Aula, 2021
Another dream I had.
1
When the explosion occurred, Aula was there. This murder, which should have been straightforward, was in fact her long-planned suicide—the final expectation of her thirty years of life, the protector of her nightmares.
Every day, as she faced all the gross things, she would think: It’s almost time. That fated murder would surely take her away, and when the time came, she would surrender immediately. Let any will to live be damned—this was the end she had chosen for herself.
She was acutely aware that she didn’t have the courage to commit suicide on her own. It was something that required immense luck, practice, and determination. She lacked the luck to die peacefully in her sleep, and she didn’t have the resolve to ruthlessly sever her arteries, or to endure the long minutes of consciousness before passing out. A coward could never end their own life.
2
She was furious, in chaos, cursing the person who had ruined all her plans, like a child in preschool tattling for praise. That person, she thought, escaped alone to seize a chance at redemption before God, running away, by himself, without her.
Afterward, she collapsed on the rooftop, thinking, let the eagles come and peck at me. She didn’t know what someone ready to die should do once they were revived.
She lay under the domes of Yazd for three days and nights, and when she awoke, her powers were gone. Yes, she was no longer a time traveler.
The past was now too distant for her.
3
I once saw a sculpture in a small park in the city center: the sky had fallen, and she kissed the back of his neck, gray mud encasing them tightly. It captured the moment everything happened, and I stood there for a long time. In the empty twilight, a sense of apocalypse overwhelmed me. How much time do I have left?
I recall meeting Aula one early winter in a liquor store about to close. Due to a new prohibition, the store was no longer allowed to sell alcohol to locals after 9 PM, and there were few tourists willing to visit. The store usually closed early, and I had walked three blocks to find one still open.
"Seven months ago, they were crowded," she said first.
A dim neon light danced on her curly chestnut hair. She must have been popular in her youth, but despite her smooth and full face, it seemed weathered by a bitter chill. It was a strange contrast, especially when I noticed her gaze never settled on anything in particular. When she looked at me, it wasn’t really me she saw, but something else. Forgive me if I struggle to explain, but the experience was undeniably frustrating.
"People are starting to get used to the days when they can’t buy alcohol—they always adapt to survive. But now it’s alcohol. What will be next?" she mused.
She told me she was a former time traveler, and her power disappeared the moment she decided to give it up. It was the only resistance she could muster.
She knelt on a rooftop, dust swirling around her—that was in Yazd, which you might not be able to see anymore. The houses there were made of adobe, divided into neat geometric shapes, like exposed internal organs. Ten miles from this house was the Tower of Silence, the Zoroastrian tombs. They believed in sky burials—because corpse demons would contaminate everything they touched, and only by offering the body to the sun and eagles could pollution be minimized.
She wandered aimlessly on the rooftop, using both her hands and feet, lacking the courage to stand up straight. Dizzy and disoriented, she only remembered trying again and again to travel through time and space to save him, but it was all in vain; there was nothing she could do—he would leave no matter what. She ran endlessly, unable to feel fatigue, driven solely by the desire to see his last gaze once more. Aula confessed that if given the choice, she would choose to stay in that infinite loop of time, where the past becomes the future, the future has already become the past, and countless repeated moments all point to the same ending.
I asked her, what about your memories? If your leaps are no longer to save him, won’t your connection fade away?
She laughed, saying I romanticized the story of Orpheus too much. In reality, she should have been the one in that position, and he went in her place to face the unknown, leaving her behind. Guilt and self-reproach tethered her, while anger and helplessness accompanied her forever—this was his eternal punishment for her.
“You’re not responsible for this…” I took a big gulp of vodka, the burning sensation traveling from my stomach to my nose, making me wince, and tears welled up uncontrollably. It was the right time to cry, I thought. “I believe this is fate; you were only traveling in borrowed time and space.”
In some places, the side effects of time slow to an almost imperceptible crawl, much like Aula herself, who had become a person living in the past.
Pale light shone on the oversized letters next to the model’s perfect smile on a giant billboard: “If you don’t surpass the times, the times will surpass you.” “As someone who only knows how to reminisce, I seem like a complete failure,” she said.
I mentioned the sculpture to her. She noded and said, “Have you ever thought that maybe the sequence was: she kissed the back of his neck, the gray mud encased them tightly, and then the sky fell?”
In any case, it was too late. I had already finished all the drinks. Few days later, the mud on that sculpture was removed, leaving only two heads floating in mid-air. They looked as if they were devouring each other. I felt sick and never went back to that park again.