One Year Left

My name is Noor. That's a popular Arabic girl’s name which means light, but it's an odd irony now, especially since the new year. I've felt more estranged from light and salvation than I can remember in all my seventeen years.

Naturally, I haven't told anyone what's been terrorizing me-- how do you tell someone that you only have one more year to live before Hell’s Thing comes to steal you away in the night?-- but a counselor at the high school I go to suggested I keep a record of my more ‘hormonal’ moods. Carol is her name. Carola, Cathoryn, something with a C. It was difficult to keep myself from snatching the spiral-bound notebook she handed me and chucking it into the trash.

I wanted to. Badly. But I refrained, returning her concerned countenance with a tight-lipped smile. Any deviance in my behavior, whether actual or perceived, would justify the hidden bigotry of the whole school and potentially the community. I would no longer be Noor, daughter of Ahmed and Shayesteh Al-Khalil, fully integrated and wholly American, top of her class in elective pre-Veterinary studies and the only Muslim girl most people knew who didn't wear the traditional hijab, or head-scarf.

Instead I would be Noor Al-Khalil, a sullen, dejected teen alienated from her peers and potentially ‘radicalized’ by ISIS dogs on social media. It wouldn't matter that my Twitter account is collecting dust, or that I don't fast during Ramadan, or that I can barely count on one hand the number of times I've picked up the Q’uran. I don't know a single sura by heart and eschew almost anything with even the briefest affiliation with ‘Allah’, except for the five-time daily prayer. I go through the motions with that to keep Ma happy and my dad from lobbing insults. I don't even know the whole Shahada. That's my parents’ and my sister's thing. Not mine.

But it wouldn't matter. My hard-working parents, who'd fled Iraq for the States in the nineties, had sweated too heavily to assimilate and provide us with some semblance of normal lives for me to ruin it.

And so I took the notebook from Caroline. I brought it home yesterday, and now I'm writing in it. The margins of this page are already trashed by my crude ink renderings of skulls, flames, scythe-like weapons, and tall beings with cloaks of onyx. I don't even remember making them.

Beads of sweat bloom along my hairline. I have swept all of my hair back into a frizzled bun, but to little avail. My mind is too preoccupied with the specters of Hades. I can practically feel the flames licking at the soles of my feet, and wonder if the hell I've been taught to fear is really going to be that bad. Might I be given a curfew? Could it be that they'd release me for a few days a year so I can remember what the sun feels like on my face? Will the demons there at least assign me to one of the hells with the least amount of scorching?

A bell chimes downstairs. It’s the reminder my parents set for the last of the day's five prayers. I can hear Laleh, my older sister, turning on the bathroom faucet to prepare her ablution. I know her: in another five minutes she'll sashay into her bedroom with her prayer rug tucked under one arm.

Five minutes come and go. The faucet stops. My bedroom door swings open (Laleh never knocks) and she pokes her head in, simpering. She is tall and fair and beautiful.

“You look as white as a ghost,” she says to me. There is mirth in her voice. “Still bothered by that old wive’s tale about deliberately missing your prayers? Get over it already. You know I was joking.”

“Eat pig’s dung and die,” I say tonelessly. “All I do is play pretend so Dad won't flip his lid. You know that. Why don't you find somewhere else to go be perfect?”

“Oh, no worries.” Laleh smiles, showing teeth as white as pearls. “But it isn't my fault you decided to throw your duty to Allah into some trash heap. Today you didn't do any prayers at all! Don't you know the angels on your shoulders record everything you do?”

“I didn't ask for a theology lecture.”

“Still. Ma would shit a brick if she knew you weren't praying.”

“It was just that one time! And she'd shit more if she knew it was your fault. Telling me that stupid fairy tale garbage about hell and demons. How did you expect me to sleep last night? Get out of my room! Go bend to Allah’s will someplace where I don't have to look at you.”

“Done,” she pipes cheerfully, flouncing down the hall. In a moment, I hear her bedroom door shut.

“Noor?” Ma’s voice wafts from downstairs. “Have you made Wudu?”

I ignore her, yank the door shut, and curl up on my bed in the fetal position. I squeeze my eyes shut and expend huge effort to keep Laleh’s matronly voice out of my head, but yesterday’s words come anyway:

'Noor, the moment you decide not to unroll your prayer rug, you become an ugly stain not fit for a dog’s blanket. You are erased from the Book of Life. No amount of remorse will get you back in, and the Djinn will come for you. In three hundred and sixty-five days, you will be gone from this world forever.'

To spite her for critiquing my ‘lack of faith’, I'd stuffed my prayer rug into my closet and flashed her my middle finger. Studying for my zoology mid-term was much more important than the drudge of fake prayer, but Laleh didn't care about that. She lives for ablution, memorizing suras, Islamic studies at the local community college and comparing Ramadan recipes with one of her women's groups. Prayer was her thing. Not mine.

'...Noor, if you don't pray, you'll be marked. After that, not even Allah may be able to save you.'

So I told her to get lost and skipped dinner. Ma had made lamb again. I hate lamb. Also, I didn't want to sit across the table from Laleh’s smirking face.

Eventually, I closed my zoology book and climbed into bed. I slept without incident, got up for school the next morning, and received the shock of my life when I went into the bathroom.

My reflection in the mirror over the sink was gone. Just-- gone.

I rubbed my eyes furiously and looked again. Nothing. I splashed some water onto my face. No change. After sloshing water onto the mirror and rubbing it desperately with my palms, the moisture fell away to reveal: still nothing. My heart dropped like a massive boulder. I could barely believe what I was seeing...or rather, what I wasn't. And again came Laleh’s words:

'On the last day, Lilith comes for you. She appears in the night with a yoke of human intestines and a collar woven made out of pig feces. She will leash you and drag you into hell's belly, where the flames are seven times hotter than those on Earth, and where the skin that she flays from your body grows back immediately, freeing you for the same torment, over and over...forever.'

I have no more strength with which to scribble.

What on earth have I done to myself?!