Glissade

The township is a place of unity. People rescue and aid each other for they’ve subscribed to the adage that a hand washes the other. One hand cannot properly wash itself. Urgent meetings and funeral attendances are occasions where this unity is witnessed. The residents know one another and one another’s affairs, unlike in the …

All writing is speculative. No matter how grounded in history or current reality; even nonfiction requires a reimagining, a speculation on what we think we know. I sit comfortably with ‘speculative fiction’ as a way of seeing rather than a genre because it is impossible for me to divorce it from everyday life. Consider Harry …

He smokes until he sees something moving in the smoke, remembers Joy like blindness: swimming at Jazeera Beach, gorging on belonging, barwaaqo, iftiin. He remembers riding through Suuqa Bakaaraha on a motorbike, held onto by women with hair trailing behind them like black smoke. It’s raining in London again, Hassan Aden Samatar sings from a …

Because he was different, the bus conductor let a lofty hope bud within him, a hope too high for his type: love.

The average Hausa trader is voluble. Ask the price of an object in a rural market, he’ll reply, “Hundred. Do you want me to speak gaskiya?”

It had been three months since the last time I heard Om Sagda’s screams. I marked those empty days on the calendar.

ISSUES

Subscribe to the Efiko Newsletter

From the Archives

Join Us