He went to the library after class and thought about her sudden disappearance. Undergrads preparing for mid-term exams and equally ambitious postgraduates doing early research for their theses littered every section of the circular, three-story library. Murad found a lone table and made an effort to do some research for his class on internal migration. When he finished working in the early evening, he felt focused and lucid, his mind free of the clouded haze that often weighed it down. He went outside and sat on the same concrete slab where he had first met Sofi. The sky’s leaden greyness was darkening, and Murad found himself surrounded by small, atomized groups of students huddled together. He thought about the email she’d sent him. He had no reason to call her. He had nothing that he needed to say, no wound that needed to be tended. There was only an absence felt, a persistent emptiness without her presence.

He dialed her number. She picked up. For a brief moment, Murad hesitated to say anything.

“Sofi, it’s Murad,” he said, finally.

“Hi,” she said, almost too casually.

“I got your message.” There was silence. He fumbled for words. “I got your message, and I thought I should call.”

“Is everything all right?” she asked, her voice sounding more concerned.

“No, no, everything’s fine. I saw you in class and you left so quickly that I didn’t get a chance to ask you about dinner. I made you a promise, and I’d feel like I’d be losing all my manners if I didn’t follow through with it.”

“I don’t doubt you’re the type who’d fail to keep a promise, Murad,” said Sofi. There was amusement in her voice, the tone light, soft and comforting.

“The answer’s yes then?”

She laughed. “Is it a date?”

“Two people sharing a meal. Let’s leave it at that.”

There was a pause on the other line. “Where and when?” she asked.

Murad looked around at the slate, anemic buildings surrounding him. “Any place that’s not school.”

#

At her suggestion, they were to meet in Covent Garden, near the station, for lunch on Saturday. Covent Garden on any given weekend was exactly what Murad had hoped the city would be when he’d first arrived in London. It truly seemed like the centre of the world, visitors and residents alike blending together with seamless fluidity. He hurried to the restaurant off Long Acre that Sofi recommended. It was a bistro, half-spilling into the street, with metal chairs and tables covered under a broad canopy. He saw Sofi to his right as he entered, sitting at a small, rounded table in front of the window. Her coat was draped over the back of her chair and she wore a thick, white, high-necked sweater. She peered outside and turned to him as he walked toward the table, without any trace of anticipation, as if waiting for someone else.

“You’re late,” she said, before Murad could greet her. She rubbed her hands together, her elbows on the table.

He apologized, removed his jacket and took the seat across from her. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good,” she said absently, staring back through the window. A waiter came by the table. They both ordered the soup of the day.

“I had a realization last night,” said Murad.

She turned and gave him a quizzical look. “What?”

“We’ve been talking about me all this time and I haven’t asked anything about you.”

Sofi took one of the breadsticks from the container on the table and delicately broke it in two. “I said I wanted to get to know you. This has nothing to do with me.”

“This shouldn’t be a one-sided relationship, you know? We are getting to know each other.”

Sofi nodded her head. “Maybe. I guess you’re right.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning forward. “We started at the beginning with me. Let’s start at the beginning with you. Where were you born?”

“Here, in London.” She explained how her father had been a petroleum engineer, doing work with BP in Britain when she was born. He also had an accounting degree (“a genius with numbers,” said Sofi). The family left for Dubai around her first birthday. She spent a few years in private British schools in the Gulf before work dried up for expatriates. They decided to immigrate to Toronto rather than go back to Pakistan or England.

Murad listened attentively, comparing her experiences to his, checking off all their commonalities: the same country of origin, the same globetrotting family history, an underlying sense of dislocation. As she spoke, the sense of familiarity he felt with her grew.

“Do you feel at home here?” he asked as a waiter came with water. “In London, I mean.”

“I’m good at making myself feel at home anywhere.”

“I think I’m the exact opposite of you.” The waiter brought their soup, quicker than Murad had anticipated. “I try to find home in far-off places but never succeed.”

“Have you tried in any place other than London?”

“I suppose not,” said Murad.

Neither one of them spoke for a few moments. Murad needed to restrain the urge to ask about every aspect of her life. Outside the window, he watched men and women in dark pea coats stepping carefully across the cobblestone pavement, as if ice covered the surface. They bore a solitary elegance, sharp-featured faces peering into their phones or walking with a determined pace to destinations unknown without companions, weaving through each other like lone atoms repelling each other.

*Drinking the Ocean* by Saad Omar Khan (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)

About Drinking the Ocean:

The day after his thirty-third birthday, Murad spots a familiar face at a crowded intersection in downtown Toronto. Shocked, he stands silently as Sofi, a woman he’d fallen in love with almost a decade ago, walks by holding the hand of a small child. Murad turns and descends the subway steps to return home to his wife as the past washes over him and he is taken back to the first time they met.

As Murad’s and Sofi’s lives touch and separate, we see them encounter challenges with relationships, family and God, and struggle with the complexities facing Muslims in the West. With compassion and elegance, Saad Omar Khan delicately illuminates the arcs of these two haunted lives, moved by fate and by love, as they absorb the impact of their personal spiritual journeys.

ABOUT SAAD OMAR KHAN

Saad Omar Khan was born in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistani parents and lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong and South Korea before immigrating to Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and has completed a certificate in Creative Writing from the School of Continuing Studies (University of Toronto) where he was a finalist for the Random House Creative Writing Award (2010 and 2011) and for the Marina Nemat Award (2012). In 2019, he was longlisted for the Guernica Prize for Literary Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2025 and other publications.