Artwork by Kaya Joan
Lucia. No one calls her that anymore, not since her father died. When Lucian Zadedoo heard his girlfriend had given birth in America, he insisted on naming the child after himself, and Ngohide after his mother. He was especially relieved about her birth because, after the months he had spent in Nigerian Intelligence torture chambers for his exposé on the big oil companies destroying the south-south, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to father a child again. Then his girlfriend died in a car accident, or—as he would insist to any journalist who would listen—was killed because of him. Despite his degree in journalism from an American university, Lucian Zadedoo was never able to secure a steady job in the US or obtain the right papers to keep him there long enough, so Ngohide had to grow up in Kiarhouse, a Hudson, New York, orphanage that was once an asylum. She came to know her father only through sparse afternoons when he would visit Kiarhouse and take her on drives around the tiny towns that budded across upstate New York for what he called “Lu Time.” After he was murdered in anti-police brutality protests in Nigeria, the name became a covenant so sacred she begged the Kiarhouse director to hide the name Lucia from all her academic records when she moved from Hudson to Minna in Nigeria for university. Everyone in her new life knows her only as Ngohide. Everyone except for Saater, but he was gone now, traveling, and she hadn’t seen him since that day more than a year ago.
When she first arrived in Minna, Saater was the only person who talked to her at the first-year university orientation seminar. He was Tiv like her father and told her that the name Ngohide meant “mother returns.” He couldn’t understand how she had moved to Nigeria by herself or why she had come here at all. “Isn’t your mother American? What about her family?” She couldn’t tell him they didn’t want her, and that they only showed up in her life through money. He already knew too much about her. Saater teased Ngohide for being secretive, but he was kind. He had helped her find an apartment off campus, helped her register a SAFESIM for her phone and seemed to want nothing in return, even though she could tell he was very poor. It was on a Saturday afternoon, after helping her install a retractable bed, that he had declared his feelings for her. Ngohide had kissed him and given him her secret name in return. She believed she was in love with him.
Their classmates teased them for always sitting next to each other, but she didn’t care. She clung to him, fiercely. She needed the regularity of him: his presence, showing up just when she needed him; the sensation of his clean-shaven scalp under her kisses when he slept over at her place; and when they were separated, the daily calls to know if she slept well the night before. But everything changed during her second semester, when Saater went away as an early volunteer for the Serf-Corps program; he was poor and volunteering this early would mean two years of guaranteed housing with food and supplies. He begged Ngohide to understand, said that he still loved her and would video call and visit when he could. She missed him, but then she met a girl named Suraiya in her general studies class.
“Lucia Ngohide!”
She turns around. It is Saater, standing behind her, his hair in short kinky locs falling on his face. He is meant to be abroad serving the country, not stalking her in the Coke Village refreshment center.
“Saater, what are you doing here?” she whispers, as he hugs her. “And since when are you guys allowed to weave your hair like this?”
“Haba, Serf-Corps is not the old school youth service na. You can dress how you want.” He pulls up a stool to her table. Serf-Corps Youth Service sought out first year student volunteers of any tertiary institution, taking them to provide labor in other countries, their bodies serving as repayment for Nigeria’s infrastructure loans. In general, only poorer students volunteered. Ngohide, with her family money, was never going to be a target for the program but many of her classmates later signed up. The labor was mostly menial factory work, but there were promises from China that more opportunities to serve in appropriate fields of study were coming. Nigeria urged young people to get their hands dirty and do the work. They said that to be in the Serf-Corps was the most patriotic thing they could do for the country.
“You’ve not said why you’re here. Or wait, are you here to recruit me?”
“Only if you want. I get a bonus,” he shakes his head and smiles bitterly. “Anyway, how are things with Suraiya?”
Ngohide drops her can of coke and looks at Saater to inspect his eyes for malice. She says, “I don’t know,” and continues staring at him, knowing he is waiting for her to say more.
“Suraiya is not good for you,” he says. Ngohide rolls her eyes, but he goes on, rambling nonsense about how any connection with Suraiya could be dangerous for her. Suraiya is already in so much trouble, ever since she dropped out of university and joined an anti-government cult, he continues. “And if you think those people, The Nameless or whatever they call themselves, are for jokes,” he thrusts his phone in her face, “just look at this.”
Ngohide looks in spite of herself. She could never turn away from Suraiya’s voice. It is a video of Suraiya leading a protest to the House of Assembly, the kinds of clips the government wouldn’t air on TV or the radio these days, not even as a warning about other uprisings.
“They are using us to pay for their sins!’ Suraiya is yelling in front of a dozen young people. “We didn’t borrow the money for their airports and currency printing machines, yet we are being made to pay. Go and see how they are treating those young people who have been shipped to China and Europe! Just go and see!”
“You know it is illegal to carry this type of video about, don’t you?” Ngohide says.
“Has Suraiya contacted you recently?” he wants to know.
“I think I need to go lie down.” Ngohide stands up. “Good luck with whatever brought you back here.” She leaves her unfinished soda and fish burger on the table and hurries out of Coke Village to the waiting cabs that are fully charged by the hot Minna sun. It isn’t until her cab pulls away from the Gidan Kwano campus gate that she lets herself exhale.
Suraiya. When they first met, Ngohide was slow to catch what happened to her breath when Suraiya spoke up in class, challenging mean professors who bragged about no one getting A’s in their course, speaking with a voice too big for her small frame. Ngohide sought her out after classes and offered to buy her lunch because she saw Suraiya as an outsider, like her, as a girl who owned herself in a way you weren’t supposed to.
One day, not long after they met, they were walking from campus in silence along the path that led to Suraiya’s house, and Ngohide had asked, “Are you really going to use our computer science degree?” And Suraiya laughed a long laugh, in the pitch of startled birds. Ngohide wanted this laugh all to herself.
“I don’t know,” said Suraiya when she caught her breath. “But this, your braiding, didn’t catch your hair properly. Come to my house. Let me fix it.”
And Ngohide followed, as if compelled. There was a power cut, so she couldn’t see many details of the one-room apartment but was content to drown in Suraiya’s sour lavender scent. By candlelight, Suraiya untangled the cornrows Ngohide had braided, a style she had hastily learnt on YouTube. She enjoyed Suraiya’s quick fingers on her scalp, short diagonal movements that travelled down to her nape. Ngohide wanted to tell Suraiya she was wearing the simple cornrow style to honor her dead father as she did every year during the third week of September, but before she could decide to say anything, Suraiya was done.
When Ngohide stood up from the cool terrazzo to stretch her knees, the electricity returned, and her image appeared in a mirror that she hadn’t noticed in the darkness. It was like she was seeing herself for the first time. The new cornrows zigzagged on her head, and her face glowed with a smile.
“You are so beautiful,” she heard Suraiya say, and her heart swelled with deep gratitude and awe. She turned and collided into Suraiya’s face. Who had initiated this first kiss? Months after Suraiya disappeared for good, Ngohide would ponder the question as though solving this mystery would give her closure.
Later, Suraiya’s biodata page had been scrubbed off the university student portal, and Ngohide had hoped that such an erasure would also disappear Suraiya from her mind. But just hearing Suraiya’s name has revived her, and she lingers in Ngohide’s consciousness fully formed, looking at her wide-eyed.
How are things with Suraiya?
Ngohide pushes the question to the back of her mind as she takes off her clothes, then peels off her cooling underwear. Good cooling clothes are expensive but essential in this heat that boils the country all year round. She rubs her body down with cleaning cream and then sits down at her desk to fill out a security registration form she had just received. Her university, like several others in the country, is trying to protect student data, they said, from dangerous forces. Ngohide is puzzled at the amount of data all her devices have used in the past month. Three terabytes! She hadn’t done that many assignments during the semester. The new rule is that all internet access had to be connected to the National Intelligence Agency in Abuja. Ngohide trembles as she logs her use on the form, but she is too tired to look over her usage in detail. She will do it later. For the rest of the afternoon, Ngohide distracts herself with house chores, clearing cobwebs, dusting the display screen on the wall, an image of her and her father having Lu Time at a tea shop.
Not long after her father’s death, the Kiarhouse director, a man who treated all the children under his care like business clients, had printed out the news reports, the ones that said that the U.S. government was deporting those born of single American parentage.
“This isn’t goodbye, you’ll get annual check-ins and a monthly stipend from me.” The man had said, dragging her suitcase downstairs to the driver waiting outside. Ngohide almost begged for one last phone call to her mother’s family, but the look on the director’s face made her swallow the plea. They preferred to talk to her only through their money. “They are aware of the situation and I promise, you won’t miss a check.”
Ngohide felt like a corpse as she got on the train to Penn Station, then JFK. As the plane lifted and left America behind, Ngohide told herself she was going to be closer to her father, since she was flying to the land of his birth.
Over the years she has come to feel at home in Nigeria and believe in the country’s promise of police reform and economic stability. The constant news reports on screens and billboards proclaim that Nigeria was stronger than the forces that try to cause division. Ngohide sometimes still dreams that she is in America, having tea with her father.
That night, she tries to put the encounter with Saater behind her and lets herself fall asleep.
I am only here because they said we are the children of tomorrow. I love the 140 students slaughtered in Kano. They are dead and I never met them, but I love them. I love our sisters in Uniport who marched to protest an educational system that allows sexual abuse. I love my brothers in jail who have been wrongfully accused of terrorism. I love them. I might be long dead by the time you receive this message but-
Ngohide wakes up panting. She has not dreamed of Suraiya in months. I love my brothers in jail, who have been – no, this isn’t from the video Saater had shown her in Coke Village yesterday. Ngohide can’t recall the exact words from Saater’s phone, but Suraiya was complaining about the new National Youth Service Program, not the students slaughtered in Kano. Ngohide gets up from her bed and googles the Kano massacre but sees nothing from the past five years. Yes, the government has censored the news, but if students had really been killed, they would know about it, right?
“Did you hear about the killings in Kano?” asks Nnam, the student representative of her class as they work in the biology lab. He is whispering, but the question makes her heart race. “I have a sound file, if you want to follow me to the bathroom.”
“Nice try, Nnam,” she turns to smile at him. “Leave me alone.”
But he whips out his phone when the lecturer steps out to chat with a colleague, and presses play.
I am only here because they said we are the children of tomorrow. I love the 140 students slaughtered in Kano. They are dead and I never met them, but I love them. They could have been any of us. When we asked the senator in this very house to say something, he said the Kano 140 are nameless, there is no record of their existence. He said our cries for justice are mere propaganda. My fellow Nigerians, these nameless people could have been any one of us. If you love them, too, give up your name and join us. We are The Nameless.
Ngohide feels her belly lurch and pushes the phone away from her face. “Where did you get that?”
“What do you mean?” laughs Nnam. “Everyone has been sharing and resharing since this morning. You were friends with the person speaking abi, in our hundred level? The guys said you and the lady used to go home together.”
“I have to go.” Ngohide says, packing up her bag. “Please tell Prof that I have an entrepreneurship screening on the G.K. Campus, and if I don’t go now, I’ll miss the bus.”
Nnam says, “Every time you keep running away from me, ehn, even now that I’m not asking you out. We still have three years in this school o.” But she is already gone. Entrepreneurship isn’t for another four hours, but she needs to be in Coke Village, where she can sit in an open-air kiosk and rest. The heat is bearable there, filtered through the trees that surrounded the kiosk, not the sharp heat that is everywhere else. In the cab ride, she realizes that she has no one to really talk to. Her life is littered with moments like this when she wants badly to cry in the arms of the mother she never knew or to talk to her father over tea.
The last time had been more than a year ago, when the Ministry of Interior Affairs reached out to inform her that Lucian Zadedoo was one of sixty-two journalists, filmmakers and writers who were going to receive a presidential apology for the atrocities done to them. She wanted to share the news with someone and Saater wasn’t in the country. Ngohide felt like she didn’t mind his absence at all when she started to spend more time with Suraiya. After their first kiss, there were other firsts. When she woke up in Suraiya’s bed after their first night together, Ngohide told her about Lucian Zadedoo. So, with this latest news of her father, Ngohide ran all the way to Suraiya’s house to tell her.
Even now, over a year later, she still remembers how her body froze on that day when she had thrown open Suraiya’s door only to find her naked with Saater, his red and green camouflage uniform pooling on the ground. She shut the door immediately and sat on the stoop, waiting for the spinning world to stop. Saater came outside and sat next to her, trying to place an arm around her shoulder.
“Lucia, I can explain.”
“Don’t touch me!” she whispered hoarsely. “How could you do this to me? ”
“Lucia!”
“Never call me that name again!”
Suraiya came out of the room just then, and tears fell from Ngohide’s eyes. Looking at Saater made her want to vomit but it was painful to look at Suraiya, too. Ngohide whispered to Saater in a hoarse voice she didn’t recognize as her own, “How-how did you even meet her?”
“She-she was my first recruit,” said Saater. “I was meant to coach her for entry level before they shipped me up to Brussels.”
“Oh, so you were here this whole time, and you couldn’t come to see me!”
“Yes! Serf-Corps controls when I move, who I talk to,” he shouted back. “And I know that you were fucking her this whole time! She told me everything!”
“I didn’t know you were using me for revenge,” Suraiya snapped at Saater. “Ngohide, he didn’t tell me that you were together. I would never…”
“Look, let me leave you people to sort yourselves out,” said Saater and he escaped into the heat.
Mosquitoes buzzed in the air. “Should we go inside?” Suraiya said in a calm voice, placing a gentle hand on Ngohide’s shoulder. She hated that she wanted Suraiya’s hand there. “You know I don’t take those expensive blood guard supplements you take.” When Ngohide didn’t move or say a word, Suraiya asked. “I hope I haven’t led you on. It’s not like we’re even dating, really.”
“We-we are-we are friends!” Ngohide sobbed, overwhelmed by a confusing mix of shock, betrayal, guilt. But with each gasp, one thought kept rising to the surface: Suraiya was planning to leave. “When were you going to tell me you were thinking of joining Serf-Corps?”
Suraiya laughed. “I mean you’ve seen my apartment, you know my family is poor.” When Ngohide didn’t say anything else, she continued. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ve decided I won’t be joining them,” Ngohide’s heart soared. “I’m dropping out of school.”
“What!”
“Come here.” Suraiya said, pulling her into her apartment. In bed, she threw a blanket over them both, adjusting it to cover Ngohide’s feet. “Have you finished reading Obafemi’s The Miseducation of African Millennials? They were the last generation to see any truly public system in this country. Neocolonialist structures borrowing from colonial pasts won’t do any of us any good. And honestly, I will kill myself if I have to sit through another semester with course materials that have been out of date for decades.” Suraiya stroked Ngohide’s hair with one hand and her back with the other as she talked. “I hope you understand.”
“I understand,” Ngohide said, not understanding. Not understanding anything at all.
Now, in the cab to Coke Village, Ngohide considers plugging her phone into the backseat screen so she can review her data usage, but her head hurts. She shuts her eyes to clear her head instead. She isn’t surprised to find Saater when she walks in, sitting on an airstool with his back to her. Wanting to feel like she is the one in control for once, she walks up to him.
“It seems you have given up on Serf-Corps,” she says and enjoys his mild surprise. “Or your recruiting game is wack.”
“If you only knew,” he says, pocketing his phone and looking at her with concern. “Are you okay?”
She orders drinks for both of them into the table mic, pausing to look up and ask, “You still like your regular, the Vita Cherry, right?”
“You’re different today,” says Saater.
She is drunk on this strange wave of confidence. “Tell me about you, how are things with Serf-Corp? What are the girls like?”
“Have you been sleeping well?” he asks.
“I have. It seems like you haven’t.” she sips her Coke. “It seems like your Serf-Corps service will never end.”
“I have a way out,” he says, leaning back on his chair.
Ngohide sits up, “You can’t just leave the Corps. The police will arrest you immediately.”
“It seems you’ve been studying us,” he laughs.
“I don’t know anything,” she responds.
“Ah, but you do,” he leans forward. “You saw Suraiya in your dreams last night, didn’t you?”
When did I tell him that? she wonders.
“Information is everywhere, in many forms,” he says. “Our ancestors were reading footprints of animals, and creases in tree barks. There are signs and symbols everywhere to read, Lucia, and we read them all the time, whether we know it or not.” You have been reading Suraiya’s soundwaves. And you have been reading mine.
Ngohide gasps. You have been reading Suraiya’s soundwaves. And you have been reading mine. Has she imagined those last two sentences? They certainly didn’t come from his mouth. It is like he was speaking in her head, but gently, like the thoughts you have before falling asleep.
Lucia.
“I am not well, Saater. I need to go lie down.”
Saater smiles at her and reaches for her hand, never looking away. You are perfectly fine, Lucia. If you let me-
“Get out of my head!” she screams. Everyone else in Coke Village turns sharply towards them. “This is the person-” she screams, pointing at him, “this is the person sharing those videos on campus.”
She walks out to the cab park without looking back. On the ride back home, she feels the need to talk to someone gnawing at her, anyone. Back in her apartment, she takes off her heels and goes to sleep without even taking off her cool wear. It is a deep sleep, and when she opens her eyes, it takes a moment to remember who she is. Slowly, she realizes she is no longer in her apartment but is sitting in a plastic chair in a windowless room. And her body feels heavy, so heavy that she can’t lift a finger.
Lucia.
Fear and panic comes to her in slow waves. Is Saater behind this?
“Lucia Ngohide Zadedoo,” says the reassuring voice of an older woman and Ngohide feels herself calm down. “You are Lucia, such a Catholic name, ehn.” The woman draws a chair and sits next to her, with concern on her face. “How are you feeling?”
“I am dizzy. And tired.”
“Kai, the dose they gave you was too high! I told those agents that this girl is not even twenty years old, ehn. They should take it easy! Kai, I am so sorry, ehn. Let’s do quick quick, so that they’ll bring the doctor to flush it out of your system. What do you know about The Nameless, or should I say, what do you know about Suraiya?”
Ngohide wants to explode. Why is everyone asking her about this girl, this girl who left her alone in this world!
“I-haven’t-seen-Suraiya-in-months!”
The woman nods and adjusts her head tie. “I know, that’s what it says on file, she dropped out in your first year. Okay let’s forget about the useless girl. How have you been getting propaganda from The Nameless? Our people have searched all your things and scanned your body, no hardware. No device containing any history of those videos and sound recordings. But when we map the data, it leads back to your apartment. How did you people do it, ehn, fine girl?”
“I am so confused. I don’t know what you people are talking about,” says Ngohide. “I told Saater the same thing, I don’t-”
“Saater Hirekaan,” says the woman, tapping the air in front of her to reveal a holographic screen. Green texts with Saater’s portrait photo in camouflage come up. “The Nameless agent who infiltrated the Serf-Corps program. Was he your handler?”
Ngohide can’t respond, her mind is racing. If Saater is working with The Nameless, by showing her that video he was somehow activating something buried in her. Or maybe attaching something to her. Bloody Pluto! She curses. Those three terabytes!
“I really hoped you would cooperate with us. I told those men to leave you with me, let us talk woman to woman. But I was wrong.” The woman stands up and walks to the door, leaving the holographic tablet in the air. “When they start, don’t fight it. Let them get what they need from you, for the good of the country.”
Ngohide isn’t paying attention to her, she is thinking about Saater. She remembers the things he said about reading invisible waves in the air, waves containing information. What was the science of it? He talked about it like it was the same as reading footprints in the sand. How did he transfer the information to her? Ngohide now understands that the dream she had of Suraiya the night after meeting Saater wasn’t a dream, but a transmission. How had he activated her ability to read it? Also, why is there fog in the room now?
Ngohide feels her trachea burn and realizes she is slowly drowning. The air is thick with moisture. The holographic tablet glimmers, and a text appears:
Please Say Your Name.
“Lu-Ngohide Zadedoo.”
What Is Your Affiliation With The Nameless?
She was gasping for air now.
What Is Your Affiliation With The Nameless?
I am really going to die, she thinks. This must be what my father went through. Alone with his torturers. Well, I am not going to scream. I am not going to give them that.
Suddenly, a rush of air fills the room and Ngohide gasps and drinks it, tears running down her eyes. The woman is back in the room, wiping her face with towels and saying things Ngohide can’t hear. Ngohide wants to scream at her, to strangle her. But her bones feel like spaghetti and her throat is raw.
“You are still a beautiful girl, Lucia Zadedoo,” the woman says, applying lip gloss on Ngohide’s lips. “I don’t care what you have gotten yourself into. You understand why this is happening, eh? Fine girl like you, the country would have been proud to have you wearing our Serf-Corps red and green to represent us in China or Europe, but see what you have gotten yourself into, eh, fine girl.”
Ngohide tries to speak, but saliva dribbles from her mouth.
“You can’t talk now until I leave, you have refused to talk to me so you will talk to Ai.” The woman turns to leave again.
“Please!” Ngohide sobs.
The woman stops at the door and turns. “You are really strong. Don’t fight us. Fight for us. Remember you have a place in this country.”
When the fog starts gathering on the ceiling and the air gets sucked out of the room again, Ngohide realizes they want her to deaden herself to the reality all around her, the exploiting of young people to pay for the government’s mistakes. It will never end. Not until she believes the lie.
Ngohide shuts her eyes and lifts her mind out of the room, reaching for those hot afternoons in Hudson, when her father would rescue her from Kiarhouse for their Lu Time. He smiled at her and she smiled back. She hated the jeans and frilly blouses Kiarhouse guardians made her wear for these trips, she would have loved to dress just like him and be his twin, a clean grey suit with a paisley necktie.
Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes and follow my voice.
Heaving from the foggy air, she recognizes the voice in her head.
Can you hear me? If you can, don’t say a word, just open your eyes.
Ngohide opens her eyes to the fog. But she is not afraid anymore.
–Suraiya.
-Good girl. Don’t speak with your mouth, use your thoughts. If they see you using this technology, things will get even more difficult for us.
-Suraiya.
-I am so sorry. You should feel the air changing by now.
-Suraiya, is this really-
We don’t have time; the room controllers will soon wake up. Push the chair to the left corner of the room and climb it. You can reach the ceiling tile if you climb the chair on tiptoes.
Ngohide, as if waking up from a dream, pulls herself from the chair and pushes it to the left corner. She is surprised she doesn’t fall the first time she tries climbing, and is relieved when the tile lifts at the first push. She takes a hand that stretches out to her, a beaten man who is sleepwalking helps her climb into the dimly lit ceiling.
It’s better this way, he’ll wake up when he gets to friends who will help him with the pain. Follow him.
-Where is Saater?
-Saater won’t be with us for a while.
-What do you mean won’t be with us for a while?
-Let’s just say you…put him in a difficult situation. He really loved you, you know.
-What about you, Suraiya? DID YOU LOVE ME?
There is a pause as Ngohide waits for Suraiya’s answer. The sleeping man keeps crawling ahead.
No. Please get ready to drop into the next room. If you lift the mat, you’ll be able to go underground and through a tunnel. Once you come out, you’ll see a truck that will smuggle you to the border and–
-Why me? Why did you pick me? I am not crawling another step until you answer me.
-I picked you after that night you told me about your father. He will be so proud of you, you know. You are so strong. I know you are an excellent student and you have a trust fund. If you turn back, you will never read us in the air again. I need you to make up your mind, are you with us?
Ngohide smiles sadly, thinking about Lucian Zadedoo. If only she could have one more Lu Time with him. She could have made Kiarhouse send her to England for college or Berlin. But she convinced herself on the plane that coming back to Nigeria would bring her close to him. She has tried to be a good student, a good citizen here. But just as the country had crushed her father in the end, Ngohide realizes now that she never felt as close to him as she had when she was in the torture chair. Maybe there is no life for her here, not anymore.
Lucia, are you with us?
A bamboo house by the sea. Blue plaster paint peeling off the walls. Air thick and bitter on the tongue, endless water lapping up the black beach sand, leaving small dead animals and branches in its wake. A draft of wind rushes through the wooden house. And then the bathroom, where a half-woman half-girl snatches clippers from the hand of a half-man half-boy. He has already finished shaving the spots she missed on her head and is now working on his beard. She then leans over to help him. He is careful to avoid smiling as the clippers travel up his left cheek, where a scar is still tender. She is still new to shaving. She is still new to this life.
When people ask how they met, they try to be kind in the stories they tell about each other. They can’t return to who they once were; but they have met again, anew, as friends. Under full moons, they leave their quarters, identical to the hundred others housing The Nameless. They go into the marshes to join the others and dance to music filtered through airwaves no conventional equipment could detect.
When the warning floats through the camps that their country has launched chemical weapons against them, chemicals that can filter past their shields and latch onto hair, they help each other shave.
They haven’t seen Suraiya in weeks. But her last transmission still plays in their minds: I am only here because they said we are the children of tomorrow.
She stops to blow tiny tufts of hair off the clippers’ teeth, then turns his face gently to the right.
I love the 140 students slaughtered in Kano. They are dead and I never met them but I love them.
The clippers whir in the background as Suraiya’s voice goes on–clear, soft and unrushed.
I love our sisters in Uniport who marched to protest against an educational system that ensures sexual abuse is not just protected but enforced. I love my brothers in jail, implicated in things they know nothing of. I love them. I might be long dead by the time you receive this message but-
She looks at her work in the mirror on the bamboo wall. He is looking, too, turning from side to side and grinning.
