Time – Strokes of My Pen

Creative Fiction

THAT ONE LONG SECOND

By Lubnah Abdulhalim July 16, 2020

There is that moment before everything changes. That one long second before everything turns sour. That one long second of total oblivion. You, at one of the beach stalls, laughing with your friend at how ridiculous you look with the sunglasses you want to purchase. The vendor looking at you amusingly. The old mirror reflecting your big grin and a huge pimple that just won’t go away. Your friend makes a silly joke about your indecisiveness while you make funny faces, still staring at the mirror. The sea waves are almost touching your feet. The fresh breeze is brushing on your face. You are fully absorbed at this moment; at this nothingness, or perhaps ‘somethingness’. See this moment, hold onto it for a second longer. Freeze. Pause. Take it all in.

Before you know it, you’re out of breath. Your hand on your chest. Your knees touching the white sand. The old mirror is shattered beneath you; thousands and thousands of broken pieces. Like your heart. Like this moment. You are sweating. You are shivering. Your heart is palpitating. You are losing control. Your friend is nudging you vehemently, she asks what is wrong. The vendor is p.e.t.r.i.f.i.e.d. He probably thinks you have a jinn. Maybe a sea jinn even. He takes a step back, slowly, while still asking you whether you are okay. Of course, he doesn’t want to seem like a coward. He cares. He is empathetic. But then, *insert Kenyan accent* ‘weuh! bravery for who?!’ People start to notice. Someone is asking someone to call for an ambulance. Who is someone though?

There is that moment before everything changes. Loud sirens. Silent weeping of your friend holding your hand. A machine beeping beside you. Constricted space. You.cannot.breathe.

You’re wheeled into the hospital. There is a lot of movement. A lot of whispers. A blurred sight of your friend talking to the doctor while tearing a lot. Darkness. Blurred sight. More beeping machines. Blurred sight again. Total darkness.

There is that moment before everything changes. You sleeping in your hospital bed, your parents by your side, your friends around you. The doctor then breaks it to you. You have just a couple of months to live. Everyone is crying loudly now. There are only a few times you are ‘let’ to cry in front of a dying patient. In fact, there are only a few times where you can ‘comfortably’ cry in front of anyone. This is one of those times. So everyone is probably making the best of it. Some are crying more than expected; they’ve probably been holding too many suppressed emotions. Some are too silent; they’re too loud.

There is that moment before everything changes. That one long second. That oblivion. Unfreeze the moment now. Can you see it? The pure joy? The hearty smile? The friendly touch? The silly actions? That one annoying pimple on your face that won’t just go away? Wouldn’t you do anything to experience it again? Wouldn’t you do everything to just pause that moment and take it all in? Feel the bliss? Appreciate the ocean? Laugh a little louder? Hug your friend tighter?

There is that moment before everything changes. It could be this one long second right now. Maybe, just maybe, you should take it aalll in.

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Inspiration

DARLING, YOU HAVEN’T BEEN LIVING

By Lubnah Abdulhalim August 28, 2018

Your alarm goes off and you let it snooze for the second time before stretching your hand lazily to put it off. You sit upright on your bed for a moment and think, ‘that was a long, restless night’. But you’ve had restless nights since when? You try to count. You lose the count halfway. It’s been years now. Late night sleep and early morning work. ‘It’s a sacrifice I have to make for our own better livelihood’ you convince yourself. But you’ve been making sacrifices for the past ten years. You frown, dismiss the thoughts and pick up your phone. Four missed calls and three text messages. You go through them. Work work work. You put it back and drag your feet to the washroom. Nowadays, you can’t even enjoy a warm shower like you used to. Time doesn’t give you that luxury, or rather, you don’t give yourself the time to enjoy anything anymore. ‘You’ve been busy.’

Hurriedly, you choose what to wear. It doesn’t really matter much anymore so long as it is clean and neat. You call out your husband’s name to wake up as you head to the kitchen to make some quick breakfast. You move to the fridge and take some eggs to make omelets for yourself and your small family. You quickly glimpse at the sticker on the fridge. It says, ‘The pursuit of happiness’ with some other tiny written words below it. You haven’t seen this one before. You smile. It must be your teenage son who kept it up. You want to read it but then you remember you have an important meeting with an important client. You make a mental note to come check it out again. You need to hurry.

Very fast, you prepare the breakfast. ‘Did I put salt in the eggs?’ You can’t remember. You put the breakfast on the table with the salt sprinkler next to it. You grab two slices of bread, insert an omelet inside it and sprinkle some little bit of salt to make a sandwich. You eat as you head to your son’s room to wake him up for school before going back to wake his father once again. You kiss him goodbye and tell him the breakfast is on the table. You take two long sips of your coffee, grab your car keys and off you go.

Heading towards your car, you meet mama Zainab who owns a small shop opposite your villa. She is humming a taarab song you are familiar with as she sweeps outside her shop.

“Good day huh?” You smile.

“Always,” she laughs.

You get into your car wondering how mama Zainab can seem so fresh and energetic that early morning while she had to walk for twenty minutes to get to her shop. Maybe you are going to ask her of her secret some day.

Inside your car you notice your book on self-love on the seat beside you. Your best friend bought it for you because she thought ‘you need to take care of yourself more’. You think she is just being ridiculous but you still promised to read it. You’ve been trying to read it for the past two months now. It is an interesting one but where is the time to read? You sigh and take off. You meet your important client, then another, then a board meeting. You make a mental note to call your husband at lunch break. You don’t get the chance to. Back to work. Work work work. ‘It is a sacrifice I have to make so my family can have a comfortable and the best kind of life’ you say it to yourself once again. It is all in the pursuit of happiness.

You get home extremely exhausted. Your son is already asleep; you don’t get to ask him about his day or even about the new sticker on the fridge. You have a rather silent dinner with your husband apart from the random small talk. Both of you are tired, you head to bed. Each one rolls up to their side of the bed. You close your eyes. You open them. You close them. Repeat. You check your phone now. It’s been one hour since you went to bed. Sleep just doesn’t seem to be your friend nowadays. Your mind still remains awake. Still contemplating. Calculating. Arranging. Planning. Work still visits you even on your bed.

You sigh loudly and walk up to the fridge to grab a glass of water. You notice the sticker again. You bring your face closer and squint your eyes to read the tiny words. It says, ‘Happiness is not having what you want. Its wanting what you already have.’ It strikes you hard. You haven’t been living; you’ve just been sacrificing. Sacrificing at the cost of what really mattered to you; creating moments with your family, your health and your peace of mind. You’ve always been on the run. Always seeking something beyond what you already have. You pull a chair from the dining table and sit. You suddenly realize how you’re ageing so fast. You let it sink in. Darling, you haven’t been living. You’ve just been seeking.

Creative Non-Fiction

THE TIME FACTOR; ARE YOU A FRIEND OR AN ENEMY?

By Lubnah Abdulhalim October 21, 2014

Photo Courtesy: http://www.randallpacker.com/

As they say it, time waits for no man and if you think of it, wasn’t it just Monday yesterday? When did it get to Friday already? Days, hours, minutes, seconds fly past us like wind and eventually leave us behind still wondering; when did it get so late?

It all seems like just yesterday when I got admitted to the kindergarten and how I really cried for my mother, proceeding to primary school, secondary school to adulthood whereby everyone expects you to be a responsible being. But who could ever believe that those are so many years back and all what we are left with are memories and probably regrets of what we should have done and what not.

As the clock goes tick-tock tick-tock and as the finest sand trickles down the hour glass, did we ever pause to imagine the wisdom behind our Creator creating us with the abundance and yet still, limitation of time? It is for this reason that we must be organized and arrange how to spend our time wisely. In the time factor, we have two kinds of people; the organized being and the procrastinator.

An organized individual knows how to use time wisely. He is the kind that since his youth age already has a time plan of life. He would write down his dreams and goal and set time limits for himself. He has set a time for everything; what age to study, what age to work, when to get married, when to make a family, when to retire etc. He knows when he is to wake up, when he is to prepare himself to go for job, what time to leave the house and when to get there such that they arrive in time. It is such people that always know how to divide their schedules such that they have time for work, time for family, time for entertainment and everything in such an orderly manner. They barely have regrets in the time factor for they make the best use of it. They are the same kind of people who made the best use of their childhood, playing all kind of games and having fun all children need. They make use of their youth; creating amazing memories, doing great things that will always be remembered by the society, making time for studies and merry as well. When they got to the working age they immediately start hustling and looking for ways to learn a living. They get married and have a family when they are surely ready to take such responsibilities and finally retire in peace with no regrets of the time or opportunities they wasted.

The other kind is the procrastinator; the lazy being. He is the type that races behind time and expects the hour clock to miraculously stop for his sake. He would wake up late and blame everyone for not waking him up. He takes everything at ease and even when he is in a crisis, he wouldn’t refuse an invitation from friends to party instead of looking for a solution to his problems. If he is a student, he would procrastinate his study sessions each time for invalid reasons like watching a TV series that they can’t miss or a movie. Such a person doesn’t even have a purpose in life and such, ends up doing a lot of the wrong things before finally realizing their goals in life. They get to regret a lot due to the time and opportunities they wasted by being ignorant. They made so many wrong choices and hanged around with the wrong lazy people who were but enemies of time.

Time will never advise us but instead it will only give us time to correct ourselves but this is only possible if the Time-keeper himself wishes! So let us make a wise use of the much or little time we have because we can never guess when the end of our times will be!