Today I received a Whatsapp message from Ben, the boy who used to write me every day when we were both in the Sixth Form in our respective boarding schools in Ol’ Blighty.
He was a nerd of the first water, with thick Coke bottle glasses but me and my nerd-fetish had the greatest crush on him. He was my classmate in that preparatory college in DU, just months before we left for Londres in August 1988. We barely spoke to each other when we were classmates except for the time we both worked on the batch’s newsletter. I’d ride in his car with eight (❗️) other chaps to the pizza parlour after a particularly harrowing day trying to beat the deadline. Once we reached Blighty our friendship blossomed even further.
Everyone thought he was the Harry to my Sally, in fact we went to watch that movie together. We went to watch more than a few movies together, actually.. I remember “Silence of the Lambs” being one of them and I hid under his jacket during the gorier scenes. That was at the Empire at Leicester Square, just a hop, skip and jump away from my uni. He studied quantum physics at Imperial and I was at that old Leftie uni on Houghton Street.
We were always together, until I met Wes. I don’t know how he felt when I started dating Wes seriously. Ben and I were never boyfriend and girlfriend, I actually saw him as rather.. asexual. I never felt any sexual tension or anything with him… he’d hang out in my apartment till late and I’d yawn and say goodnight and retire to my room. That was the kind of relationship I had with him.
Ben was a witness at my nikkah with Wes. Wes used to take to him quite nicely those days. When Ben met his wife-to-be, he brought her to see me first, before he brought her to see his parents. He eventually married her (she happened to be my senior at that school on Bukit Merbah). I wasn’t even invited to the wedding… which I thought was rather strange. I always felt that she was never very comfortable with Ben seeing me, even in our large group of friends… the batch of students who were all sent to Blighty straight after the SPM results were announced.
I recently heard that he is now divorced (separated?) from his wife. He has 3 daughters, all grown ~ 2 have graduated and one is still in university. The last time we really spoke was after our Haj. Coincidentally, we performed our Haj in the same year ~ 2010. He took the muasassah package and I was on THTS’ Nilam package with Allahyarham Brix, so our paths never crossed whilst there.
He has run into some rather hard times now and needs some … help. Even though it is not easy for me now either, I feel I must do whatever I can to help ease his burdens. May Allah SWT make it easy for my friend Ben and open all paths of rizq for him. May Allah SWT makes things easy for me each time I try to lessen the burdens of His Creation.
Aameen 🤲🏻
