Download the Book - Islam and Science Fiction

egun spending hours each day watching the live camera feed,
alternating interior and exterior shots. I fantasized about being the
first woman to land on Mars, and what that would mean. Once, I'd
had some fairly definite ideas about what that would mean, could
mean; for me, for Earth, for mankind. For womankind. But I seemed
to have forgotten all those things. After two hundred days in space,
the things which had once seemed important felt distant, unreal, while
things which had once been inconsequential threatened to overwhelm
me.
I shoved the book in my hand back under the pillow and
fastened the slings of my bedding. I pulled a moist towel from the
slot beneath the mirror and ran it across my face and neck, smoothing
back my eyebrows, running the fingers of one hand through my filthy,
unruly hair. I took the fastenings out and braided it as tightly as I
could, knowing there was little else I could do under ship conditions.
Once we were home I intended to tell them to cut it all off. I'd have to
have someone else to do it, as my muscles would be so weak after a
year and a half in space I'd be lucky if I could lift my head. My bones
felt hollow and weak just thinking of full gravity.
I exited my cabin, trying to force the lines of my face to
smooth. I was filled with inexplicable rage directed at no one. I was
so distracted by the noisy static in my mind, in the abrupt darkness of
the corridor with its meager running lights I sailed straight into Jabril.
Our heads smacked together with deceptive, almost slow-motion
force.
Jabril was quicker than I. He saved me from the recoil,
catching me and turning me against him in such a way that my head
didn't snap back against the wall. I pressed a hand to my mouth to
staunch the flow of blood welling from my split lip. A small trail of
beads rolled across Jabril's shirt collar like a broken strand of tiny red
pearls.
Everything drained from me: my unreasonable, unfocused
rage, my roiled feelings of shame and anger and boredom and fear. I
felt deflated. It was as though one accidental whack had knocked all
vitriol from my veins. Some rational remnant of my brain was
shocked to feel myself sobbing. Jabril folded me against him and I
clung there, my tears and blood and other inconvenient fluids soaking
into the soft fibers of his shirt rather than becoming messily airborne.
For the first time in weeks I felt calm. The incessant buzzing
in my brain, the horrible weight of space and metal I usually felt
pressing against my body, were gone.
"Shhh. It's all right. Shhh." Jabril stroked my tight-braided
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