He Would Be Mad If I Didn't Call

And I remember telling one of my closest friends, hey just out of the blue it hit me I turned to him and I said: you now, you are one of those friends if I was really in the shit I Would call you, and his reaction, is he didn’t say thank you, he said, I’d be mad if you didn’t, when you don’t call me and say I’m in the mud, you deny me the opportunity, the honor of setting in mud with you. - Simon Sinek

Every time I hear that, I think of Abdalwahab. We used to pray at the same small mosque near my home, nothing more than a hall, really, a modest room that held the neighborhood together. and then I would disappear. just gone, the way I always went, my patterns pulling me inward for weeks or months at a time. and when I came back I wouldn’t think I had done anything wrong. I’d return to the mosque, to the street, to the familiar corners, and find that everyone was fine. no one had noticed. and I hadn’t expected them to. I didn’t even fully understand what had happened, only that I had needed time alone and taken it, the way I always did, without announcement.

But not Abdalwahab. he was the only one who noticed. and the only one who was upset.

He would tell me: why did you disappear? why didn’t you tell me? I came to your house, I knocked, you weren’t there, you weren’t answering. and I would stand there not fully understanding why it mattered to him the way it did, because to me, nothing had happened. I had just been away. but to him, my absence was something he had felt, something he had shown up for and found closed doors. someone who refuses to perform indifference just to seem unbothered. he wasn’t performing anything. he was just telling the truth about missing me.

And then, not ten minutes later, we would be fine. back to normal, two kids walking home from the mosque like nothing had passed between us. because nothing needed to be carried further than that. he said what was true, I heard it, and we moved on together.

That was Abdalwahab. he was there for me in the way that counts most, not when it was convenient, not when I made it easy, but consistently, even when I disappeared, even when I gave him no reason to keep showing up. he never wanted anything in return except to know I was fine. and even that, the wanting to know, was a form of love I didn’t have the language for yet when we were children.

I have it now. I just wish I could tell him in person.