Some people come and go in our lives as if they had never really been there. They visit your life, leave barely a trace and fade over time until they are just a vague echo in your memories. And then there are people like Sophia. People who not only stay, but who, even when they disappear, always find their way back to you - as if it was predestined.
I didn't look for Sophia. Our lives had driven us apart and I had come to terms with that. We never argued, even if we sometimes didn't realise how much we actually loved each other. It was just the way life happens sometimes. Time passed, the days turned into years and at some point she was just one of those memories that sometimes appear out of nowhere and linger for a moment before disappearing back into everyday life.
And then she was suddenly there again.
It was on the train, on a normal day, when I was lost in my thoughts without really paying attention to my surroundings. I sat in a corner, my head leaning against the window, while outside the city passed me by. People came and went, faces I didn't recognise, voices I didn't pay attention to. And then I felt something - a presence that was familiar to me even before I raised my head.
When I lifted my head, I saw her.
Sophia was standing just a few metres away, and I could see a glimmer of surprise and joy in her gaze. She had hardly changed. Her eyes - alert, penetrating eyes that seemed to see more than others. Her hair fell loosely over her shoulders, a strand had come loose from her plait. She looked as if she had never been away.
For a moment, it was as if time had taken a leap, as if the intervening years hadn't really happened. I was surprised and didn't know what to say. But I didn't hesitate, I immediately felt at ease. There was no uncertain feeling out or strangeness. It was just this wonderful recognition.
I can't remember which of us said something first. Maybe it was an astonished ‘You?’ or a puzzled ‘What are you doing here?’ But in the end, it didn't matter. Because at that moment, Sophia was back.
A reunion that felt like an arrival
From that day on, we met again. First by chance, then on purpose. Sometimes for a coffee, sometimes for a walk. And each time it was as if we had never stopped talking to each other.
Sophia had a special way of dealing with people. She didn't ask questions that she couldn't answer herself. She listened, really listened, not just with her ears, but with her whole body, with her whole attention. She didn't have to agree, she didn't always have to understand, but she let me know that my words carried weight.
I told her things that I hardly ever confided in anyone else. About my past, about my hopes and fears. I could be honest with her. I hid nothing, neither my sadness nor my joy, neither my doubts nor my hopes. I knew that she wouldn't fool me, that she wouldn't try to comfort me with cheap phrases or empty promises.
‘Every word you say is true,’ she said to me once.
I looked at her questioningly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You don't pretend everything is fine when it's not. Most people do. But you're real.’
Maybe that was why she kept coming into my life. Because there were very few people I didn't have to hide from.
A special connection
Over time, I realised that there was something special between us. Not love in the classic sense, not a simple friendship. It was something deeper, something that couldn't be put into words.
Sometimes I wondered whether it was a coincidence that we had found each other or whether life had brought us together again and again on purpose. Perhaps there are people who are meant for you - not as partners, not as family, but as companions, as souls who cross paths again and again, no matter how far apart they may have become in the meantime.
Sophia was such a person for me.
I have often thought about why she was so important to me. Because she understood me without me having to explain myself? Because she asked the right questions without expecting answers? Or was it simply the knowledge that I could be myself in her presence without fear of being judged?
Maybe she was an angel. Not in the religious sense, not with wings and a halo. But there was something about her that reassured me in a strange way. When I spoke to her, when she looked at me with that penetrating gaze, I felt understood. Not pitied, not analysed - simply seen.
There were nights when we talked for hours about God and the world, about things that had happened and things that would never happen. There were moments when we just sat next to each other in silence because words weren't necessary. And sometimes I thought that if I could only keep one person in my life, it would be her. I remember long phone calls in which we shared our worries, even when we didn't see each other. At the time, I was in Kunduz and she was in Munich, and even when I was in Germany in between, we couldn't meet.
Sophia is the most extraordinary woman I have ever met. And sometimes she is an angel.
And even though life sometimes took us apart, she always found her way back to me.