Leilah Usman awaits an acceptance from a university abroad so she can leave the country she never loved when she stumbles upon an ancient diary. Through the eyes of Mahrosh Irfan, she finds herself in a world so completely different from hers.
One w...
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Present.
The winds knock on the creaky windows.
She tries to ignore the sound as she warms up her food. Her fingers restlessly tap her thighs as she counts down the seconds on the microwave. Somewhere in the rickety walls of this house, she is certain that she hears a rat scurry.
Leilah is finding it difficult to forgive her mother for leaving her in this big old house and disappearing as if it were no big deal.
"I grew up there when I was a child. I'm sure you'll love it," her mother had said and not for the first time - Leilah begins to doubt if her mother actually knows anything about her at all. Because even after the day she has spent roaming around these old walls, Leilah is yet to find something she could remotely like about this place.
It is located away from the central city, seems like the large house renowned in the neighborhood for its jinn stories, and the internet connection here is more unstable than her future.
Leilah wishes that the last comparison was a joke but the bitter truth tightens her grip on her phone. It is not. Not when four out of the six foreign universities she applied to responded in negative.
The microwave beeps and Leilah takes out the plate of pasta.
She practically runs back to her room, breathing only when the door is securely closed behind her. God, what if there are actual jinns in this place?
The thought does little to comfort her and she ensures that her door is locked before she sits down to eat. Her room is a tad bit better than the rest of the house - only because she added a tinge of her own flavor to it. But even with the posters and fairy lights from her previous room, the eeriness still stands out.
Perhaps Leilah feels it even more so because her mother told her that this room had once belonged to her grandmother. In the silence, sometimes Leilah can almost hear the laughter that might have once echoed off these walls and she does not like it. She does not like the thought of memories hanging in the air - as if she was walking into an empty room but in another era, it was once filled with a happy family, or a mourning one, or a lover's den. It causes her hair to stand up and only pulls her thoughts back to her university applications.
"I'll get in," Leilah whispers to herself when she feels the anxiety bubble in her throat. I'll go abroad to study and I won't ever come back.
She puts the plate on the side table once she is done eating, having no plans on returning to the spooky kitchen. Her mother has not yet contacted her, but Leilah knows better than to wait so she decides to put on Netflix. She skims through her downloads, only to decide to rewatch her favorite anime.
She rests her laptop on her bed and goes off to find her headphones in the drawer. They are not in her side table drawer and her brows draw together as she tries to remember where she last put them. She checks her bag next and when she salvages nothing, she moves to the study table.
The drawer is jammed and it takes her a second to open it. There is nothing inside except a leather-bound journal and she is about to close it again when her gaze skips to the journal and her hands fall by her sides.
She realizes as she takes it out that its brown color was only a layer of dust and when it has been brushed off, it is matte black. And ancient. She fears it will tear in her hands when she walks over to her bed again and slowly opens it.
Her fingers gingerly skim through the yellow pages and it does not take her long to realize that it is a diary. The dates pass by in front of her - June, 1933.
Leilah's heart skips a beat.
She moves to the first page and it is empty minus a name written on the right top of the page.
Mahrosh Irfan.
Her forehead creases when she fails to recognize the name. It's not Nani, then whose could it be?
