Mustafa adjusts his fez and rubs his wrists with his favourite oud.

He steps out of the house and makes his way to the mosque for maghrib prayer.

The date is Shaban the 29th of the year 1447, or (based on the Gregorian calendar) February 18th, 2026.

In about 25 minutes, the sun will set, and as is the case with the lunar calendar, the night precedes the day. This means that the holy month of Ramadan begins the moment the sun sets. The month of blessings and the month of fasting.

Mustafa picks up the pace in his stride, hoping to make it to The Bright Beacen Mosque, (the local mosque to him) a little earlier in order to read a page of the Quran before it's time for prayer.

In doing so, he trips and finds himself on his back looking up at the sky. The sun is no longer visible, quickly receding over the horizon.

A man helps Mustafa up, pulling him up by the hand. Their eyes do not meet and the helpful move is fast. So fast that Mustafa doesn't actually recall seeing the man's face. But he had a firm grip on his hand. The man tells him to watch his step (while walking away), "for every step either leads a man to good or evil".

Mustafa dusts himself off, and in the blink of an eye, the man is gone. With his hand released, Mustafa notices that there is a very small piece of paper in his palm.

He unravels the sheet of paper and finds that it just keeps unfolding. And just when he thought that he had unfolded it all the way, the sheet unfolded again. It's probably the size of around 6 A4 sheets with a lot of words he cannot make out the meaning of.

Mustafa notices that nothing around him is moving. No vehicles, no people and not even a breeze in the air. He looks at his watch to see how long there is to maghrib prayer and notices that the seconds have stopped counting up! Time is at a standstill.

He tries to walk forward and realises that he seems to be constrained. Stuck in what seems like an invisible box. 3 steps forward in any given direction!

Between his feet there is what looks like an old gaming controller.

He reaches for it. It has no chord. When he pushes the buttons, the buttons seem to flash with a red glow apart from when he pushes the up button. It flashes green.

He notices that pushing the up button twice makes it flash green twice but not a third time. He understands there must be a combination with a correct sequence of presses in order for him to be released from this invisible containment and for time to resume.

For him to solve the correct sequence of button presses, he looks at the buttons on the controller and then at the huge sheet of paper.

The buttons on the controller are "up", "down", "left", "right", "B", "A", "select" and "start".

What's the correct combination to get out of the invisible container?

---