Loneliness Is The Language of the World

By Lina Taj

A very short and lonely story

A benevolent winter — 1952

The tranquillity of winter always seemed to rekindle a peculiar flicker of creativity in the trembling fingers of an aging lady. Lovingly, but rather haphazardly, she threaded a miniature cello from old rags she found scattered around her small house, serving as a feeble reminder of all those who had taken up residence at her place at some point in time. However, silence now occupied corners where conversations once brewed — the only sound breaking through the tangled mesh of stillness was the frequent crackling of the fireplace. Still, she carefully pulled the threads back and forth, pouring all of her attention on the little cello taking shape in her hands rather than the bare cupboards, the soulless rooms, and the untrodden carpets. All around her, the silence grew like ivy on cracked walls, metaphysical evidence that loneliness, like a loyal companion to the soundless foundation of the house, had become a permanent inhabitant of her life.

A failing relics shop — 2000

The primitive goal of the relics shop on the corner street was not to overflow and prosper with unmatched riches but to serve as a sanctuary to all the familial antiques that lost familial ties with those who owned them. And so, the lonely antiques found themselves perched on high shelves with dust sprinkling on them like a slow, unnatural downpour. Ranging from necklaces with fragile chains to embroidered miniature cellos — the newest addition to the collection, albeit very strangely put together and dropped off hurriedly by an energetic young woman — the owner was rather content with the little collection she nestled. As days turned into weeks, and weeks melted into months, and the months were verging on becoming years, the shop remained static. No items were left and no money was exchanged. The owner’s mornings often wilted away while perched on a chair, awaiting the ding of the bell above the entrance that signified the arrival of a customer (any customer, please!). But the dinging never came.

And she stayed among the forlorn antiques, the loneliness diffusing out of the very material that made them, dampening the atmosphere of the shop with a gloomy mist.

A leafy barren subway station — 2023

A foreign country, a friendless fella, and a dozen dead leaves hindering the causal saunter of the common folk were not exactly the building blocks for a distressing remedy. A young man stood on a platform awaiting his usual morning train, ready — almost — to start another day on the conveyor belt of unending lectures. As he felt unease pulling on the strings of his peace, threatening to snap them apart, the faded outline of a cello doll became unnervingly obvious in the pocket of his jacket. He took it out and gave it a gentle squeeze and a roaring river of nostalgia started surging through his veins, as if all it took for him to reminisce about his family back home in a very distant continent was to take a little glimpse at this old —and almost decaying— miniature cello his father got from an antiques shop some twenty years ago. He could not explain it — he wasn’t even sure if any set of words would have explained what he attempted to say — but there was a peculiar consoling film associated with the doll, as if whoever made it had sneaked a fine thread of bittersweetness through its wool. As if whoever made it understood the dire need of the forlorn to be consoled out of their loneliness. He couldn’t fathom it, but the doll seemed to utter a wordless language.

And it seemed to spit out one universal fact:

You are not alone in your loneliness.