When A Daughter Loses Her Father

It has been a year since my dad died. I am still baffled at the audacity of death, to come between a father and his child. It is an unkind separation. A tearing at the seams. Time became warped for me this past year, i am finding it hard to believe a year has gone by. The grief is still enormous and the sense of loss is ever constant. My concept of time became a measurement of time before or after...

On Mourning

I wipe the tears that come without consentI do not bother halting their descentWithout invitation, this grief makes it’s ascentRises to my throat and makes itself a tentThis sorrow is of pitiful intentOf separation and loss i am forced to lamentOnly he who has lost, knows this tormentShackled and bound, i am under arrestThere is only sadness in my heartIn death’s ugliness today i am caughtRising and...

Nawal El-Saadawi: The White Lion

 Nawal El-Saadawi has died. I feel the same way i felt when i read about the death of Fatima Mernissi. Like i lost old friends. For me, these were women who validated my truth. I never knew one could be muslim and feminist because i had never met anyone like that until i found both El-Saadawi and Mernissi through books, on my journey of self discovery. Mernissi thought me about myself and El-Saadawi...

2020: Books That Kept Me Sane Through This Very Strange Year

It has been an incredible year. I will not recap all of the negatives that happened this year. Experiencing and surviving a pandemic is enough. I don't think it would be possible for anyone to possibly forget this year so i will simply celebrate the good.  To have achieved nothing other than...

The Best Thing A Girl Can Be In This World, Is A Beautiful Fool

I read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald sometime in 2013. I loved the book and I loved the movie. It was a beautiful story and at the time, I was still a naive little girl with fire in her veins. I was just discovering what kind of person I wanted to be and at the time, I had recently found...

A Race For The Sunset

Context: In January, I and my best friend in the world decided to take an uncertain trip to a place far away from home. We chose the Maldives because it was the only seemingly magical location where we didn't need a visa. We had previously tried to travel to Europe but visa issues and limited...

#ArewaMeToo: A Hausa Normalised Culture Of Abuse

In Solidarity with our sisters fighting the good fight with the #MeToo movement! A friend was lamenting late last year about how the sanctity of marriage has been bastardised. "Our hausa communities are rife with divorce." he cried. Fortunately or not so much, he came to me. This year started...