Manipulation of a FRIEND

 What the Tide Leaves The manuscript found its way to a publisher the following spring. When the first printed copy arrived, Sana held it up in the café and screamed so loudly that the waiter dropped his tray. Hamza cried and pretended it was allergies. Eman came too, quietly, and I let her sit beside me. Nobody mentioned Dua. Nobody needed to. I do not know whether she will ever read this book. If she does, I hope she reads it slowly. I hope she finds, somewhere between the pages, a version of herself that she can forgive. I wish her that, honestly. Not because she deserves my silence, but because I no longer need to carry hers. Some nights I still wake up and remember her voice, honey-slow, saying the line she thought would end me. But it did not. It only taught me the difference between being used and being loved. “You are still living in fantasies,” she once told me. Maybe I am. But my fantasies gave me a book, a calm heart, and friends who stayed. If you are standing at your own shoreline right now, holding a hurt that has finally started to heal, listen to the water. It does not apologise for returning. It does not shrink to make the rocks comfortable. The tide takes some things and leaves others. It left me my marks. I have decided to call them proof that I survived.