Why a Professor cancelled his flight for me

He arrived in silence with three books in his hand and a face that held years of withheld sentences, the kind of man who never looked twice unless he meant it, and when I asked if he wanted a drink, he said he only drinks when he loses control, but that afternoon he stayed, not for the wine, not for my dress, not for Dubai, but because I answered a question he hadn’t asked since his twenties and I did it by just sitting there with my knees crossed and a look that didn’t ask anything in return.

He told me he had a flight to catch in three hours and a lecture to deliver on history and loneliness, and I asked him if he had ever spoken about the way a person can disappear in a city full of people without being lost, and he looked at me like I had just taken off his academic armor and reminded him he was once a man who didn’t write things down before feeling them, and I swear I didn’t say anything after that except “Don’t go yet,” and I whispered it in a way that didn’t need permission.

So he called the airline and told them he wasn’t coming, not today, not because he was sick or delayed or trapped, but because something had unfastened inside him quietly like a door no one noticed opening, and when he asked me if I was real, I told him I was only real to those who didn’t try to define me, and that’s when I became the only thing he couldn't explain.