The Bijani sisters were 29 at the time of their death, and, for so long as they lived, they may have lived one life in two bodies or two lives in each of them. Their last wish was to come apart and see each other face to face, not in the mirror. It was a simple wish, something we do naturally. We sit face to face, back to back and side by side. We have the flexibility, our pliable bodies giving us the freedom to take any position we want. Laleh and Ladan were different from us because they didn't have that flexibility. They grew up like the two halves of a book, which couldn't be closed because it was jammed in the spine.

The conjoined twins often show a common sense of destiny, their separated souls trapped in the psychosomatic confluence of joined bodies. They are like two pipes connected to the same sinkhole; when life drains out of one, it drains out of the other as well. Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst, also known as the Biddenden Maids were born in 1100, and lived for 34 years in Biddenden, County of Kent, England. The sisters were joined at the buttocks and lower backs. After the death of one sister, doctors hoped to save the life of the other by separating them surgically. The surviving twin refused, declaring, "As we came together, we will go together." She died several hours later.

Similar thing happened to the celebrated Siamese twins Chang and Eng. Eng woke up one night with a strange sensation to find that his brother Chang, who clung to his body, had died, and within hours Eng also passed away. Initially it was determined that Chang had died of a cerebral clot, but it was unclear why Eng had died. Some physicians suggested that he died of fright. Today, it is thought that Eng bled to death, as the blood pooled in his dead brother's body. But the Siamese brothers had lived to be sixty-three, and they were married to two sisters, fathering twenty-one children.

We know of Millie-Christine, the two-headed nightingale in the 19th century USA. They retired from show business and moved into a house with their parents and their fourteen brothers and sisters. On October 12, 1912, just a week after their sixty-first birthday, Millie died of tuberculosis. Christine died within next seventeen hours.

Laleh and Ladan Bijani came together and went together. They were like two branches of the same tree, two streams of the same river, two drafts of a single breeze, two fruits from a single stem and one soul with two thoughts. They were born a double deal; one offered in the bargain for another. They were freaks, one of the many wonders of God, perhaps His anger, or a devil's influence.

In the sixteenth century, the French surgeon Ambroise Pare attributed conjoined twins to several types of constriction, including too tight a womb, tight clothes, and the manner in which a woman sat while pregnant. Two centuries later the scientists were convinced that conjoined twins resulted from the blending of two initially independent twin embryos or from the fertilization of one egg by two sperms.

But beyond science and superstition, the Persian twins have set their own record. They didn't end up in circus or freak shows, but studied to become lawyers. They sustained normal and healthy aspirations of life, and only wished to be separated to signify their union. They joined heads in true sense of the words, and agreed to undergo the surgery, which clearly risked their lives.

If you put aside predestination for a while, Laleh and Ladan would have been alive today if they hadn't gone through that surgery in Singapore. They would have still walked around on four legs with four arms and two faces. They would have still gone on as a double entendre in human flesh. They would have still struggled to take shower, change clothes and look around.

Violet and Daisy Hilton were conjoined twins from North Carolina, who died of complication of influenza. These twin sisters had acted in a movie called Chained for Life, a lurid tale in which one sister stood accused of murder, but questions were raised as to the fairness of sending her to jail if her innocent sister must go as well. The conjoined twins are a contradiction, because they become attached to their growing fascination for a detached life. Because, they grow tired of following each other, worn out by the struggle of having to reconcile the futility of a lockstep life.

Laleh and Ladan have escaped that ennui in the separation, which killed them at last. At last they fled the prison where bone and flesh forged their bodies into a stronghold of afflictions. They had no privacy from each other. They could not lie down on their sides without being stacked upon each other. One couldn't take a nap, if the other wanted to read. One couldn't be sad, if the other wanted to smile. One couldn't lie down, if the other wanted to stand.

It comes only as a rude contradiction that they are now separated in death as they were joined in life. Throughout history, conjoined twins have appeared in myths and legends. The Greek and Roman god Janus had two faces, one young, one old, and Centaur was a combination of horse and man. A common heraldic symbol, the Double-Headed Eagle, is common throughout the Central Europe.

We don't know if the Persian sisters symbolized anything. What we saw is their sufferings, the agonies of two separate souls chained to their fused bodies. They were born and then they grew up, cherishing all through their wretched existence the hope to be severed someday by the stroke of a surgeon's knife. They must have talked about it between them, whenever the Persian night dropped like a mysterious shroud and left just two of them side by side.

We never knew Laleh and Ladan Bijani, but we have seen them on television and heard their voice. For the few weeks that they came to the limelight, we have watched them during the run up to the surgery. They talked, smiled, posed for the camera and looked confident. One time they themselves set up the camera on a raised spot and then rushed under a tree just on time before the shutter went down. They must have had a sense of destiny and were in a hurry to etch their memories onto the world before it erased them.

Perhaps that is what they symbolized, if anything. Every life is a conjoined twin: one is permanent and one is transitory. We talk, smile and pose for the camera, denying all the time that the permanent is fused with the transitory. Laleh and Ladan symbolized in flesh, what we must adopt in faith.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.