The Train Tracks Will Never Meet
Short story by Abdel Latif Moubarak Egyptian writer
Al-Ataba station was breathing steam and hustle, as it did every evening. Bodies moved hurriedly, bumping into one another without apology, every gaze searching for a sign pointing to the right platform for their life in the coming minutes.
Tariq stood on platform number four, clutching his old leather suitcase, worn out from too many journeys. He was a man who loved order to the point of madness; he wore his watch set to the second and remembered train schedules like the names of his siblings. For Tariq, life was made of straight lines and fixed rules: if you depart at seven, you arrive at eight, with no room for coincidence or improvisation.
A few meters away, on the same platform, Nada leaned against an old lamppost. She looked at her watch without seeing the numbers, smiled at a miserable-looking painter, and rummaged through her bag for a ticket she couldn’t remember placing. Nada lived life as if it were a musical score without fixed notes; she took the first arriving train and trusted the road to choose its travelers.
On that night, the route was too rigid to soften, and the train coming from Upper Egypt traveled northward, carrying two souls moving in the same direction, but on tracks destined never to meet.
The train departed with its familiar clatter, playing its usual symphony on the iron: tac-tac… tac-tac.
Tariq sat by the window in the second carriage, seat number fourteen. He pulled his small notebook from his pocket and began jotting down the day’s details: “Train delayed by four minutes… High humidity… Estimated speed eighty kilometers per hour.” For him, translating the world into numbers was the only way to control it.
On the other side of the same carriage, but in a rear-facing seat, Nada watched the reflection of her face on the dark glass. She pulled out a box of colored pencils and a small sketchbook, starting to draw random lines. She wasn’t drawing what she saw, but what she felt: the movement of the air, the screeching of iron, the noise of the minds around her.
The tea vendor passed by. Tariq ordered a weak tea with no sugar, while Nada asked for something warm and very sweet.
Their eyes met for a fleeting second as the vendor passed between them. It was a passing glance, like a ray of sunlight passing through a keyhole, but it was enough for Tariq to quickly shift his gaze back to his notebook and for Nada to stop drawing for a few seconds.
As the journey stretched on and the night grew quiet, fragmented conversations began to drift among the passengers. An elderly man spoke to a youth about rising prices, a child cried in the back, and the loudspeaker announced the upcoming stations.
Tariq pulled out an architecture book and began to read with intense concentration. He loved architecture because it represented strength and balance; walls do not change, and pillars hold up the roof without complaint.
On the other hand, Nada watched Tariq’s fingers turning the pages with meticulous regularity. She was struck by his exaggerated calm and neat appearance amidst all the chaos. She began to sketch his hand holding the book.
Suddenly, the train jerked violently as the emergency brakes were applied to slow down near a track switch. Tariq’s book fell, and Nada’s box of pencils slid across the dirty floor.
Both bent down at the same moment to gather their things.
Tariq’s hand reached out to grab a yellow pencil, and in that instant, his fingers brushed against Nada’s. The touch was warm, as if the electrical currents running through the train’s iron had migrated to their fingertips.
”Sorry…” Tariq said in a low, cautious voice, handing her the pencil.
Nada responded with a wide smile that melted the coldness of the moment: “Don’t worry, it was the pencil that decided to jump! Thank you very much.”
Tariq returned to his seat, but he didn’t reopen his book. There was something in her voice that refused to be translated into a mathematical equation. Nada, for her part, looked at her drawing and then at him, saying: “You read about engineering, but you sit like someone trying to build a prison around himself.”
Tariq was surprised by her bold candidness. How could a stranger read him with such ease?
He replied calmly: “Order isn’t a prison, miss. Order is what keeps this train from derailing and crushing us all.”
Nada laughed softly and replied: “But the track itself is a prison, sir! Two lines of dead iron, traveling together for a lifetime, seeing the same sights and arriving at the same place, but… they never meet.”
Silence fell between them like a heavy curtain, carrying an indisputable truth.
Her words kept spinning in Tariq’s head like an unstoppable gear. “Two tracks that never meet.” Had he always seen himself as one of those two lines?
The dialogue between them began to flow like a river. They talked about everything and nothing. He told her about his work as a planning engineer, his passion for order, and his old fear of surprises that bring loss. She told him about her work as a ceramicist, how she shapes clay with her hands without a predetermined plan, leaving it to the fire to give it its final form.
”You’re running away from possibilities, Tariq,” Nada said, looking at the dark roads flying past the window. “Life lies in the detours, in the minor errors that lead us to places we hadn’t planned for.”
Tariq countered: “And small errors can lead to the destruction of the train, Nada. Some lines were born to remain parallel, so that the journey may continue in peace.”
Each of them represented an entire world that refused to merge into the other, yet in that narrow carriage, they formed a strange harmony, like light and shadows.
The hours passed quickly, contrary to the usual long train rides. Dawn was approaching, and the color of the sky outside the window began to shift from dark blue to a rose-streaked gray.
Nada pulled a small piece of polymer clay from her bag, which she shaped in her free moments. She began to mold it between her fingers until she formed two parallel strips that curved slightly at the ends.
Handing it to him, she said: “This is for remembrance. The iron of the track… but curving at the end.”
Tariq took the small object with an emotion he couldn’t hide. No one had ever given him a gift lacking practical utility, but that piece of ceramic carried a weight far beyond its size.
He pulled out his notebook, quickly wrote his phone number on a small slip of paper, folded it carefully, and handed it to her: “This is my number… in case you ever want to read an engineering book one day.”
Nada smiled, took the paper, and placed it inside her sketchbook, between a page featuring a sketch of his face and another with the track extending into infinity.
The sound of iron brakes grinding violently against the rails reached their ears. The train was shedding its speed piece by piece.
The raspy voice of the loudspeaker announced: “Next station… Tanta. The final stop for some passengers.”
Nada stood up, gathering her pencils and sketchbook. It was her stop. Her station to disembark.
Tariq looked at her, feeling for the first time in his life a strong desire to break his fixed schedule. He could get off with her, abandon his destination and commitments to follow this beautiful storm that had suddenly entered his life.
He stood up as well, his voice wavering: “Are you getting off here?”
She answered with a touch of quiet regret: “Yes… here ends my journey on this train.”
Then she looked into his eyes and added: “The trip was much more beautiful than I expected, Tariq.”
She took a step toward the carriage door, while he stood still by the window, watching her.
Nada stepped down onto the platform. The morning air was cool and refreshing. She turned and looked up at the window where Tariq stood.
Tariq raised his hand to say goodbye, and she did the same.
At that moment, the train lurched forward slowly. The roar of the engine signaled the start of their departure. The train continued on its scheduled path toward the capital, while Nada remained standing until the train disappeared around the station’s curve.
Nada opened her sketchbook as she walked along the station platform, searching for Tariq’s number. She wanted to send him a quick message to tell him that the journey wasn’t over.
But a sudden, violent gust of morning wind swept through the pages of her sketchbook, and the neatly folded slip of paper slipped away… it flew into the air and landed with pinpoint precision directly between two railroad tracks, vanishing into the deep dark beneath the stones.
Nada stood watching the empty space between the tracks, smiling with a gentle, bitter regret. The path had spoken its final word.
In the second carriage, Tariq sat clutching the small piece of clay.
Deep down, he knew the probability of meeting her again was almost zero; cities are vast, life waits for no one, and his phone would not ring from an unknown number. But something inside him had changed forever.
He stepped off at his final station, but he didn’t walk with the usual speed he was accustomed to. He didn’t look at his watch to count how many minutes of delay he had accumulated. He walked with calm steps, watching the people, listening to the street noise, and contemplating the irregular shapes of the buildings.
He pulled out his notebook, and for the first time in years, he didn’t write numbers or appointments. He looked for a blank page and drew two parallel lines by hand, then sketched a small rose sprouting between them from the middle of the iron.
Now he finally understood what she meant.
Years passed.
The city’s landscape changed, and the trains evolved, becoming faster and more modern.
Tariq became a famous architect, but his designs began to stand out for their bold curves and lines that diverged from the rigidity of his past. In his luxurious office, on his main desk, rests a small piece of dried polymer clay, receiving more care and attention than all his awards and honors.
Nada, on the other hand, opened her own ceramic art gallery. One of her most famous works was a sculpture depicting a railway line that eventually curled back on itself to form a single continuous ring.
Tariq and Nada never met again. Each lived their life on their own track, like two rails running side by side into the future.
But they proved another truth that geometry had overlooked: that tracks, even if they never meet, carry the same meaning, endure the exact same journey together, and without both of them… no train could ever move.
