Huda Al-Naimi is a Qatari writer with a PhD in medical physics. She worked for many years in a medical establishment before recently devoting herself entirely to writing. Parallel to her work in the medical field, she began publishing short stories in 1997. She has published several collections of short stories (Al-Makhla, Anatha, Abatil, Halat Tashibna) and, in 2012, a children's play (Al-Naba Al-Dahabi). She subsequently published a collection of short stories (Qamt) in children's magazines across the Arab world, an autobiographical story (Hinnib al-Nakhil) in 2021, and her novel (Za'farana) in 2024. She was selected as a jury member for the "Al-Bukkar Al-Arabi" Arab Booker Prize in 2012 and as a jury member for the Katara Prize for Arab Literature in 2018. She has participated in numerous conferences throughout the Arab world.

Ahmed took my hand and at that moment, I felt my cheeks flood with all the colours of the rainbow. We walked among those who had come to congratulate and bless us. Ahmed held my left hand, and in my right, I held a bouquet of flowers adorned with white ribbons. I handed it to my mother as we descended three steps. I had gone from being a celebrated bride, the centre of attention in the great hall of this luxurious hotel, to the wife of Ahmed, whom I had met only a few months earlier, when he had come to ask for my hand - and which I had accepted. My husband took my hand, kissed it, and spoke to me in a calm voice, which I could hear over the sound of tambourines:

- Our first daughter will be a moon... she will look like you.

I heard my mother's voice as we left the room. She was ululating, and I detected a sob in her voice. I heard her wish me happiness and a peaceful life with my husband. I heard her tell him to take good care of me, never to neglect or abandon me. Between her tears and her laughter - which hid her joy, her fear, her elation, her nervousness, her happiness and her anxiety about the future - she barely concealed her relief mixed with the constant worry that had beseiged her since my engagement to Ahmed. I turned back to watch her walk away, until I could no longer hear her sobs.

Ahmed never betrayed the trust I had placed in him. He didn't fail in the image I'd built of him during our months of engagement. He was happy that I was his fiancée, that I was becoming his wife, and the mother of his future children. He brought colour to our days, and my mother was reassured to know I was in Ahmed's hands - the same Ahmed who had still been writing poetry, not so long ago, before he found an engineering job with an oil company two hours' drive from the capital. Every day, he told me he'd get back to writing, composing poems for his daughter, the one I was soon to give birth to, he would say. He would talk about it with disarming seriousness, as if he could already see before him this daughter who would look like me, to whom he would declaim verses, whom he would shower with love, paying no attention to my astonishment or incredulous laughter.

And even though the signs of pregnancy took nearly two years to appear, Ahmed never took it personally. He never asked me to see a doctor or go to hospital about it. To those who made innuendoes or muttered malicious comments, he always replied:

-Everything in its own good time.

I hid the secrets of my relationship with Ahmed from my friends. I was afraid to talk about my husband, just as my mother had advised. In fact, it was she who helped me complain, in front of others, about Ahmed's prolonged absences with work, the delay in the pregnancy - nearly two years -, and the anguish that consumed me. And yet, Ahmed appeared unworried. My mother had advised me to feign concern, to say that we were consulting doctors and following their recommendations. "The evil eye exists", she kept saying. I listened to her words. I would complain about Ahmed's absence and the delay in pregnancy to anyone who tried to pry. And if these complaints could reassure, avert the evil eye, then so be it. I didn't want this malevolent gaze to reach Ahmed, this man who seemed to have walked straight out of the pages of a romance, born from the imagination of a writer sipping his coffee on a terrace facing the sea, caressed by the breeze and the song of the waves. That's how I saw my imaginary author, writing the story of my beautiful life. I hid Ahmed in the recesses of my happy days, and the colours of the rainbow continued to flush my cheeks when he spoke to me of his daughter, the one who will look like me, and of the tenderness with which he will raise her.
When my belly began to round out, long before we knew the sex of the child - something so easy to find out now - Ahmed began to write a song for his daughter. He wrote one word, then two, and promised to finish the lyrics the next day.

- O moon that captivates my moons

Ahmed wrote his love for his daughter who would look like me, as he had assured me on our wedding day. I so believed Ahmed that I would talk to my daughter while she was still in my belly. I would tell her how I would sew dresses for her as colourful as mine, that each of my dresses would have a miniature version for her. I would also tell her that she would accompany me on every move, every gesture, every step.
We'll continue, Ahmed, my daughter who looks just like me, and me, this image drawn by this imaginary author that only I can see, this romantic writer sitting on his balcony, perhaps in Marbella, Spain, or in the coastal city of Cancún, Mexico. There, he draws me in words: me, Ahmed, and my daughter, who looks just like me.
Ahmed was slow to finish his song, or his poem. I didn't rush him to finish, absorbed as I was in buying pretty fabrics that I would one day sew into two dresses: one for me, and one for my daughter. I ended up forgetting the song, forgetting the poem. My husband's exhausting work took all his attention, and left no time for us. Yet Ahmed filled me with tenderness.

Then came the day of the ultrasound results. I learned that what was growing inside me was indeed Ahmed's daughter - the one who looked like me, as the doctor had said, not knowing that she was repeating a prophecy Ahmed had made on our wedding day. I called him at work and told him that his prophecy was coming true, that what was growing inside me was his beautiful little girl. Ahmed let out a cry of joy and repeated:

- O moon that captivates my moons.

He promised me he'd finish his poem that day. An hour later, he called to tell me that he had finished it, and that he would read it to me in my presence, and in that of our daughter, who could now hear his voice. I begged him to read me a few verses, but he refused, saying he would read it to me and our daughter every day. And that, when she could speak, she would sing this song, dance to its words, and that he would write her other poems still.

He was about to continue, but I interrupted him, joking that I might become jealous if our daughter captured all his love. To prove that his love for me wasn't waning, he told me he was going to leave the library right then and there, come back to kiss me on the cheek, then read me his poem. Before hanging up, he repeated:

- O moon that captivates my moons.

I hung up, and imagined this writer drawing my life with words, while sipping his coffee on his seaside balcony. I smiled and thanked him, then walked away to perfume the house with the scent my husband loved, and put on the dreamy music he cherished. I went to choose a dress that showed off my belly, so Ahmed could see his daughter, for the first time, in a beautiful outfit.

Ahmed didn't come home. He was very late, and his phone stayed off the whole time. He didn't come back that day, the day he'd learned that his daughter would be in his arms four months later. He never came back after reciting the first words of his poem - the one he'd finished without my knowing the rest. Ahmed never returned. And the poem never reached me.

His car, crushed in the accident that day, was removed from the scene a day, or a few days later - I don't remember. When, at the end of my pregnancy, as my daughter was about to be born, I asked what had become of the car, the papers it contained, I was told it was too late to ask that question, that everything had been reduced to ashes.

Just as I'd heard, behind me, my mother's ululations mingled with her tears as Ahmed led me down the three steps of the dais on our wedding day, as I heard Ahmed's voice breaking with emotion the day I told him that his daughter would soon come into the world - on that day, I also heard the sound of the coffee cup breaking in front of this calm writer who inhabits my mind. He sat on his terrace facing the sea, never turning away. He cried without turning towards me. I saw his black ink invade the white pages. I heard the sea cry out in fear. And I felt a tsunami wave engulf his pages, and with them, me.

I cradled my daughter, Qamar, and sang her a song written by her father - a song he had never finished. I invented a melody for those words, and she would nod her head when she heard them, snuggled up against my shoulder. Later, she'd sway to the rhythm of the tune as she clung to the edge of the table, then dance to it, to this music and these words of hers, as she began to walk with a confident step, scattering everything in her path.

She'd repeat them as she packed her little books, on the way to her first school. Then she started boasting to her little friends in the grown-up world, the ones who talked about their fathers in front of her. She'd tell them that her father had written her an entire poem on the very day he'd left this world. And that she would be happy to tell them the first words:

- O moon that captivates my moons.

But that the full poem she would only reveal on her wedding day, as she often repeated to them.
Qamar's words - "O moon that captivates my moons" - spread to school, then to the university where she was studying, then to her workplace and the institutions with which she was in contact as part of her profession. They were then published on social networks, and she turned her father's words into an icon associated with her name, a slogan she systematically affixes to everything she writes on these platforms. She said she wanted to claim her and her father's right to these words.

However, numerous poems have emerged beginning with these very words. One was written by a man to his little sister who was bidding him farewell as he left on a long study trip. He said he saw her tears flow as she embraced him, and he wrote:

- O moon that captivates my moons... Then he continued.

Another composed a poem for his ailing mother, who was waving to him as she entered the operating room. His inspiration poured through these words:

- O moon that captivates my moons... Then he continued.

A third addressed them to his wife, after an argument: she had gone to take refuge with her parents. He wrote them to appease her:

- O moon that captivates my moons... Then he continued.

But Qamar never stopped defending her moral right to her father's words, claiming that she was indeed "the moon" to whom he had addressed these words, long before she was even born. Opinions differed on the origin of these words, which have become a "trend" - as the generation to which my daughter Qamar belongs puts it. Some poets claim the words were their own. Others admitted to having heard similar words, which they had then developed in their own way, to serve their poetry.

The day Qamar stepped onto a dais similar to the one on which I'd once stood, I didn't wail and shed tears as my mother had once done. But I approached her, as she held her husband's hand, and whispered in her ear:

- O moon that captivates my moons, how like me you are.