Distance دعاء and Tea

When a cup of شاي Holds home.

It’s a quiet, cold evening.
I’m brewing tea , watching the steam curl into the air . A sudden, fierce urge pulls me toward my parents, and then the truth settles, heavy and unforgiving:

It’s been almost two years now. Seeing your parents is a luxury you realize you’ve lost when the silence replaces their presence. When distance turns faces into memories.

I ache to call my mother, only to realize we no longer share the same time zone. She is asleep.
Instead, I call my father, the only family member whose clock nearly matches mine, reassurance has a name. In that small overlap of time, I find a fragile comfort, though it trembles under the weight of absence.

Something in my heart breaks a little when I notice the signs of aging on his face. lines are deeper, the tiredness more visible. I tell him, “Waan ku jeclahay, aabo.”
I love you.

He gives me a soft smile and replies, “May Allah and His angels love you.”

My parents share the same love language. It is rare to hear them say “I love you too.” Their affection almost always diverts toward Allah, as if love is too sacred to stop at the tongue and must be returned upward, as if earthly words cannot hold its weight.

And somehow, love feels heavier, more meaningful, when their declaration of love means love from the heavens.

My eyes are filling with tears that carry the weight of distance . I swallow the lump in my throat as he mouths his prayers by default. We giggle softly, the way people do when they are trying not to linger, the kind that holds back tears and I bid him goodbye .

“Humans are bound to separate,” By distance, or by death.

Both leaves wounds.

I no longer wake to my mother’s voice calling me from my sleep. I no longer hear my father’s footsteps and whispered supplications in the early morning. No sibling linger, leaving lights on or doors ajar.

I sip my tea slowly, and finally, the dam breaks.

I miss having my siblings scramble for the last cup, the loud laughters, the jabs so creative they make you choke mid-sip, the way tea was a game of debts and teasing, of my brothers owing money and me vehemently insisting on payment for my “catering services.”

It was loud. It was careless. It was full.

Now it’s a quiet, cold evening, and the dynamics have changed.
Distance has molded us into softer beings, into people of fewer words.

Allah says:

“And We have made some of you a trial for others. will you endure?”
(Qur’an 25:20)

Perhaps love itself is a trial, not in its presence, but in its absence.

I am learning to be patient. To carry this ache quietly, like a prayer whispered between heartbeats.

Because reunion is not as far as it feels.
It is closer than the next dawn, nearer than the breath we take.

And until then, I sit with my tea, whispering their names into the night,
holding on to love that lives beyond distance ,
waiting for the moment when silence will break,
and home will call again.

Love learns to live without noise.

And I am still learning how to live with this ache.

“ولعلّنا من بعد بُعد نلتقي” “Maybe, after this distance, we shall reunite.”