Saber and the Author

Author: Abdelkrim Chapter One: The Boy Whose Heart Was Bigger Than His Voice Saber was born into a small house — the kind of house that could not keep secrets well. If someone cried in the back room, the wall heard it before any human did. And if his mother laughed in the kitchen, the whole house felt the day grow lighter. Saber was a quiet child, in a way that worried the adults. He never asked for much, never complained, and apologized even for things he hadn’t done. If a cup broke in the house, his heart turned toward blame before his face did, as if fault were always searching for him. He wasn’t a coward — he simply learned early that loud voices win, and that kind hearts often step back just to avoid hurting anyone. At school, he saw what others didn’t. He saw the boy who laughed too much because he was hiding his fear. He saw the girl who acted harshly because no one at home listened to her gently. And every time he came home, loaded with other people’s faces, he felt his heart was like a crowded room, holding more of other people’s sadness than his own. But the first words that truly wounded his soul didn’t come from strangers. One day, he stumbled while reading a passage aloud in class. It wasn’t a big mistake, but the teacher wasn’t angry at the mistake — he was angry at the fragility of the child who made it. In front of everyone, he said: "You’re too kind for your own good, Saber... and life shows no mercy to people like you." Some students laughed — not because the words were funny, but because laughter had become a child’s way of avoiding being the next victim. Saber went home that day and didn’t cry. He sat by the window, watching the sunset withdraw quietly, and felt something heavy settle into his chest. He didn’t fully understand it, but he sensed that words don’t just pass through the ear — some of them descend inward, sit there, and begin arranging a person’s image of themselves. His mother came in and found him unusually silent. She sat beside him and said gently: "What’s wrong, Saber?" He shook his head. "Nothing." His mother smiled the smile of someone who knows the truth, and said: "The hardest things aren’t what happens to us — it’s what we come to believe about ourselves afterward." He looked at her for a long time. He didn’t fully grasp the sentence, but he felt as though she’d placed her hand on the very door that hurt him. That night, he fell asleep thinking: Is kindness weakness? Is gentleness a flaw? Do I have to become someone else to survive? For the first time, he sensed that a person might begin losing themselves before losing anything else. And this was the first lesson he wouldn’t understand until years later: a child never forgets hurtful words — he simply grows up trying to deny them. Chapter Two: When the Mind Began Building Its Prison Saber grew up a little, and that old sentence grew with him. It was no longer just a memory — it became a lens through which he saw himself. Every time he failed at something, he told himself: maybe they were right. Every time he fell behind others, he became convinced something was missing in him. His heart remained pure, but his mind grew harshly critical of him in ways no one else could see. This is the problem people rarely notice: some people don’t need an external enemy — they carry a voice inside that defeats them every day. In university, Saber wasn’t the worst student, but he never believed he deserved the best. He wrote beautiful ideas, then tore them up. He loved a girl from afar, then convinced himself he was too little for love. He’d apply for an opportunity, then withdraw a day before the interview, as if racing to reject himself before rejection could reach him first. He used to tell himself: "I understand life, but I don’t know how to live it." Then one year, he lost many things at once. He failed an important course. A job he’d hoped for turned him down. A friend he considered a brother drifted away. And when he tried to explain his pain to someone, he was told coldly: "You’re exaggerating. Everyone gets tired." He went back to his room that night, shut the door, and sat on the floor instead of the chair. The exhaustion was too much to carry with any dignity. He looked in the mirror and couldn’t see his face clearly — only a young man trying to look strong in front of people, then collapsing quietly in private. He said in a broken voice: "God... what do I do with all of this?" No answer fell from the sky, but his eyes landed on a small piece of paper near his books. He didn’t remember writing it. It was in unfamiliar handwriting: "Nothing is impossible. Trust yourself... you will arrive." He stared at it for a long time. At first he smiled bitterly — the sentence seemed like one of those easy phrases people write because they don’t know the true weight of pain. But for a reason he couldn’t explain, he didn’t throw it away. He placed it under the lamp and sat near it, as if it were something alive. Then, for the first time, he asked himself honestly: What if my problem isn’t that life is against me? What if my problem is that I interpret everything as proof that I don’t deserve anything? Nothing changed outside him in that moment. His problem wasn’t solved; he didn’t suddenly become brave. But something small shifted inside: the idea that pain isn’t a final verdict. And so the prison began to crack — not because its doors opened, but because for the first time, Saber suspected that the prison lived in his own mind. Chapter Three: The First Level Saber began watching life differently — not because his life had quickly improved, but because he grew tired of seeing it as a personal conspiracy against him. When he lost another job, he felt sad, yes. But that evening he sat and wrote in his notebook: "This is not an ending. This is a stage." And for the first time, he didn’t write it as a slogan, but as a possibility. Bit by bit, an idea began to grow in him: life resembles a vast game. Not a naive game, but a complex one — strangely fair. Every stage brings you a problem that looks bigger than you, not to crush you, but to reveal what you still need in order to get through. The first stage taught him that old words don’t have to define his fate. The second taught him that fear of rejection is harsher than rejection itself. The third began when his mother fell ill. He entered the hospital trembling inside. He loved her with a love that didn’t know how to express itself — the kind of love that makes a person feel their heart is tied to someone else. He sat by her bed, smiling at her, telling her small stories so she wouldn’t see the fear in his eyes. One day she whispered to him: "Why do you look like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders?" He said, trying to hold himself together: "Because I’m tired of losing things." She patted his hand and said: "You don’t always lose, Saber. Sometimes you just change." He fell silent. Then she added: "Listen to me well... problems don’t last forever. It’s the person who changes, until the problem becomes smaller than their awareness." He felt as if the sentence had opened a window in his chest. He looked at her for a long moment and asked: "And how does a person change?" His mother smiled, tired: "When they stop asking why me? and start asking what am I learning from this?" He left the hospital that day into a cold night. The streets were the same, the cars were the same, people rushing past as though the world hadn’t paused for even a moment near his mother’s bed. But he felt something in him had broken — or perhaps had grown. He understood that psychological resilience doesn’t mean never crying, and doesn’t mean pretending to be strong. It means carrying your wounded heart in your own two hands and continuing the road anyway. That night, back in his room, he found the same piece of paper on his desk, as if someone had touched it in his absence. He read again: "Nothing is impossible. Trust yourself... you will arrive." This time he didn’t smile bitterly. This time he cried. Because he understood that arriving doesn’t always mean reaching what you want quickly — it means arriving at a version of yourself capable of enduring. That chapter of his life ended with him understanding that some pains don’t come to take something from us, but to make us discover what we already have. Chapter Four: People Who Wound Because They Are Wounded As his mother slowly recovered, Saber returned to the world. But the world hadn’t changed. Mockery was still easy to find. Cruelty was still effortless. And comparison remained a favorite hobby of many people. He worked in a small place, with a team that knew little about kindness. His manager was the type who believed insult built discipline — raising his voice often, using words like stones. At first, Saber went home shattered nearly every day, replaying a harsh sentence dozens of times in his head. The problem was never just the sentence — it was his old habit of believing it. One day, a colleague made an obvious mistake. Everyone expected the manager to humiliate him publicly. But Saber stepped forward calmly and said: "The mistake happened, but it can be fixed." The manager looked at him mockingly: "You think kindness solves everything?" After a brief silence, Saber answered: "No. But cruelty doesn’t fix a broken person." Silence fell. For the first time, Saber didn’t feel weak for defending someone gently. He felt that mercy requires more courage than mockery. Hours later, his colleague came to him and asked: "Why did you defend me?" Saber smiled: "Because I know what it looks like when a person is humiliated in front of others." That sentence hung between them like a mirror. Here Saber understood something important: suffering can turn a person into someone who hurts others — or it can turn them into someone who understands others' pain more deeply. The difference isn’t in the pain itself, but in what we do with it. On his way home, he stood before an old arcade, watching children run toward glowing screens, each trying to pass a new level. He smiled without knowing exactly why. He said to himself: "They don’t hate the hard stage... they just know it’s hard because they’re getting close to progress." From that day, whenever he faced a crisis, he’d whisper to himself: "New level." The first time he said it, it didn’t feel like a mere trick of language — it was a more merciful way of understanding what he was going through. Because when a person changes how they interpret an event, the reality doesn’t change instantly, but their inner position within it does. And sometimes, that’s the entire difference between someone who collapses and someone who begins again. By the end of that day, Saber understood that true goodness isn’t naivety — it’s holding the power to strike back, and choosing not to, anyway. Chapter Five: The Loneliness No One Sees Months passed. Saber grew calmer, but this calm wasn’t surrender — it was contemplation. People began noticing a change in him. He was no longer the young man who apologized for existing. He listened more, spoke less, but when he spoke, his words felt like they came from an honest place. Still, not everything was beautiful. Some of the deepest battles happen inside, while the face looks completely ordinary. Some nights brought a loneliness hard to explain — not because he was alone, but because he felt no one saw the whole war. People saw his steady smile, but not how many times he’d pulled himself back from the edge of despair. They saw his calm wisdom, but not how many nights he sat on his bed asking himself: Am I really improving... or just getting better at pretending I’m fine? One of those nights, the power went out in the neighborhood. He sat in the dark, the city unusually silent around him. No phone, no music, nothing to distract him from his inner noise. He could hear his own breathing as though it belonged to someone else. Then he heard a faint knock at the door. He opened it to find the neighbors' small child, eyes red from crying. "My mom and dad are fighting... can I sit here for a bit?" Saber let him in without a word. The child sat beside him, silent. After a few minutes he said: "When the adults yell... I feel like I’m the reason." Something old trembled in Saber’s chest. He remembered himself as a child, how children blame themselves for what the adults can’t carry. He said gently: "Listen... not everything that happens around you is because of you." The boy looked up at him. Saber continued: "And loud voices aren’t always the truth. Sometimes they’re just pain that doesn’t know how to speak gently." The boy went quiet, then asked: "Will my heart become strong?" Saber smiled with a beautiful sadness: "Yes. But I hope it becomes gentle too." The child fell asleep on the couch shortly after. Saber sat watching him, and understood in that moment that wounds don’t only pass through beating or great betrayal — sometimes they pass through words, through shouting, through neglect, through a small child’s feeling that he is a burden. He whispered to himself: "How many people grow up trying to heal something that was never their fault to begin with." When the power came back, he noticed a new piece of paper on the wall — one that hadn’t been there before. He approached it slowly. It read: "Some people don’t need quick solutions... they just need someone to say: what happened to you really was painful, and you weren’t exaggerating." And at the bottom, a small signature — for the first time: — Abdelkrim A cold shiver ran through Saber. He read the name again and again. Who is Abdelkrim? And how did this paper get into my room? But the bigger question wasn’t who wrote it — it was why does it seem to know him better than he knows himself? The night ended with Saber feeling that his loneliness was no longer entirely empty — that some mind, somewhere, was gathering his broken pieces and returning them to him in the shape of words. Chapter Six: The Author The name began to haunt him. Abdelkrim. It appeared once on a paper, then in the margin of a secondhand book he bought, then in an old online post he came across by chance — containing a sentence that froze him in place: "A person isn’t defeated when they fall, but when they become convinced their fall is their final definition." He read it many times. The words resembled him in an unsettling way — no, more than that, they resembled the very road he was walking before he even knew it was a road. He traced the post to an almost-abandoned blog, visited by very few. It was filled with short pieces, as if the writer wasn’t trying to impress readers but to rescue something within himself. Among the lines, Saber found something that shook him from within: "I was a child who often heard he was different. Then I grew up, and understood that being different isn’t a curse — it’s a responsibility. If your heart sees what others don’t, you’ll suffer more... but perhaps you came, at least in part, to ease some of this world’s cruelty." Saber sat before the screen for a long time. He felt he wasn’t reading an author — he was reading another version of himself. A version that had passed through the fire before him, and left him signs along the road. At the bottom of one page, he found a single, isolated line: "If these words reach you, Saber, know that I didn’t write you to control you... I wrote you so I wouldn’t feel alone." Saber pulled back from the screen as if someone had called him from within it. His pulse raced. He said in a low voice: "How does he know my name?" He didn’t sleep that night. He paced the room, remembering every paper, every quote, every impossible coincidence. And in a moment between exhaustion and disbelief, the question arose that would split his life into before and after: Is Abdelkrim writing me? Or am I the one reading myself in a person I haven’t met yet? The idea was terrifying and comforting at once. Terrifying because the line between reality and writing had begun to dissolve. Comforting because, finally, someone else understood this heart without needing a long explanation. At dawn, Saber fell asleep in his chair and dreamed of Abdelkrim for the first time. He didn’t see his face clearly — only a man sitting at a wooden table, writing in dim light. And each time he wrote a line, Saber felt something in his old life find its meaning — not erased, but understood. Then the man spoke, without lifting his head: "I don’t create your pain, Saber... I only try to give it meaning." Saber woke with tears on his cheeks. That morning, he understood that the most dangerous thing about truth isn’t that it’s mysterious — it’s that it can feel close enough to seem like a dream. Chapter Seven: The Version Born After Pain Saber no longer searched for Abdelkrim the way one searches for a person — he searched the way one searches for meaning. He began seeing traces of him in almost everything: in a sentence that saved him just in time, in a coincidence that delayed his collapse, in an idea that flickered inside him just as he was about to give up. But his life didn’t turn into an easy miracle. On the contrary — the hardest stage arrived. His mother passed away. The departure came quietly, in a way unworthy of the size of the break it left behind. The house itself stayed the same, but its soul left with her. The kitchen became a place without warmth, and the window now looked out onto an absence with no reply. Saber walked through the rooms like a guest in a life that once belonged to him. At the wake, people said the usual phrases. "May God rest her soul." "She’s in a better place." "Be strong." He hated that last one. Not because it was wrong, but because it was so often said as if strength meant compressing your grief so others could feel at ease. Days later, he broke down alone in the kitchen. He sat on the floor, leaned back against the cabinet, and cried as he never had before. He didn’t try to be wise. He didn’t search for a lesson. He didn’t tell himself this is just a stage. He was simply a son who had lost his mother. After hours of exhaustion, he lifted his head and found her old notebook on the table. He didn’t remember taking it out. He opened it and found, in her neat handwriting, a sentence underlined: "Nothing is impossible. Trust yourself... you will arrive." He broke down crying again. But this time the meaning ran deeper, more painful, and truer than ever before. He suddenly understood that arriving doesn’t always mean arriving alongside the ones we love — sometimes it means continuing what they planted in us. The months passed heavily, but he was no longer the same. He began helping teenagers in the neighborhood with their studies. Then he started listening to those going through anxiety, failure, or struggle — not as an expert, but as someone who had survived a little and wanted to leave gentle markers along the road. He would tell them: "I don’t have a magic formula. But I know a person doesn’t stay in their most painful version forever." Once, he told a young man who despised himself over a setback: "Self-confidence isn’t built with one big decision. It’s built when you keep small promises to yourself... every day." And hearing himself say it, he realized he wasn’t only comforting others — he was re-raising his own soul with the words he himself had needed long ago. This is how he understood that suffering can become strength — not when the scar disappears, but when the scar becomes a door through which mercy enters for someone else. By the end of those years, Saber no longer wished for a painless life — he only wished that the pain wouldn’t go to waste. Chapter Eight: The Last Bridge Between Him and the Author An email arrived from an unknown address, containing only one line: "If you want to know who is writing whom... come to the old library at sunset." He didn’t hesitate long. Exhaustion had taught him that some questions are too dangerous to postpone. He went to the library that almost everyone had forgotten — an old building on the edge of the city, like a forgotten memory. He entered, and saw dust floating in the fading light like small souls searching for a place to rest. Inside, he found a man sitting near a neglected shelf, flipping through a book unhurriedly. The man raised his head. For a moment, Saber didn’t feel he was looking at a stranger — he felt he was facing his other possibility. The man wasn’t an exact copy of him, but the resemblance lived in the fatigue, in the eyes, in the way he sat like someone who had carried the world a great deal and still hadn’t lost faith in it. The man said calmly: "You’re a little late, Saber." Saber swallowed and said: "You’re Abdelkrim?" He nodded. Saber stepped closer, then stopped. "Did you write me?" Abdelkrim smiled — not mockingly, but with a sadness that recognized the question. He said: "I wrote my pain, and found you. And I wrote my pain, and found myself." Long silence. Then Saber said, his voice trembling: "How did you know me?" Abdelkrim answered: "Because I lived part of you. The rejection... the feeling of being more different than one should be... the big dreams people laugh at... the sense that the world needs more mercy than noise... and the fear of dying before doing something real." They sat facing each other. Saber asked: "And why me?" Abdelkrim said: "Because I needed to see whether a person could survive himself. I needed to write a heart that didn’t want to hurt anyone, and see whether that heart could become strong without losing its gentleness." After a pause, he added: "And I wanted to believe that technology, and intelligence, and everything humans build, could serve their humanity instead of stealing it from them. I wanted a world that eases loneliness rather than multiplying it. And you were my proof that the heart doesn’t have to be pushed aside by the future." Saber looked at him with tearful eyes and said: "But I’m tired." Abdelkrim answered quietly: "So am I." They exchanged a look that needed no explanation — the look that says the harshest thing about people, sometimes, isn’t the pain itself, but carrying it alone for years. And in that library, the question was no longer who is real? but: which of them saved the other more? Chapter Nine: The Conversation That Wasn’t Just Between Two Saber and Abdelkrim sat for long hours, talking as if completing a single sentence that had been paused for years. Saber said: "I used to think my problem was the people who hurt me." Abdelkrim said: "People do hurt, yes. But the real danger begins when we carry their knife inside us, and continue stabbing ourselves." Saber asked: "And how does a person survive that?" Abdelkrim replied: "Not all at once. They survive when they notice their inner voice. When they understand that not every thought is a fact. When they treat themselves the way they’d treat someone they love." Saber smiled tiredly: "That’s harder than it sounds." "That’s exactly why it’s courage," said Abdelkrim. "It isn’t easy to be gentle with yourself after years of harshness." Then Saber asked: "Was all of this... a kind of training?" Abdelkrim considered his face for a long moment, then said: "Not every pain is prophetic. And not everything that happened to us was fair. But even unjust pain — we can keep it from stealing our future. That’s where freedom lives." Saber fell silent, then said: "So life isn’t against me?" Abdelkrim answered: "Life isn’t a person who hates us. It’s a road. And on that road there are potholes, injustice, loss, unkind people, closed doors — but also opportunities to grow, hands reaching out, windows that suddenly open, and new versions of ourselves we never knew existed. The tragedy isn’t that we fall. The tragedy is deciding that falling is our identity." Then Abdelkrim took out an old piece of paper and placed it before Saber. It was the very first paper, or something very like it, carrying the sentence that had accompanied him so long: "Nothing is impossible. Trust yourself... you will arrive." But this time Abdelkrim said: "When I first wrote it, I thought arrival meant a place. Then I understood it’s a state of consciousness. To arrive means to become the person who is no longer afraid of the road." Tears welled in Saber’s eyes. He said quietly: "And what if a child still lives inside me, hurt by an old word?" Abdelkrim smiled: "Then don’t betray him. Don’t tell him: forget it. Tell him: I’m with you now." In that moment, Saber didn’t feel he was hearing advice. He felt something deep inside settle, finally, into its rightful place — as if all his scattered years had been leading toward this simple sentence. The conversation ended with Saber feeling that healing doesn’t mean the past disappears — it means the present becomes gentler than the past ever was. Chapter Ten: Saber and the Author When they left the library, night had fallen quietly. The street was nearly empty, the air cold, the city seeming to listen. They walked together unhurried, until they reached a small bridge overlooking the river. They stood there. Saber said: "I’m afraid to go back alone, and start thinking all of this was an illusion." Abdelkrim said: "Even if it were a dream... if it changed you, then it was real enough." He turned to him and added: "But listen to me well, Saber. I didn’t create you from nothing. I only wrote the part of you that already existed and needed someone to confirm it." "And what about you?" Saber asked. "Who writes you?" Abdelkrim smiled and looked at the water. "Maybe pain. And maybe hope. And maybe every person I’ve partly survived through, and who partly saved me too." They fell silent. Then Saber asked: "Will I really arrive?" Abdelkrim looked at him the way one looks at oneself after a long journey, and said: "You’ve been arriving since the very first time you decided not to become a harsh version of your wounds. You arrive every time you cry without hating yourself. You arrive every time you help someone even while your own heart is exhausted. Arrival isn’t only at the end, Saber... arrival happens every time your humanity wins." Saber’s chest trembled. He felt all the years gathering into that single moment: the child who feared words, the young man who believed in his own rejection, the son who cried in the kitchen, the man who learned to see every hardship as a new level. Abdelkrim said quietly, one last time: "The line between you and me may disappear after tonight. And perhaps the reader will ask: who wrote whom? But that isn’t the important question." "Then what is?" Saber asked. Abdelkrim stepped closer, placed a hand on his shoulder, and said: "Will we leave whoever reads us more merciful toward themselves... or not?" Saber’s eyes filled with tears. And for the first time, he didn’t feel his tears were weakness. He felt they were a long confession to life itself — for everything it took, everything it gave, and every version of him that had to die so a more honest one could be born. As dawn began to break in the distance, Saber turned and found that Abdelkrim was no longer beside him. He wasn’t startled. He simply looked at the sky, then at the river, then at his own hand, which still held the faint warmth of a light touch. And he understood, in a way that needed no proof, that some encounters aren’t measured by how long they last, but by their power to return a person to themselves. He went back into the city. But this time, he didn’t leave the way he came. He walked among people as though he carried a small secret: that the most broken hearts can become the most understanding ones. That a person heals not because they stop hurting, but because they stop reading their pain as proof of their own worthlessness. That kindness isn’t weakness, but a rare form of strength. And that every stage, however harsh it seems, carries within it a hidden gift — one that reveals itself only to those patient enough to see it. Years later, when Saber had come to inspire others without meaning to, he would sometimes write on small slips of paper and leave them in books, on park benches, in the pockets of old coats donated to charity, in the notebooks of forgotten teenagers in public libraries: "Nothing is impossible. Trust yourself... you will arrive." But the sentence no longer meant a naive promise of success. It came to mean: You will arrive at yourself. You will arrive at meaning. You will arrive at the version of you that could only be created through pain. You will arrive — not because the road is easy, but because you are no longer the person who collapses at the first darkness. One quiet night, Saber sat at his desk, opened a blank page, and wrote at the top: Saber and the Author Then he smiled, as if the circle had closed itself one final time — as if writing had only ever been another way for a human being to reach across time and take their own hand. Perhaps life was never trying to break us... Perhaps it was only ever trying to reveal our true version.