The Time Traveller

written on March 28th, 2017 by Rafia Abubakar

14 hours.

That was what I had to go through for my next destination. Just to clarify, I was OK with it. I tend to enjoy long flights. It was night time, and I figured I could catch up on sleep. With lady luck on my side, I had a row all to myself and no noisy person on my side of the plane. I was already humming a happy tune.

This allowed for the comfort to shift between sitting, lying down, and sleeping. In a long flight, this was heaven sent. Then turbulence literally shook me awake. So there I was woken. Not quite sure how long I slept. With the changing time zones, I couldn’t be bothered to calculate. I happened to look out the window and saw the moon.

It looked brighter and much closer than usual. Strangely, I thought it must’ve been because I was high up in the sky. Upon closer inspection, I was in awe with the view before me. Fishing out my camera, I took a shot. I had never been good with taking shots of the moon but the image was enough for me.

The moon, the plane’s wing light, and the emerging sun on the left. My capture of one of the world’s great divide, Day and Night.

Every legend, prose, and tale of the Sun and Moon, Day and Night, Light and Dark were running through my head as I silently marveled at what I dare say is one of nature’s most beautiful displays. To be smack in the middle of this was mind blowing. Alarm clocks must be striking the bell somewhere down below.

Another perspective I amused myself with was that I was travelling back in time. Something my friends and I like to quip about. When crossing timelines, it is technically going back or going forward in time. Semantics. My flight was at 1 AM in the morning and when I arrived at my destination, local time would be 7 AM same day. Do the math, a 14 hour-long flight won’t fit in that time frame. So somewhere along the (time)line, I was gaining more hours.

Humour me.

I think I had more fun than I should have, thinking about these perspectives and notions. But that’s the beauty of seeing things for yourself when travelling. Old and well known ideas become new and real when experienced firsthand. Of course I knew about timelines, but it was fun to think of time travelling, while watching the silent chase between day and night.