1. It’s midnight. I’m sitting on the veranda drinking cardamom coffee, trying hard not to call Chris. “Don’t call him and accuse him,” my therapist says. “That will only make things worse.” She suggests filling my mouth with water and keeping it there. “Bite your tongue if you feel you might say something that will …
The sun burns brightest on the morning after a night-time rainstorm. That Thursday in June, when my partner and I awoke to find our Surulere apartment windows washed clean by rain, with the glass slats sparkling in the sunlight and the floor tiles as dry as an ark’s insides, we decided to celebrate our good …
The phone rang. I picked it up at the first beep. “Waziri, how are you?” “Fine sir. And you?” “Have they called you?” “No sir.” “These people! Don’t worry, I will sort it out.” The conversation ended within thirty seconds. This was around noon on Tuesday, 23rd February 2016. I did not have to probe. …
The Girl arrived a little after dusk as Manyara laid out plates for dinner. The Girl knocked on the gate with a kind of urgency that disturbed even the old dog, Lazy Bones, who never shook out of sleep for any reason. He barked furiously whilst running around, circling the house in a confused, frantic …
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 …
The baby, nameless still in this model of spirituality, and his parents, Sarah and Fabian, catechists at Saint Mary’s parish, sit in the front pew. The baby’s godfather and uncle, who is Uche elsewhere, but not on this day, not in this ritual where he must be Silas, sits behind the baby’s parents. There is …
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 …
