And I could have died last night, too.
Or the night before that.
And I could die tomorrow.
Allah knows best.
I don’t even know where to begin, and I apologize in advance
if this narrative seems jumbled, because honestly, that’s how my thoughts are
right now.
I lost my debit card sometime between last Thursday and
Sunday morning so I went to my bank around 2:30PM to get a new one. Since I was
in the neighborhood, I went home with intention of taking a nap before having
to leave to pick up my sister because I was literally falling asleep at the red
lights, but I figured I should call my dad first because I had a missed call from
him. I spoke to him for a few minutes, and he asks me if I was busy, if I could
go get kunafa from Clifton. I figured, okay, I’ll just grab a coffee on my way
out.
So I leave the house and go to Clifton. And it’s crowded,
and the gentleman asks me if I could wait 15 minutes because he has to make
more kunafa. So I sit down and try to memorize Quran but I’m just so freaking
sleepy, so I literally sat there and stared from the television set to my
phone.
Thirty minutes pass, and the kunafa isn’t ready yet, and he
comes out and apologizes to me a million times, and asks if I can wait ten more
minutes, just ten more minutes, and I tell him it’s okay, I can wait.
Ten minutes later he comes out and looks at me and says, “You
have the worst luck today. The kunafa I just made is burnt because the guy didn’t
dry the water off the pan properly. I know you’re gonna kill me, bas ma3lesh,
gimme exactly five minutes.”
I finally leave the store with the kunafa around 5:50, by
which time my sister is blowing up my phone with texts asking where I was,
because her class ended early.
I get on Route 3, take 21 South towards Newark, and I’m
driving like a psycho. Not because I’m late, but because I just drive like a
psycho when I’m tired (bad combination, no?).
Now pay attention to this next part, because this is where
things get really bad.
I get to Newark by 6:30, but it’s still like 20 minutes to
get to SHU. I’m driving on Raymond Blvd, and I remember seeing a red Nissan
Maxima in the lane next to mine, and I sped up a little because I thought it
was Amanee, but it wasn’t, but anyway.
I’m driving in the left lane, and it’s a four-lane street.
The light’s green, and the cars in front of me all have their left blinker
lights on, and they’re all waiting to make a left turn, and I’m stuck behind
them. And the light was green. So I’m getting impatient, so I put my right
blinker on so I can switch into the right lane. And I check my right side view
mirror. But the car in the right lane is coming too fast, and it’s too close
for me to get in front of, so I think to myself, I’ll just let that car pass
and I’ll switch into the lane right behind it. It was an old car, nothing too
fancy, still box-shaped, reminiscent of the early 90s. It was grey, or maybe
light blue, but they don’t make cars in light blue, so it was probably grey.
In the movies, they make these moments seem like they pass
by in slow motion.
I’m here to tell you that life isn’t like in the movies.
Everything happened so quick. I could have blinked and
missed it.
I was looking at the sidewalk to my right, and there were
two people standing there by the curb. White female, mid-twenties, a little
chubby, taller than the male, wearing jeans and one of those poofy waist-length
jackets. She had light colored hair, which was pulled back into a pony tail.
She had her phone in her hand. She was looking down the street, towards me, in
the direction of the oncoming cars, if you follow. The other person standing
with her was a black male, really thin, dark jeans, a dark cap, and also
wearing a black poofy jacket, but his was longer than the female’s. He was
standing with his back to me, he couldn’t have seen it coming.
There were plenty of other people on the sidewalk, I’m sure,
but I noticed these two because they were standing closest to me, just a lane separating
us. I noticed them because they were talking loudly. I could hear them, because
I had rolled down my windows an inch because the heat was making me drowsy. I
noticed them because suddenly, the girl started screaming and she bent her
knees slightly in a brace. Then she turned around to run, I’m assuming, but she
didn’t have time to get far. The guy, he didn’t even see it coming.
I’m sitting there in my car, stationary because I’m waiting
for the car in the right lane to pass me so I can switch into the right lane.
And that car? The car that looked old and boxy? Like a car
from an early 90s movie? That car drove onto the curb. The front wheels jumped
up from making the contact with the sidewalk, and the car kept going. That car
hit a light pole, and the light pole fell. And since this is ghetto Newark,
there were black trash bags on the sidewalk. The car ran through some of those
as well.
And that car? It hit those two people that were standing on
the curb. It hit the girl and the guy and it literally sent them flying a few
feet down the sidewalk.
And that car? It hit into the building on the corner, and I
watched the entire front half of that car fold in against the building, as
easily as you would crush a plastic cup against between your palms.
And the scary part is that I watched the whole thing from
the passenger side window. The smell of the powder from the air bags drifted in
through my open windows, and it was strong enough to make my throat itch and my
eyes water.
And that girl, she was laying there on the floor, and her
friend, the guy, he was half covered with a garbage bag. The girl moved a
little, but the guy was still.
People in the streets started screaming. Someone shouted, “Call
911!” and before I knew it, everyone on that block was holding a cell phone to
their ear.
A bus had just turned into the street we were in. The driver
saw the broken lamp post laying horizontally across the street, the car crushed
against the building, and the hordes of people swarming the area, and he
started backing the bus out of that street mad fast.
I was still sitting there, with my foot on the brake, in the
middle of a freaking car wreck. I pulled over a few feet ahead and opened my
car door, and I stood there, leaning against my car, staring dumbly. There was
so much glass. Impossible for all that glass to be just the windshield. It was
everywhere. I took a picture, but it didn’t come out very good, my hand was
shaking.
I could still smell the air bag powder, it was making me
nauseous. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that smell.
And then the person closest to me, who was facing the car
accident, turned around and looked at me. She had one hand crossed over her
chest, her other hand still had her phone in it. She stared at me for a second and the said, “You are one lucky girl.”
Waves of terror washed over me, and I felt the hair on my
scalp stand up, I swear it, and I was so freaking cold. I got back in my car
and I just sat there. It was 6:38PM.
It happened in less than eight minutes, the actual crash was
probably only a minute long. Two people might be dead, and it only took a
minute. Allahu a’lam, maybe it took even less.
And oh my god, the driver. Would he live? Was it a he or a
she?
Were there kids in that car?
How am I supposed to react? What is the behavior protocol for
someone who just brushed against death?
That could have been me. That car could have hit mine. I was
planning on switching into that lane. What if I had gotten where I was a few
seconds early and switched into that lane in front of that car. Would the
driver have rear ended me, an impact strong enough to snap my neck? Or what if
I hadn’t made into the lane in time and the driver T-boned my car? Yeah, it
would have been the passenger side that got hit, but it would be my side that
would hit the ground first if my car had flipped onto its side.
I put my seat belt on and I drove away.
And then I drove past NJIT. Would Dean Jack Gentul send out
an e-mail to the student body, with subject line “Sad News” and inform every
one of my sudden death?
I drove past UMDNJ, and the ambulances were pulling out of
the parking lot. It was a strange feeling, knowing exactly where they were
going and for what reason.
And then I started crying. I cried because I missed fajr
this morning, and I missed it on three of the five school day mornings of last
week. I cried because I wasted so much time last night. I cried because I
should have been memorizing Quran instead of watching mindless television on
Friday. I cried because I was so scared. I cried because I wasn’t ready to die.
How foolish, how
arrogant,
of me to wake up this morning thinking I’d be alive to see the next.
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| I won't be going into photography. |
