Quote by Wallada bint al-Mustakfi: “When you are absent, my nights are long; when you are near, the day is gone too soon.”

The same time can feel endless or fleeting depending entirely on whether the person you love is present. Love distorts time — absence stretches it painfully, and presence collapses it. This is not an illusion; it is what love actually does to experience.

Wallada exchanged poems with the poet Ibn Zaydun in a celebrated literary love affair that became legendary in Andalusian cultural history. Her poems to him range from passionate tenderness to bitter reproach, and they document one of the best-recorded relationships in classical Arabic letters.

Andalusian princess and poet born around 1001 in Córdoba, daughter of Caliph Muhammad III, who ran one of the first literary salons in medieval Europe and was known for embroidering her own poems onto her garments. Her love poetry, especially her exchanges with Ibn Zaydun, is among the most celebrated in classical Arabic literature.