What is love worth?

by Amna Shoaib (Pakistan)

I didn't expect to find Pakistan

Somewhere along the Gondrani range in Balochistan, the mountains begin to shrivel. The road is narrow. On one side, mountains as still as sails of ships in windless waters. On the other, a steep descent. All around us, the oppressive silence of mountains. In the bus, S perks up excitedly. I cower with nervousness. I prefer beaches to mountains. We are looking for the shrine of Shirin and Farhad. It’s an impromptu detour. Yesterday, a man we asked for directions inquired if we planned to visit (“It’s up in the mountains, shouldn’t be hard to find”). The next morning, we left for the pilgrimage around 6. We have been on the road for two hours now. No sign of the shrine. I don’t mind the journey, the exhaustion, the hunger. I learned earlier in the trip that the body is our only defence against the heart. When the body flowers open to fatigue, any non-physical pain blunts. Under the stark blue sky, my senses sharpen. My hindsight awakens. I think of him, of the past few months. It was a connection doomed to failure from the onset. Like a fool, I had still fallen in love. Face first. It ended as quietly as it began. The cosmic thread that pulled him to me churned again and pushed us apart. In the days after, a sudden winter descended onto the city. A plant I had named after myself shrivelled its leaves upwards and died. It rained for a week straight. The mud dampened my socks. I quit a job, let go of a cherished dream. When the trip arrived, I had been looking for an excuse to recede from my life. If I could leave the city behind, I could also leave its hurts behind. A white structure peers out of a thicket of rocks. We turn a corner. The wall that now faces us has the painting of a girl. Shirin, drawn by Farhad. Legend has it, when Farhad, a lowly sculptor fell in love with the Armenian princess Shirin, the princess’s primary suitor Khusrow was enraged. He sent Farhad off on a futile task. If he could dig out the heavenly springs of milk and honey from these hostile mountains, Khusrow will abandon his pursuit of Shirin. Farhad toiled for months. Moved by his perseverance, God ruptured the membrane between this world and the next and let streams of milk and honey flow. Khusrow did not keep his word. Farhad never saw Shirin again. It was in these mountains that Farhad, with callused feet, breathed his last. We travel to retreat from our tiresome selves. I had not expected to find myself confronting a familiar hurt. With the eventuality of loss, whether through heartbreak or death, why do we love at all? What was Farhad’s love worth? What was the value of mine if it couldn't last? What love is worth is a sucker. A snatch from a poem returned to me. We say a few prayers inside. Couples from nearby cities came to pray for love. On the walls, people had scribbled initials: A+S, N+H. Even in a monument to lost love, people continue to find reassurance of some kind. Maybe falling out of love had made me forget something important about it. Love does not ennoble us. But for the while that it lasts, it allows us a shared experience, a stake in something greater than ourselves. Maybe lovers recognise that whatever had animated their hearts was also Farhad’s legacy. The mountains may have swallowed his love, but he left something sweet in their mouth. Maybe, it was worthwhile to be reminded that love ends. And begins as many times as it ends. Shirin and Farhad, her crazed lover, now lie in the same grave in the mountains he spent his last days in. The state has built a road on the path paved by Farhad. People continue to come here, to pray for love or to scribble their beloved's name on the walls. In the remote hills of Balochistan, the lovers separated in the streets of Persia will forever be together. The plastic flowers whose stems hold the windows shut will forever be in bloom.