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Messages from Her

If Kalsuma had had any doubts about Azhar’s interest in her and why he had opted for an arranged marriage they were removed on one particular day.

Kalsuma had felt Azhar’s interest was indeed serious and genuine when he sent her a message that day panicking that he could no longer see her on his Whatsapp messenger.  Kalsuma had no idea why she wasn’t showing up. Even if she had blocked him he would still be able to see her name appear, while her picture would be removed.

These were the joys of modern communication.  You could block someone on a messenger application to show them that you no longer wanted to speak to them.  You didn’t need to write this out, let alone verbally communicate the message to them.  As the number of people you might speak to was increasing with globalised technologies, the methods of removing someone from your life was also easier. You could unfriend, unfollow or block someone if you had the mind to.  

However, in this case Kalsuma had not done any of these to Azhar and found it strange that he was so worried.  He must have been very anxious  as not only did he send a message asking if everything was ok via the troublesome WhatsApp messenger but he also sent several text messages asking her if there was a problem.  Double messaging, and messaging through normal text was only reserved for emergency situations when there was no Wifi and you were desperate to get in touch with someone.  People rarely used old fashioned text messages anymore. Oddly enough text messaging was free,what with all of the mobile packages giving unlimited text and call packages. Nevertheless it was reserved for special occasions and Azhar had resorted to a text to check she wasn't upset with him and was still talking to him. This was serious.

His messages were light but she could sense the worry, “Hey I can’t find you on WhatsApp” he first said.

Then 3 minutes later, “Is everything ok? Don’t you have WhatsApp anymore?” 

And another message a couple of minutes later said "hi Me again, what’s up?”

Another message, “You ok Kalsuma, get back to me when you can?”

Kalsuma hadn’t seen the messages as she was at work.  When she looked at her phone during lunch time she saw all ten messages at once.  “hey, hey, I really don’t know what’s wrong she replied. “It’s raining heavily here so it might be causing connection issues? I still do have WhatsApp, I haven’t removed or uninstalled it, you should be able to see me on there.”

The culprit of the panic might have been a storm. There was extremely stormy weather in Oxford that day and perhaps her Wifi connection dropped.  It was a mystery but there really was no explanation as Kalsuma had been too busy at work that day to check her phone let alone block and unblock someone.  She reassured Azhar that it must have been the storm playing with her connectivity. She hoped he was happy with her response.

He replied at the end of the day, “no worries”.  He went from frantic to at ease pretty quickly, but that day’s communication made Kalsuma believe that he truly cared about her, perhaps he cared for her more than she thought as he was so worried about losing her.

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