Change of Times ...

And yet again, the night seemed like a story out of the Arabian Nights. One that descended onto the sky just to stay there forever; like a lover's sigh, like a gypsy's curse.  

He thought and tried to concentrate on how life would be the next morning, under the new sun. But the blackness of the bleak night invaded his vision everytime his thought kissed the radiant face of a sunny morning. 

With his eyes settled on the feeble new moon, his heart ached with the anxiety of the unforeseen, the fear of the unknown. He cursed not having read Tolestoy's complete collection. They said he wrote the best tragedies. Who knows, probably he belonged to them;  was merely a character out of any of those! His aching heart sank a little further and he averted his gaze, away from its feeble hanger. 

What if tomorrow REALLY never comes? His mind asked as his sight grazed the gloomy sky seeking a trace of light. What if life is just a continuum, devoid of any yesterdays and tomorrows? What if the calendars and the ticking watches had all been invented by some clueless idle minds as a cheap ploy for the fools? What if time, 'the time', was merely a hoax? A virtual reality, with nothing real inside? 

As his mind began to craze into actively dissociating itself from the reality, he heard his heart drumming into his ears. With each beat he could visualize his madness turning into a physical being, a being that surrounded him like a windowless death cell, over powering his senses, his sanity. 

He winced over the strength of that mastering gloom, when suddenly his tired sheen-less eyes again traced the boundary of that forlorn soldier that was stripped off his shinning armor but was still battling the looming darkness in the vast expanse of the sky. His heart went out for it. And then like a bolt of lightening a realization hit him. Hit him hard. He looked intently at the moon, smiled and then looked at the sky, in the opposite direction. A little while from now, and the moon would no longer need to wage war against the darkness alone. The rising sun from the east would take care of it. 

The rising sun from the east suddenly became a reality that asked to be believed in, just like that limitless expanse of black in front of his eyes. It became a reality almost touchable. He closed his eyes and hearing his drumming heart slowing down in his chest, felt the sky scrapper walls of his death cell crumbling down to a cloud of dust. His dry lips cracked into a smile filled with gratitude as he murmured, rendering his voice to the almost touchable reality whose realization had hit him like a bolt of lightening. "Seest thou not that Allah merges Night into Day And He merges Day into Night?" 

Time was not a hoax after all. It was a reality more real than anything else. It was the Divine promise. It was the change. The Change. 

His heart trembled with the raveling realization as he began to experience the change. The horizon towards the east bore a witness to the change. 

It was the break of dawn.