Black script lettering design on a white background, with Arabic calligraphy above the English words "If it's meant to be, It will be."

Arabic and English quote lettering design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a lettering design with Arabic calligraphy on the upper line and a cursive English phrase, "If it's meant to be, It will be.", on the line below. The linework is thin, flowing and black, with varied stroke weight in the script. The design sits on a plain white background with no colour, shading or body part visible.

Lettering Arabic script Calligraphy Quote Text Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tariq,

Keep reading

The ferry didn't come again this morning, so I have had time to finish the marmalade and read your last letter twice more. You ask whether I have given up on the crossing. I haven't. I've only stopped checking the tide tables every hour like a nervous grandmother.

Mrs Gillies at the post office says the sea keeps its own ledger and never shows you the entries. Last week a man from the mainland came asking after a boat he had sold in March. She told him the boat had been meant for someone else and would find its way back. He laughed, but he left his number on the counter all the same.

I keep thinking about what your mother used to say when the lamp oil ran short and the cupboard was bare: kun fayakun, be, and so it is. She said it the way some people say grace, quickly, expecting nothing grand, only a small kindness from the world. I wrote the English beneath it in the margin of the ledger, though she never trusted translations.

The boat is in the harbour now. I can see its orange hull from the window. Come on Thursday if the wind holds. If it's meant to be, it will be, and if not, I will still have bread and you can tell me about Muscat.

Love, Leila