By: Dr. Adnan Bozan

On the margin of the world, where night grows small and hope stretches long, we walk — two lights cramped in the pocket of darkness — carrying in our palm a piece of bread as if it were an ancient covenant between us and life. Bread for us is not merely food; it is a register of patience, a mirror that reads our morning faces. We hold time slowly as the poor hold their bread: with a watchful eye that refuses to squander, and with a touch that turns a morsel into a measure of dignity.

You taught me the names of the wind: how storms travel down streets, how pockets hide their secrets. I taught you the names of hunger and dew: how morning slips along the edge of the bread, how the mouth screams without sound when words betray it. Between us flows an exchange of an invisible tongue: you grant me the spare piece, I give you my song. Thus we walk — not in search of departure nor of return — but because our feet multiply the question with each step, as if the question itself were a necessary spiritual bread.

Our feet bear in their heels the small branches of light and leave behind shadows that resemble our poems: letters drawn on the city's sand before they are spoken. In one hand bread, in the other a song. We divide them as caravans divide the oasis water: with a goodness that knows no ledger, with a fundamental sense of justice that precedes every law. Thus we learned the meaning of sharing: not a trade but a sacred rite we perform every evening on the table of the earth.

We never asked the road its name; roads are names we give as we pass along them. Yet we asked it the hour of birth that produces in us the beast of longing: when is this sticky sorrow born in the chest whenever we see the smoke of a city melting on our lips? Nor did we ask the homeland whether it stands with us or against us; we asked it the taste of our loaf on the tongue of morning. What truer homeland than one measured by the taste of bread!

I love you with the love of caravans: a love that cannot be confined to mere words, because it is laden with crumbs of bread and the names of men who died while dreaming. A love that yearns to return as a traveler longs for his origin, returning laden with what cannot be counted. I love you as the poor love their loaf: with gratitude the soul cannot hide, with reverence that breaks the isolation of hunger, with a care felt by worn fingers.

We sing because silence for us bears neither bread nor water. Song for us is cultivation, not luxury; we sing to see how grass will sprout between the joints of stone, to see how the sea rewrites the names of the martyrs along its shore. Our songs are a slow rain: they do not only wet faces, they teach the earth how to host the stranger.

O companion of the road: how many times have we cried out without a voice? How many times have we washed the night from our glove to kiss a land that did not know us? There, midway along the path, we teach the tree to forget its season so it gives its fruit to a strange child from the other trail; we teach forgetting to be generosity, departure to be compassionate, and patience to bear fruit despite the harshness of the soil.

Within me you are a map of a city unfit for use: a map folded in the shape of a loaf that hides in its folds the consciousness of defeat and hope together. And you are a poem not yet written: a poem carrying the scent of rain and wings and the voice of windows on a winter morning. Half a line of you has been written; the other half waits for us to finish it together on a shore that maps do not recognize.

We are two beings who drink illusion from a cup, believing that tomorrow holds the keys to closed doors. We believe that every song told returns to us some piece of the homeland: the edge of a door, a splash of light, a patch of earth we have yet to sow. Small stories are a parallel history, written not in the state's registers but in the memory of the body and the bread.

Each evening we pin a placard to the breast of the sky: here lived two who came before the rain and after it. We are those two pieces of bread that emerged from the mouth of the city and decided to walk without excuse — not fleeing, not seeking — because walking itself splits pain in two and turns it into a tale fit to be told.

We do not search for songs of weeping in old anthologies, for such songs sometimes kill hope. We make our songs from the scraps of days: shards of light, a cold loaf, a leaf signed by absence. And we ask Love: will you remain? Love answers with a song we alone can hear.

I love you — not an easy love — but a love that plucks a rose from the stone, a love that reads names on the breast of time and rearranges the stars as the bird-keepers rearrange their nests. I love you as the night dreams of a dawn born from the womb of fire: a dream choosing beauty despite smoke and ruin.

We draw our future with a spoonful of grass, we write our names on the walls of sand and await the wind to read them to the sea. We sow bread in the corners of hearts so that no one goes hungry for words. We divide shadows as bread is divided in a small room: even shadows deserve their share of justice.

Come, let us stand at the door of the last world, where the waves embrace our feet and where the earth teaches us how to tuck longing into our pockets. We will not vanish; we will go on to see how many songs the grass can hide, and how much bread suffices for a farewell prayer.

We are companions because the world is not enough for one. A loaf needs two hands to be shared; a melody needs two mouths to be sung; the night hardens if left alone, but becomes tender if we sing to it together.

I love you: the love of a caravan, the love of opening a door onto what has not yet been invented — a love that teaches the map to laugh in the face of loss. I love you as the earth loves rain: not to get wet alone, but to feed the crop and the memory.

And at the end of the road — if there is one — we will sit on a mat that is neither sold nor bought, divide a small loaf, bury a little longing among our laughter, and hide the city's name in our chests as love is hidden: small, fragile, asking only to exist.

Thus — with you — the world becomes bread and song: two loaves of air standing firm against the storm. We walk together — not because the end is known, but because our steps have chosen to be together. In the margin I write your name: a letter that resembles a loaf, a letter that resembles a star. I will not hide from you the truth: you are companion of bread and song, and you are — always — a home that asks for no address.