A Single Lifetime | Novella

HER MOUTH WAS AS DRY AS sandpaper and she rubbed her eyes as they peeled open.

“What time is it?” she rasped as she pulled Aurora off her aching back.

A groan escaped her as she noticed she had slept with her hijab on and had gotten makeup all over her teal pillowcase.

That’ll take forever to wash off. It’ll take time...

On the verge of tears, she bit her tongue and tried not to curse.

Crap.

Even after she had changed and washed up, she couldn’t go to sleep. Her heart was pounding and there was a knot in her stomach. Her phone buzzed with Email and message notifications–she shoved it under the mattress. The room around her was a mess; she wouldn’t be able to find anything in the morning.

Morning…

How many hours till sunrise?

Fajr squinted in the dark but it was pointless because she could only hear the ticking of her wristwatch and the clock hanging above her bed. The numbers on her digital clock changed almost too quickly for Fajr. An hourglass that she forgot she owned–it was hard to keep track of them all–emptied away on her bedside table.

Calm down, Fudge, she told herself, internally mimicking her mother’s voice. Count the seconds…

She gulped and bit her lip as she stared at the clock. “One...two...three…”

Her breathing steadied temporarily and she put a hand over her chest as her eyes fell back on the hourglass. It’s golden sand complimented the dark wood perfectly.

Fajr found herself staring at it and reminiscing about the early years when she would practice her powers, late at night after her mother had fallen asleep.

Because I wasn’t allowed to do it in front of someone...and it always felt beter at night.

At that moment her hearing became heightened and it was as if she could hear the clock in her bathroom ticking, she picked up the sound of each grain of sand falling in the hourglass she kept around the house.

Her heartbeat and breathing fastened, synchronized with the ticking of clocks and the sand clinking against the hourglass.

Calm down, Fudge, her mother would say if she were here.

Fajr felt bile and her dinner rising in her throat. My little fudge cake, she would call her. You worry for no reason. If you manage to control it, you can have all the time in the world…

“All the time in the world,” Fajr whispered to herself with a hand on her stomach.

All the time in the world....

If we focus enough, we can slow down time as much or as little as we want. Her mother’s words flooded her thoughts as her brain formed an idea. A relatively dangerous idea. An idea that could give her everything she wanted.

To distract herself from her own thoughts–the gloriously precarious idea, looming in the back of her head. She cleaned every inch of the house without saving time without tiring herself out.

The cats were fast asleep and once Fajr realized that there was still time until morning prayers, she took her sweet time in the bathroom and counted the seconds…

Don’t think about it. Don’t you dare think about it. Don’t fudging–

Fajr coughed, spitting out toothpaste over the bathroom mirror.

Fajr chewed off the top of her nail. She sat on the janamaz–prayer mat–rocking her body back and forth. Praying for steadiness hadn’t worked yet and her mind wasn’t letting her forget her idea.

It’s worth trying…

“A scientist’s daughter is bound to experiment, right?” she said into the pale morning light as the sheer curtains swayed in the breeze. Her thumb lingered over her lips, bots of nail between her teeth.

Fajr pulled out a tissue and spat, undoing her hijab as she stood from the janamaz.

A schedule formulated in her head as she made her way down to the kitchen.

This requires caffeine, with french toast and honey.

Fajr typed liesruely, pressing Send on the email she had typed to her mother. She was experimetning with her powers. She took her sweet time as she felt something tightened in her chest but her shoulders lifted.

In that moment, she took her own advice: You can get as much time as you want, you do know that right?

She leaned back in her desk chair, flexing her fingers over the keyboard. The stopwatch showed 6:08 a.m. and her wrist watch showed 5:45 a.m.

Focus, she told herself, pressing her bitten nails into her palm. If you focus enough, you can have infinite time. You can take as much as you want...

“Amma’s going to be so mad,” Fajr said, laughing unenthusiastically.

The women who possessed this ability before her, the ones that passed it down to Fajr, attempted to delay death because of it. They didn’t succeed, of course. They just kept freezing time until time hit them.

Hit them.

“You’re even more lost than usual…” Sura said as they trodded down the street to get coffee. Fajr didn’t pay attention to whatever her friend was babbling about.

Instead, she counted the seconds and let her brain think.

Fajr’s mother used to say that the women in our family were special.

We can trick time. We won’t let it hit us, for as long as we can.

For as long as we can, her voice echoed. An undertone of disappointment in her tone, implying that–ironically–our ability to freeze time would only allow Husani women to use it for a single lifetime. It would never be enough.

Fajr’s gaze was fixed on a spot on the ground, her brows furrowed and arched, making her seem irritated and unapproachable. Sura turned to her friends but the words died on her tongue as Fajr snapped, “Order for me.”

And Sura did, eyeing her friends suspiciously. She backed away a few steps once Fajr’s lips parted into the ghost of a smile and she daydreamed about her brilliant idea.

Risky, but brilliant.

What if a woman froze time permanently? She’d indeed live forever. The world around her would slow down and chaos would erupt as soon as she unfreezed it but it was the closest a human could get to being immortal.

What if she never unfreezed it?

Zareen and Fajr never discussed this. Even though she was always pushing the boundaries with her ability and science. Trying to find more people like us and researching genetics and heritage took up a lot of time, and sometimes she needed extra hours.

She would disappear for only seconds and come back with so much to tell, it was hard to believe she had been gone for merely a moment.

Like mother, like daughter.