated, but she
walked up to me and said, "Hi. I'm Tasha." Just like that. Confident. Unapologetic.
We became inseparable. I don't know if she felt the same pull I did, that magnetic tug in the chest when she entered a room, but I did everything I could to be near her. We had wildly different energies she was quick, sarcastic, fiercely independent. I was shy, bookish, constantly hiding behind the pages of history books. But she liked that. She liked listening. I'd read to her for hours from books she'd never pick up on her own. Her favorites were always the ones with tragic endings.
We had our own world. In the backyard, beneath the old pine tree, we built a kingdom. She ruled, of course. Queen Tasha the Fearless, and I, Kerif the Wise. We wrote our laws in journals, made treaties with the neighborhood cats, even buried time capsules for civilizations we imagined would rise after us. I think that's when I first fell in love with her under the glow of twilight, after she'd declared war on the raccoons that raided our trash. She had dirt on her cheek and a crown of leaves, and in that moment, I knew. I just knew.
Years passed, and we grew up. Her laughter grew rarer, more self-conscious, but no less beautiful. When we entered high school, things began to shift. Tasha became popular quickly. People were drawn to her magnetized by her charm, her intelligence, her rare ability to speak just the right words when someone needed them. I remained the quiet one, often in the corner with a book, observing the way she lit up a room. But still, we had
our late-night talks, our bike rides, our secret notes passed during history class.
Then came the change. Her aunt died unexpectedly, leaving Tasha a considerable inheritance. Her uncle newly appointed as her guardian decided she needed better opportunities. And just like that, she was gone. Moved to New York City. A single suitcase again. A voicemail on our home phone saying goodbye. I played it over and over until the tape cracked.
I wrote to her. Once, then twice. I never sent the third letter. Instead, I poured myself into study. Into books. Into understanding the migrations of peoples, how cultures carry grief across continents. It felt academic, but really, I was just trying to understand how one person could carry so much love for another, without ever speaking it.
College gave me distance, but not peace. At Stanford, I buried myself in lectures and fieldwork. I studied culture, migration, the histories of displaced people. My professors said I had a gift for analysis, for tracing how memory lives in people long after place is lost. What they didn't know was that all my work traced back to a single memory Tasha, standing in the rain, suitcase in hand, already half out of reach. I didn't date much. I told myself I was too busy, too focused. But in truth, no one else could compare. I was always holding them
up to her.
It was during a summer study abroad program in Istanbul that I found the rhythm of the city matching my own grief. Istanbul is a city of layers, where every stone seems to remember something forgotten. I wandered the Grand Bazaar, sketched buildings in dusty notebooks, and spent long hours on ferry rides across the Bosphorus. One late night, I sat at the edge of a rooftop and wrote in my journal: "Istanbul is a city that has lost
many things, yet remains whole." It was how I imagined Tasha, wherever she was.
Years passed. I returned to the U.S, completed my graduate studies, and took a job with a nonprofit archiving immigrant oral history. My father passed away the winter after I turned 30. Quietly, in his sleep. The house was so full of his voice in its silence. Sorting through his things, I found a photo of me and Tasha, age fourteen and twelve, our hands covered in paint, grinning over a project we had dubbed "The Great Time Machine." I cried for the first time in years. That was the day I decided to write our story ''The Story of Us That Never Was''.
When the book came out*Lost Cities, Found Voices*I expected nothing. But somehow, people connected with it. I was invited to speak in places I'd only dreamed of. Cities like Marrakech, Athens, Prague. The book was translated into six languages. I remember standing in a bookstore in Buenos Aires, staring at the Spanish title on the cover, and feeling like I had somehow written myself back into the world. Yet every city I visited, I looked for her. In faces passing me by, in gallery openings, in art exhibits, in cafés lit by warm orange lamps. Always hoping.
Then came Istanbul again. I was invited to a symposium on cultural belonging, and I accepted without hesitation. Something about returning felt necessary. The night after my panel, I went to the same rooftop café where I had once written in my journal. And there she was. Tasha. She had changed older, certainly but the way she held her coffee cup, the way her hair curled at her temples, it was her. My heart stopped. I didn't approach right away. I watched for a long moment, afraid to ruin it. But then I said her name.
We spoke for hours. There was laughter, tension, silence, even anger. She told me about her gallery work, her nonprofit. I told her about my travels, my father, the book. She said she had read it. She knew. She had always known. But life had pulled her elsewhere. Her marriage, she said, was one of stability, not fire. She hadn't been unhappy. Just... unresolved. We didn't touch. Not then. But when we parted at the edge of the bridge, I
kissed her hand. She let me.
I thought that would be the end. A final full stop. But Tasha emailed me two weeks later. A simple note: "I dreamed we were painting again under the pine tree. Do you remember?" I replied: "Every day." We wrote back and forth for nearly a year. Long messages and full of everything we couldn't say before. We never crossed the line. We never needed to. Our love had evolved quiet, respectful, fierce. It lived in the words we sent across the digital sea.
Then, without warning, the messages stopped. Her last message read: "There's something I need to face. I'll write again soon." She never did. I checked the news, searched online, even contacted a mutual acquaintance. Nothing. It was as if the world had closed around her again. I respected her silence. But I waited. A month passed. Then two. Then twelve. I lit a candle on the rooftop of my New York apartment the night I realized she might never return. The wind took the flame in one breath.
Now, I teach. I guide students through the art of preserving memory. I tell them that some stories are never told, only felt. I show them how to listen to what's not being said. They ask me if I've ever lost something that mattered. I say yes. But that shaped me. Tasha did. She made me into a man who feels deeply, who writes honestly. I don't wear a wedding ring. I don't need one. I had a love that filled the pages of a life.
So, if you've read this far, you know now: this is not a tragedy. It's not about endings. It's about presence. About a kind of love that lives even when unspoken. It is about Tasha. And it is about me. It is about all the words we leave unsaid, and how sometimes, those are the ones that matter most. Goodnight, Tasha. Wherever you are.