One Choice, Many Lives

Aidha Khan

- 

In our village, old weaver Nan sat every evening on her wooden porch. The boards sighed under her chair. Her loom stood near her knees, and her fingers moved over the threads as if they knew stories before words did. She liked to speak while she worked. Her voice carried dust, rain, and age.

“Every regret makes another life | somewhere,” she once told me. Her eyes looked pale, like clouds before rain. “Kindness ties those lives together.”

I laughed then. I was sixteen and full of noise. The city had already claimed me in my head. I wanted tall buildings, clean shirts, and a name people would remember.