Chapter 6


"Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it."
- Rumi

Sayid walked along the edge of the ocean, hardly noticing the tide that lapped at his feet. The moon was full tonight, and he continued to walk long into the night. He felt something wash against his toes, and he glanced down at the shore to discover a book. The waves had brought it to him. He picked up the paperback and turned it over in his hands. It was an English Koran, waterlogged, but not illegible. He had not packed a Koran himself. When had he last looked at the book? He wondered to what now lost passenger it had belonged.

He walked up the beach and began to gather sticks for a fire. He opened the Koran and lay it down flat against the sand. He left it to dry by the fire overnight, and he himself reclined against the sand. Before falling asleep, he drew out Shannon's ballerina figurine and turned it over in his hand. He caressed its supple edges and replaced it in his pocket.

Next, he drew out his photograph of Nadia and turned it over to read yet again the writing on the back. He thought of those dark and anxious days when he had held her in solitary confinement. He had been unable to bring himself to torture her, and so he had shut her off from the world. Solitude could break a spirit. He had hoped, then, that it would break hers. Instead, it had broken his…

"I have some fruit for you, Nadia." The door had been closed behind him. He was alone with her again. He was supposed to be interrogating her. Omar had remarked more than once that time was of the essence.

She reached out and ate the proffered food greedily. His tender eyes surveyed her haggard face. He could not believe this was the charming girl he had once admired in the schoolyard. She was worn, and the dark circles had grown beneath her eyes…and yet, she was somehow beautiful in her courage, in her determination.

"Nadia," he said softly. "Please talk to me. I will have to…I will have to hurt you if you don't."

"I know, Sayid, so why don't you get on with it?"

He sat across from her, his hands draped over his drawn-up knees. He did not speak. He watched her finish the fruit.

"What happened to you, Sayid?" she asked.

"What happened to you?" he shot back. "For love of your country, Nadia, tell me who did this!"

Her eyes flashed fiercely. "It is for love of my country that I do not tell you."

He looked away. Her words stung him.

"Is this what you want to see become of your country, Sayid?" She glanced around the dank dungeon. "I have seen the mass graves. I have seen the women and the children rolled into them. You have seen it too. And yet you torture those who long to stop it."

"Silence!" he ordered. He rose to his feet and paced the length of the cell, hands held behind his back. He turned savagely on her and ordered her, "Get up!" She rose without fear. "You do not seem to believe I will really hurt you," he said. "But I can. In more vicious ways than you can imagine."

"I know you can, Sayid. But will you? Only you know that. You have shown me mercy. I do not expect that you will continue to do so. I can only hope that you will."

He swallowed. "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps some more time alone…" And he walked from the cell.

The next morning, Omar met him at the head of the hall, before he entered her cell. Sayid shifted his position so Omar would not see the bulge beneath his shirt, where he had hidden her bread. "Any progress?" Omar asked.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. But it will take time. She is…she is resilient. But I will break her."

But he did not break her. He gave her the bread and desperately showed her a set of photographs, begging her simply to nod. But she would not. Instead, she reached out and touched his hand, and the shock that simple touch sent through his flesh drew his eyes downward. She told him that he was pretending to be someone he was not.

"How can you know what I am?" he asked.

"Because I know you, Sayid."

"You knew me."

"I hope for you, Sayid. I pray for you." And then she closed her hand more tightly over his own. He drew back.

"You do not know what I am capable of," he said.

"You do not know what you are capable of," she returned, with an entirely different meaning. He had to look away from the scrutiny of her gaze.

He came and stood directly across from her. He placed a hand on either side of her, trapping her against the wall. He leaned in close. When he spoke, he was but inches from her face. "I am no longer a child, Nadia, and neither are you. There are real consequences here. It is not too late to talk to me."

"And it is not too late for you to change, Sayid. It is never too late to change."

Her voice was so soothing, so overflowing with compassion, so certain of his hidden goodness that he found himself leaning in still closer, found himself beginning to press his lips against her own, but he had barely touched them when she turned her face away, and he was left staring at the cold wall.

"I can make you, you know," he said emotionlessly. "I can make you do more than that."

"I know," Nadia said, staring at the other end of the cell. "I know you can. But you will not."

He pushed off from the wall with his hands and walked away slowly; then he turned to look at her again. "Why should you care so much for my soul?"

"Because I loved the boy you once were. And when I look into your eyes, I love the man I know you can become."

"Then why do you refuse my kiss?"

"Because you are not yet that man, Sayid. You are not yet that man."

Sayid awoke with a start. Somewhere in the midst of his reminiscing, he had fallen asleep, and the photo had fluttered too close to the flames. He snatched it up now, before it could begin to curl from the heat, and he returned it to his pocket.

He found himself thinking that if the plane had not crashed, if he had arrived in L.A and had encountered Nadia, she would have found that even then…even after he had helped her to escape, even after he had fled that old life, even after seven years…he still had not become that man.

Seven years of seeking, seven years of penitent solitude and still he had found himself capable of torturing Sawyer. He had repented of that, but how much of the old calloused spirit was still trapped with him? After all, what was he doing now? He was selfishly commiserating with himself, when he could instead be helping the other survivors.

He rolled over on the sand and saw the Koran. He lifted it from the sand and, for the first time in years, began reading its words.

What had he sought in seeking Nadia? Love, yes, but there was something more he had yearned for, something far more powerful than any romantic love, something more incalculable than that which Nadia, or Shannon, or any woman could offer him. He understood this now as he read; he perceived the idols he had made of these women, and he recognized the shrines he had built in his mind. He admitted to himself that, however much each woman had meant to him, however much each had changed him, both were but a partial reflection of something even greater. These women had loved him, but they had not been able to absolve him.

Suddenly, Sayid felt overwhelmed by that longing which knows no earthly satisfaction, and he felt his guilt rise within him as though it would suffocate him. The tears pooled in his eyes, but he could not seem to release them. He pulled himself halfway up from the sand, resting on his knees. He felt utterly helpless, broken, and afraid.

He thought he might begin to retch, but when the wave of seeming sickness had passed over him, his body began to tremble, and he heard himself whispering in Arabic, over and over, "Allah, Allah, have mercy, for I am lost. I have done such weak and wicked things in my life, and I am lost."