My brother, held tight to his belief like a limpet holding onto algae, chewing it off a hard rock. So when he joined Boko Haram, we only saw it on the leaf he left us that read: I have left to strive in the path of my Lord. Ya Ilahi, I agree, belief eats at a …
A child’s need to be chased, to hide and be found time and again, is why my father is the ghost stalking my dreams. When I was a child, hunting for where to hide and wait for my friends to seek, I found, inside an abandoned yard with an unfinished building, a hole in the …
I have never wanted to forget. But I have faltered in remembering.
Little Inhabitants The poet wakes in the middle of the night to find that his room, Barely enough for his lean body, is a megacity for the little Inhabitants. Roaches are going and coming, each one with A different sense of urgency, some slow as clumps of dew, Others civil servants in love with the …
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 …
When they walked into the cathedral, God watched them walk. When the bullets prepared to leave the gun, they left the gun. The prayers shielded nothing. The father against his son shielded nothing. The bullet will always obey, find a way through the body's anxious defense. I am tired of writing about my country. Every …
