Deleted Novel Excerpt: About Time

The four of them had gone to Nesrin’s room to look at her clock. It was round with a thick wooden frame, and other than the face being decorated like the inside of an playhouse with a music box motor on a stage at the bottom, it looked like any other clock.

“See,” Nesrin said, “that’s how you think of time, running in linear cycles.”

The clock struck five o’clock. A music box version of some opera song or another played while the numbers separated from each other in six sections – 1, 2, and 3; 4; 5, 6, and 7; 8; 9, 10, and 11; and 12. Underneath, the sections were affixed to a blue rotating disk decorated with gold musical notes. The disc revolved clockwise while the numbers rotated in alternating directions. Periodically the numbers would stop and change rotations. After a minute the music took on a sleepier tempo, and the disc and numbers began turning counterclockwise until they were back in their proper place, then the music stopped and the clock resumed its normal appearance.

“That’s what time’s really like.”