Saiyaara

The night sky in Montana was breathtaking — the kind of darkness that felt ancient, pierced by stars that seemed too sharp, too perfect to be real. Samira stood alone on her porch, wrapped in an oversized sweater, her bare feet cold against the wooden boards. She tilted her head upward, letting the stars fill the spaces her heart had grown too tired to fill on its own.

She whispered the word again, quietly, like a prayer.

“Saiyaara.”

It was the only word her mother used in Urdu when she smiled at the stars. Wandering star, she’d said once. A name for those who don’t quite belong anywhere.

Now, years after her mother’s passing, Samira had begun to feel like one herself.

Born in London to Pakistani parents and now living in a small town in America, Samira had never quite found home. Her accent was confusing to most. Her name, unfamiliar. Her past? Too complicated to explain without the inevitable pause — that moment when people didn’t know what to say because grief made them uncomfortable.

She worked at the local library — quiet days among quiet people. She liked the silence. It didn’t ask her to pretend.

It was a Tuesday in late autumn when he came in — a wiry old man with eyes like wet coal and a tremble in his left hand. He came to the front desk with a piece of yellowed paper and a hopeful smile.

“I’m looking for something,” he said, voice rough with age. “Not a book. A person. Maybe you could help.”

She took the paper, gently, and looked down. A name written in beautiful, old-fashioned script: Amina Jilani.

Her breath caught. That was her mother’s name.

“How… how do you know her?”

The man’s eyes softened. “We were children in Karachi. In the 60s. She moved to the UK before I ever got to say goodbye. I wrote her letters, but I don’t think she ever got them. I just moved here last year. I was hoping…”

He trailed off. Samira’s lips trembled as she nodded slowly.

“She died. Three years ago.”

There was a long silence. The kind that feels both heavy and strangely comforting — like the hush after snow.

“She used to call me Saiyaara,” she said finally. “Said I was born under stars that refused to settle.”

The man smiled, and for a moment, it was like watching a window open into the past.

“She used to look at the sky like it was speaking to her. Always wondered if someone that full of dreams could stay in one place.”

They sat on the library’s worn couch for over an hour, sharing stories — fragments of a woman Samira had only known as her mother, but who had once been a girl with sunburned cheeks and poems in her pockets.

As the man left, he turned and said, “She was a galaxy. And now I see — so are you.”

That night, Samira drove out to the open fields just beyond the edge of town. She lay on the hood of her car, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes tracing the constellations.

She realized she had spent so much time trying to belong that she’d forgotten she came from someone who had taught her to wonder. Her mother hadn’t asked her to fit in — she’d asked her to shine, even if it meant shining alone.

She whispered the word again — not as a question this time, but as a declaration.

“Saiyaara.”

A star that wanders.

But still a star.

The Takeaway

In a world obsessed with roots, sometimes our strength lies in being unrooted — in learning how to carry home within us, rather than looking for it in others. We are shaped by our past, yes, but not bound by it.

Saiyaara isn’t just a name.

It’s a reminder.

That even those who wander still carry light.