Between The World's I Lived

Chapter 4: Omar

I was standing outside his brother’s shop when I first saw him.

I didn’t know his name yet. I only knew the way my body reacted before my mind could make sense of it. I felt drawn to him, inexplicably, as though something ancient in me had recognised something ancient in him. I kept glancing in his direction, trying to be subtle, but failing. Years later he would tell me he had been doing the same — looking, then quickly looking away whenever our eyes met.

My cousin was with me that day. She noticed him too and joked that she wanted his number. They were already talking about setting her up with him, and I became the middleman. I walked over, asked for his number “for her,” and felt a strange disappointment that I couldn’t explain. I told myself it was nothing.

We began chatting on Mxit, and at first our conversations were innocent. I asked him whether he liked her. He asked about me. Then one night, he admitted that it was me he was interested in, not my cousin. I remember sitting with my phone in my hand, heart racing, feeling something light up inside me. I was elated. It felt like being chosen in a way I never had before.

From that moment, we were inseparable through our screens. We spoke from morning until night. I would grin at my phone in public. He would do the same. It was as though the world had shrunk to the space between our messages.

One night, I was on a bus with my university drama class, returning from a play out of town. The bus broke down and we were stranded for hours. That night, our conversation changed. Something shifted. The words became charged, alive. I had never felt so seen, so desired, through a screen. I remember thinking that I had never connected to anyone like this before.

But he lived out of town, and meeting in person was difficult. When we finally made plans, it happened suddenly. I was at a classmate’s flat when he messaged me. He wanted to see me. I cut my visit short and met him at the casino.

I was nervous when I arrived, unsure what would happen now that he was no longer just a voice in my phone. We walked together, then sat on the stands outside. That was where he kissed me for the first time. It felt like something breaking open inside me. Our moment was interrupted by a security guard, and we laughed awkwardly before deciding to leave.

We drove without direction, both of us unsure where this was going. I parked on a quiet street. We talked, we laughed, and the world seemed to disappear. I remember speaking my thoughts out loud, stunned by how alive I felt. It was like waking up for the first time.

That night changed me.

I would later learn that I had been his first love in every sense of the word. He told me years after, almost shyly, that I had been his first. I had no idea then. I only knew that something powerful had begun.

The next day, he asked me to meet him at his brother’s shop. It was only down the road from my house. I made up an excuse with my mother and walked there, my heart pounding.

He was sitting on a concrete pillar across the street when I saw him. When he stood up to greet me, we moved toward each other instinctively, almost forgetting where we were. We stopped ourselves just in time, startled by the intensity between us.

The pull was magnetic.

It felt like electricity.

And in that moment, I knew: this was not just attraction. This was a story that would follow me for the rest of my life.