"Sightless Stars and Scarlet Ink: The Unseen Love of Ada and Layth"

Letter I – From Ada Manssouri to Layth Soufi

Casablanca, 14 August 1942

My Dearest Layth,

This evening, with the call to prayer still reverberating in my ears, I draw my fingers along those engravings on the parchment which read out your name. Although my left eye is shrouded in darkness, to me, you look elaborately exotic—the twitch of your smile, the inflection in your voice when you mention the stars. Remember that night we took a walk on the roof? You told me the constellations while flexing your grip around my palm. From the stories you narrated, it seemed like they were woven together with magic. You mentioned that Orion’s belt was a bridge between souls, and I swear the universe shifted to make us feel closer to each other.

The medina sounds quieter whenever you choose to keep your laughter to yourself. Just yesterday, I passed by the saffron and cedar vendor, and the scents gave me a fabulous surprising shock because they are so strongly associated to you. I descended beside the fountain where you told your poems, hoping to hear the words whisper from the water because as I said before, it's simply not enough to listen to the gurgle of water. Why is it so intolerable to want someone desperately who feels like a weight, a lost limb I yearn for in the pitch dark?

You’ve now been trained as a soldier, but to me, you are forever the poet who kissed the scars that were adorned to me and claimed them to be art. Remember, do not let the battlefield erase the gentleness that makes you, you. I wish I could give you a glimpse into my heart, so you could feel how uniquely heavy the world has grown. Layth, my heart imagines you to be unbreakable, even as it storms.

I wish I could wrap my pleads into the hem of your name so I could stitch them along with hopes I have for you. Not as a hero, but as the man who pressed a single orange blossom into my palm, telling me, “This is how your soul smells.”

Not to be smooth and undetermined, but to exist beyond sight and time, wherever that may be,

Ada

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Letter II – From Layth Soufi to Ada Manssouri

Near the Front Lines, 20 September 1942

To My Beloved Ada,

With your name floating on my lips, I find myself in the trenches where the atmosphere stinks of iron and mud. The flickering light of a dying candle has me wondering about Casablanca, picturing your laughter painting the waves crashing on the Corniche. What are your thoughts on that rainy day when we decided to hide in the bookshop? While you were whispering, “Love is the wound that heals us,” and tracing the Braille in Rumi’s verses, I was fulfilled to the core. In this desolated region, your words are the stitches I desperately need.

Last night, a shell shattered the farmhouse where we’d taken as our resting place. I stumbled across some rubble and found a rauch rose with bruised yet unyielding petals. Whilst pondering over your blind eye and how you’ve always managed to teach me that ‘the pulse’ is who you truly are the world in fact lies, I pondered over silk hair. The tremor in my voice while speaking my last goodbye is something I will forever drown in. You are my compass and your letters are worn against my chest. I find myself coming back to your words more and more, for they bring me comfort.

They say I am a leader in this area, but you will always be my guiding light. When fear overtakes the men, I tell them about the woman who uses touch to navigate through the world’s brokenness Aad, you have turned my prose into poetry. When I speak your name, the gunfire seems to hold still.

Wait for me in the orange grove. I will return home to you, and together, we will read Rumi until the war feels like a faintly remembered nightmare.

In every scar and syllable, yours,

Layth

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Letter III – From Ada Manssouri to Layth Soufi

Casablanca, 5 October 1942

Dearset Layth,

With fall’s arrival, the air brings with it the taste of salt and cheeky nostalgia. I can be found sitting under the fig tree, as the heavy fruits dangle from its branches. The weight feels unbearable for me to even touch without your presence. Children are dancing around the square, their voices shining like gold coins. I envision your hands shaping beautiful stories for them, ones where brave knights wield pens instead of swords.

When Fatima asked me why I light two candles at dusk, I told her one is for faith, the other for a soldier-writer who romantic praises in the muddy battlefield. I know you would understand, even if she doesn’t. You’ve always been someone who could see the vibrations in silence and feel the prayers that can be said in a pause.

With my fingers, I memorised your last letter, tracing each part of your script like a cartologist trying to chart out his way home. When you explained the rose in the ruins, my eyes became moist. Do you have an idea of what I whispered to the night? “May he find beauty and remember me.”

The music echoing from the tailor shop down the street evokes the emotions of being separated from you. I sing along with it, my voice cracking, as I picture your warm breath grazing my neck. Come back to me Layth. When you do, I will show you how a woman with only one eye can perceive eternity in a singular kiss.

I’m forever yours,

Who tastes the sea and thinks of your tears

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Letter IV – From Layth Soufi to Ada Manssouri

The Front, 1 December 1942

My Eternal Ada,

While winter has delivered its offense upon the land, your words are the ones that melt the ice in my veins. I dreamt of your hands last night; remember the ones that fashioned my heart into something whole? You were stitching a woven tapestry of our memories together: the mint tea tang on your lips, and the way you gasped when I first kissed the scar above your blind eye. “You are my moon,” you said. “Even when I cannot see you, I feel your pull.”

On the nights the cannon fires, I put it on my wrists and pretend the battlefield is our courtyard and the smoke surrounding us is a veil hiding us from the world. My men think of me to be losing my mind, but that is the cost of loving you across continents. Don't you agree?

Today, in my arms lay a boy, as he drawed his final breath while pleading to his sweetheart in Marseille. I delivered his letter, and as I penned hers, I cried for all the unused words between us. Ada, please forgive me. War has transformed me into a thief of time.

But I still manage to find time to sneak off and keep dreaming. I remember your voice, always calm and confident, reciting Hafez as we drift off to sleep.Listen to the warm melodies of the children we will raise, the smiles and laughter will bring peace to our wounds Of growing old, your face etched with lines I’ll trace like sacred text.

The world is on fire, But I’ll tell you this, you are the ember that our souls ache for the moment the blaze is consumed. Slowly and painfully I will stoke the flame and bring it back to life, my love. I hope you are ready because I am on my way home.

There has always been a reluctance on my side to accept my punishment. Society calls people like me a dreamer or a spectator just waiting to die.

Yours, in this life and the next,

Layth

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A faded letter: Presed between the pages is an orange blossom that gives off a faint scent even after drying and loses its luster over time, and it is believed to be Ada’s last letter. With “You are my sight” being inscribed Braille on the back.