𝓜𝔂 𝓫𝓪𝓫𝔂, 𝓶𝔂 𝔀𝓲𝓯𝓮

43# TIME BOMB, TICKING.

THE KHALIL RESIDENCE,
ASOKORO.
MARCH, 2022.

Five months.

It had always seemed like a long time. Ayman had been gone from the house for almost five months, and it had felt like an eternity.

One could do a lot in five months. You could make millions in that time, you could memorize a great deal of the Qur'an, bellies could swell with the promise of offsprings.

So why then did five months seem so little?

Why did it seem like it would go by in the blink of an eye?

Why did the thought of the next five months shatter him beyond words?

Why did his mother have only five months left to live?

"Hey", Jamil said, patting Ayman on the shoulder as he sat next to his brother. Hamdan followed behind, plopping down onto the ground.

It'd been a week since Ayman got back home, a day less than that since they'd told him his mother had cancer, and five days since she'd confessed she was dying.

Clouds of gloom had descended upon the Khalil mansion, and the only person who seemed to retain a level of cheer was ironically, Hajia Zaynab, herself.

Despite the fact that their house had become a mini hospital, with the nurses and doctors that kept trooping in and out, and the fact that she was hooked up to several machines for majority of the day, when she found the time to leave her room, it was with a face full of smiles.

She would joke and laugh, undisturbed that no one else joined in her cheer. Ayman wanted to pretend that everything was fine, to share in whatever it was that kept her sanity intact where everyone else was losing theirs, but he couldn't find anything in him that wasn't broken.

It was clear as day that she wasn't feeling any better. They'd taken her away from the hospital on her request and brought the very best healthcare practitioners they could home, but Hajia Zaynab only got progressively worse.

There were days in between where her eyes wouldn't look as sunken in, and her steps wouldn't be as shaky, and Ayman hated that those days made him feel hopeful.

Surely, there had been people who'd beaten the odds? He spent his time searching for them.

He was like a madman on crack, chasing webpage after webpage for testimonies of people who'd survived lung cancer. Majority of them didn't. Still, he held onto the hope that his mother's would be different. It had to be.

Hajia Zaynab had never smoked, she'd never lived a carefree lifestyle. She fasted and prayed. She fed the poor, she was everything a lot of people aspired to be. She was everything he aspired to be. She wasn't like the scores of people with lung cancer who'd earned it.

She didn't deserve it.

Ayman tried to hold on to his faith, but he could feel the light gradually extinguish in him when he stood up in prayer. He stopped feeling the usual sweetness in prayer. He stopped sitting to make requests after he was done.

Worship became a chore to him. The worse his mother became, he worse his concentration became. By the time Hajia Zaynab had become too weak to walk, he only prayed because it was routine.

Through it all, Hamdan and Jamil stuck with him. On the days he hated the thought of prayer, they were the ones who urged him up. And on the days he broke down, they were the ones who picked him up.

***
The alarm next to Ayman blared. Everything in him wanted to hit snooze and shut the damn thing up, but there was a lot to be done.

Recently, he'd been compiling a bucket list on his mother's request. She'd told him to write down all the things she never got to do. Ayman found that the list was exceedingly long.