Second Annual Writing Competition

The last goodbye was at the airport. She was leaving Canada and the plan was that they would see each other again. She was sobbing. She felt like she was walking through molasses. The ugly, hard chairs at the airport reflected how she felt. She knew deep down that this was the end. She would never see him again. He promised though – he promised he would be with her soon. He loved her. She wanted him to love her. They had talked about kids. She was in a hotel in LA – she woke in a cold sweat shouting his name. Her heart was broken. 

She went to the coast for the weekend with her family – he didn’t answer any of her phone calls. He ignored everything that she sent him. She was still so in love. He called her when she got home. She was sitting in a beanbag on her floor. As soon as she heard his voice, she knew it had happened. 

“I was wondering if she can stay the night?” 
“Why?” 
“We are just going to make some music together” 
“OK – why does she need to spend the night?” 
“Actually – I don’t think this relationship is going to work.” 
“oh.”

The lump in her throat rendered her speechless. 
She hung up. She found a bottle of red wine. She put on Amelie and she sobbed. More than she’d sobbed in a long while. The ugly cry. The cry that made you run out of breath and hiccup. He sent the video of them singing a love song together.  

She was so beautiful. 
Her name was Kat. Nice, easy, normal, white.  
Priya wanted to look and dress just like her. 
She kinda wanted to be her. 
Was it jealousy or was it something else? 
Maybe she envied the ease with which Kat floated through this world.

She continued to work under women like Kat. 
As if politics was beneath them. 
As if because they turned the news off, they could just ignore the suffering. 
Oh, it’s so sad what's happening over there they would say with a wave of her hand and a dismissive tone.
Was this the privilege of whiteness? 
Priya wished she could be oblivious to the interconnected atrocities. 
But she couldn't.

Wasn't bearing witness and having your heart break every single day part of what it meant to be human? 

The mask that these women wore was almost better than her own. 

The more she interacted with people like herself; it confirmed that it wasn't just her that saw through this facade. There was something truly toxic and hateful under the surface of people like this. 

They were living the dream without realising that the dream was also made from a mountain of their own discarded bodies, allowing the white man to keep a flag at the top. 

Years after the heartbreak, after her heart had healed slightly and she had reconciled what it meant to be and embrace herself, she wrote a poem that she thought fit these women perfectly.
It went like this. 

You think we like your voices. 
You laugh about how its all a bit too hard.
Whilst sitting in your privilege
And throwing glass shards.

With your voice. 
With your eyes. 
You don’t need to tell us you hate us.

Some people you say. 
They don’t listen. 
They can’t talk like us. 

We are the knowledge. 
We will gatekeep
With our cracked lipstick 
And 
Our fake allyship 

We don’t need to say it.
But we know we are better than you. 

Why can’t you be civilised? 
Eat with fork and knife? 
Just ignore it when black and brown babies die.

We take your language 
Twist it 
And use it to stab you in the back. 

We only have friends that look like us 
Because we just get it.
Our friendship is easy because we maintain the status quo 

We would love to have you around, 
But play by our made up rules. 

We encourage self-reflection for YOUR growth
But the only self-reflection we like is how we look in the mirror. 

Your thinly veiled threats 
Hide that you want to be like us

While you fill your lips with botox 
And 
Lather yourselves with fake tan
And 
Make yourselves something you are not. 

We are the women of white
We are feminists. 
We rule the world. 
And you better remember that. 

Priya reflected on the way that people had said that she was too angry, but all she could think was I that anger was a message. A reminder that this was all unjust. 

That power is unequally distributed. 
That we are all cogs in a killing machine. 
That our world has been designed in such a way that we are harmed by black and brown anger but not by the killing. 
That we tone ourselves down so as to not upset the monsters.

She chose to listen to her anger. It was productive (even though it didn't need to be), but it was also sacred. 
And if you couldn’t hear her because of her rage... it made her ask... why weren’t they raging? 
Shouldn't we all be raging?

I am Nuriye.

But for three years of my life, I was not allowed to carry my own name.

So I became “Noor Ahmad.”

Not because I wanted to.

But because survival has no patience for identity.

And slowly… even my own voice started responding when people called me by a name that was never mine.

The morning my life changed into disguise did not feel like a beginning.

It felt ordinary.

The smell of boiled tea and dry bread filled our small room.

The sound of my younger siblings chewing slowly echoed through the silence—each bite carefully measured, as if hunger could be delayed by eating less loudly.

Cold air slipped through the broken walls, touching everything without permission.

 And my mother sat quietly on the floor, dividing food that was already not enough, her hands moving with the patience of someone who had learned that love sometimes means giving away what you do not have.

My father was gone.

And after his death, there was no one left to earn.

No voice to stand between us and hunger.

No footsteps returning home with food.

Only silence… waiting… and the unbearable sound of emptiness growing inside a home.

Under the rules around us, a girl cannot simply step outside and work freely.

Not to study.

Not to earn.

Not to build a future.

Even when survival is collapsing inside the home.

Even when hunger has already taken everything else.

But hunger does not understand rules.

It only understands absence. 

So I erased myself in the only way I could.

I wore men’s clothes.

Not as disguise.

But as permission to exist outside my door.

A borrowed identity became my key to the street.

A stolen name became my protection from questions that could destroy everything.

I cut my hair to look like a boy’s.

I lowered my voice until it no longer sounded like a girl’s.

I walked into the streets like a boy, pretending to be someone else just to survive.

 The moment I stepped outside, my senses were overwhelmed.

Dust entered my mouth with every breath dry, bitter, like ash.

The air carried the smell of frying bread, diesel smoke, and crowded lives moving too fast to notice a girl trying not to exist.

Voices of men filled the streets loud, unrestrained, free.

And sunlight struck my skin sharply, as if even light could question my right to be there.

But beneath everything, I heard only one sound clearly

my heartbeat.

Too fast. Too exposed. Too afraid.

I worked in a small café.

The smell of tea leaves, oil, and cooked rice clung to my clothes.

Hot trays burned my palms through thin fabric.

Steam rose into my face, carrying warmth I was never allowed to sit still and enjoy.

Each step felt like walking on the edge of discovery.

“Faster,” they said.

And I answered in a deeper voice I trained like survival itself:

“Yes.” 

But inside, I was pleading silently:

Please don’t see through me.

The hardest part was not the work.

It was the pretending.

It was forcing my voice down every time it tried to rise.

It was watching my reflection in metal cups and not recognizing the person trapped inside it.

It was learning how to disappear while still standing in front of people.

For years, no one knew.

Not the workers.

Not the customers.

Not the people passing through that café as if I was only part of the air.

Only I knew.

And only I carried the weight of everything I had become to survive.

Until early 2026.

The café smelled like grilled meat, strong tea, and smoke that never left the walls.

I remember the moment the door opened.

Not because it was loud.

But because everything inside me suddenly went still.

Even sound seemed to retreat.

Heavy footsteps entered.

The air changed.

Not colder.

Heavier.

Like something unseen had filled the room and refused to leave.

“Stop,” a voice ordered.

My body froze before thought could respond.

The tray in my hands trembled, and the sound of clinking cups betrayed me.

“Your name,” they asked.

I said it.

“Noor Ahmad.”

My voice came out steady.

Too steady.

The kind of steadiness born not from confidence but from repeated fear. 

“Look at me.”

I did.

And in that moment, I felt years collapse into a single breath.

Not just fear.

Not just shame.

But the weight of every identity I had built and buried just to survive.

They looked too long.

Too carefully.

As if truth is something the body cannot fully hide.

As if existence always leaves traces.

“Take him,” they said.

And in that instant, Noor Ahmad disappeared.

Not because he was real.

But because he was temporary.

A survival mask finally removed by force.

The prison smelled of damp stone and rusted iron.

The air tasted old, as if it had been holding sorrow for too long to remember anything else. 

Light entered weakly through narrow gaps, unable to soften what was already hardened by silence.

Even time felt heavy there.

I sat with my knees pulled close.

Listening to metal doors, distant footsteps, voices that treated human life as something replaceable.

Day passed without direction.

Until I finally spoke.

Not to defend myself.

But because silence had become too heavy to carry alone.

“I wore men’s clothes,” I said quietly, “because I had no other way to survive.”

“My father is gone. My mother has nothing. My siblings were hungry. And as a girl, I was not allowed to work or move freely even when we were starving.”

My voice did not shake.

Because fear had already broken and rebuilt me long before that moment. 

Silence followed.

Even authority did not interrupt truth spoken without permission.

After days, I was released.

Not because the world changed.

But because my existence was not considered important enough to hold.

Now I walk again.

But I am still Nuriye.

A girl who became “Noor Ahmad” because survival demanded disappearance.

A girl who learned that sometimes living means becoming invisible.

And I want the world to feel this—not only read it.

To smell it in empty kitchens.

To hear it in silent homes.

To feel it in the weight of a voice forced to change shape.

To understand it in the life of a girl who had to become someone else just to survive.

Because this is not only my story.

It is the story of many Afghan girls.

Still learning how to exist inside silence.

If a girl must erase her identity to feed her family…

If she must change her voice, her clothes, her name just to survive…

Then the problem is not her disguise.

It is the world that made disappearance feel safer than existence.

I am Nuriye.

And I am still here.

But I should never have had to become someone else to survive.

For over twenty years, the red dirt and plastic-sheet roofs of the Kyaka II settlement in western Uganda have been my home.

On most days, if you walk through the paths between our mud-walled houses, you’ll hear the chatter of children playing and the smell of woodsmoke. 

We have built a life here, even if it is a life of constant, quiet struggle.

For a long time, we had a rhythm. Organizations like the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) provided a basic safety net sometimes bags of split maize and yellow split peas, sometimes a modest transfer of about 12,000 Ugandan shillings sent directly to our mobile phones. It was never enough to make us rich, but it meant we could buy soap, salt, or pay a grinding mill. It kept us going, and we were grateful for it.

But recently, everything changed. We started hearing whispers that big international donors, including the United States, were cutting their budgets. Soon, the rumors became our reality. Global humanitarian funding was shifted away to meet new emergencies elsewhere, leaving protracted crises like ours with severe shortfalls.

According to aid agencies, this perfect storm of shifting donor priorities and rising operational costs meant our lifelines had to be rationed. 

The monthly cash transfers we relied on were cut to almost nothing reduced by over half for the most vulnerable, and stopped entirely for others. The clinics and support centers run by humanitarian groups grew quiet, lacking the malaria medication and staff they used to have. When you live in a refugee camp, a budget cut on the other side of the world isn't just a headline. It means looking into an empty pot at dinnertime.

"When we first arrived, we were given small plots of land," says Isabella, one of our oldest neighbors, her hands gesturing to the narrow strip of dust outside her door. " But today, these plots are barely wide enough to walk around, let alone plant crops. The soil can hold up our small mud houses, but it cannot feed our children."

The older men and women in the camp often talk about the early days, decades ago, when families were given larger pieces of land to farm. 

Back then, people could grow their own maize, beans, and cassava. But over the years, as conflicts in neighboring countries forced more and more people to flee to Uganda, Kyaka II grew crowded. Today, there simply isn't enough land left to share.

When the institutional support began to shrink, we knew we couldn't just sit and wait. We had to rely on each other. A group of us started a Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA). Every Sunday afternoon, about fifteen of us gather under the shade of a large jackfruit tree. We bring a small blue metallic box secured with two padlocks.

Even when we had almost nothing, we would save a few hundred Ugandan shillings from our food allowance money that would have bought a single tomato or a handful of greens.

If a neighbor’s child fell sick with a sudden fever and needed medicine from the surrounding clinics, we drew from the box. If someone wanted to buy a sack of eggplants to start a small roadside stall, we gave them a small loan.

It was our own system, built on trust. It felt good to have control over our own lives. But now, because the cash assistance has dried up, our metallic box often sits empty. It is incredibly hard to ask a mother to contribute a 500-shilling coin to a savings pot when she is staring at her children, wondering how to buy a single cup of maize flour for their evening meal. Yet, we still meet under that tree every week. Even without money to count, we share advice, keep track of who is struggling the most, and make sure no one is completely forgotten.

The road ahead of us feels uncertain, and some days the worry is heavy enough to keep you awake at night. But we are still here.

Yesterday evening, as the sun was setting and the air finally cooled down, I watched my neighbor’s nine-year-old daughter sweep the dirt in front of her family's doorway with a small broom made of twigs. She was humming a song her mother used to sing back home in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

We may have very little left in our pockets, and our metallic savings box may be empty for now, but we still have each other. And as long as we have that, we will find a way through.

Tomorrow morning, the sun will hit the dusty paths and cast long shadows across our mud houses, just like it does every day. 

The rest of the world might look away, caught up in newer headlines and other conflicts. But inside this settlement, our lives keep moving forward. We will still walk these narrow lanes together, stretch whatever food is left in our bowls to feed our families, and listen to our kids playing outside in the dirt. Next sunday, our community group will meet again under the big shade of the jackfruit tree. We will pull out our small, blue metallic cash box. It is dented and scratched, but to us, that box isn't just about the money we manage to save together. It represents our promise not to let each other fall, even as the global funding cuts we keep hearing about begin to hit our food rations and clinic supplies. The people managing aid budgets far away see us as numbers on a spreadsheet, but our dignity cannot be erased by a line item. We are the ones keeping each other alive.

When a neighbor is sick, we carry their water jerrycans. When the evening settles, the older women sit by the cooking fires and teach the children the songs from our old village so they don't forget where we come from. We are not just waiting here helplessly for the next distribution truck to arrive. With our own hands, we took this red earth and these blue plastic tarps and built a place where we can live with honor. As the sun goes down next sunday, we will lock that blue metallic box, pocket the keys, and walk back to our homes in the dark, ready for whatever the next week brings.

TRIGGER WARNING: Description of self-harm.
 
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky triggered what felt like my last day on this earth.

In an old, barely working car, under the noon sun burning through the rusty metal roof, I was sitting in the back seat with Sarah, my best friend, and an old man with a stinky smell. All three of us were tired and drained after a long day either in college or work.

The ride from the north to the south is only an hour, but it is never just an hour. It is the journey between the farthest two points in Gaza. And even though Gaza is tiny, whenever we head to the north, we pack our belongings as if we are traveling to the other side of the world. Maybe because we never got the chance to travel outside this well closed box; controlled by them and a countless number of checkpoints.
 
That day was long, humid, and carried the smell of misery. I smell it from afar. That damn aroma often finds its way towards my nose. He’ll kill it though. I wonder who will slaughter the other first?
 
I took the book out of my bag. White Nights, a short novella. I had forgotten the rule: don’t judge a book by its cover. White is supposed to be light, gentle, promising something soft. I thought it would be an easy read.
 
Sarah looked at me. “White Nights, ya Lama?”

“Girl, you read love stories? Are you in love?”

“No, I’m not.”

It’s just my habit. I buy books without knowing anything about them. I let them surprise me. I let characters reveal themselves to me. I don’t wait for people to experience something first and then tell me what to think of it. What I might detest, others might love; and the same with books. That’s why I don’t trust good reads reviews or even have a cursory look at them.
 
“I forgot my wallet in the library,” she said.

“I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.”
 
I knew she hadn’t forgotten her wallet. I also knew she couldn’t afford the ride. She knew I knew. But that’s how we moved through life; each one helping the other with whatever she could offer.
 
“Today is my cousin’s henna,” she continued. “I don’t want to go but Mama is forcing me”
 
“Oppp. Stop. Don’t change the topic,” she cut herself off.

“Why did you even buy White Nights by Dostoevsky?”
 
“I liked the cover,” I said.
 
“You liked the cover? How silly!” She slapped my back and burst into loud laughter.
 
“Shut up. I’ll read it. And then you’ll know the story — from me. Don’t spoil it.”
 
“It’s a love story between two lonely people and it ends in…’’
 
“Shut up, Sarah. I want to read it.”
 
A donkey cart crashed with the broken car. I panicked as if someone threw a bucket of freezing water over my head. The driver got out of the car and started cursing the universe “A donkey driving a donkey,” he said.

A young lady with ozon holes beneath her beautiful brown eyes was by me. With torn out slipper and pale scarf, sitting still, gave no reaction, neither to the accident nor the shouting nor the 500 meter away explosion, staring at nothing, or who knows, maybe gazing at everything.
 
Where is Sarah? Did they kill her? No. Maybe she missed her little girl. She called her Dusty for it turns everyplace she enters to a pile of dust. But Dusty cleans Sarah’s heart as she often says. They killed Dusty. I’m sure of that. But Sarah killed herself for she couldn’t find food to feed Dusty. She slit her wrist to make him drink her blood.

TRIGGER WARNING: Description of domestic violence.

I was twenty years old when I became a wife. I was twenty-two when I became someone who flinched at the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

No one tells you, when you're a young bride still learning how to run a household, that the person you've promised your life to can also become the person you fear most. I didn't have language for what was happening to me at first. I only knew that love was not supposed to leave bruises. I only knew that a home was not supposed to feel like a place you had to survive.

The abuse did not arrive all at once. It came in increments — a raised voice, a slammed door, a comment meant to make me feel small. And then, slowly, it became something else entirely: hands raised, not just voices. Nights I don't fully let myself remember, because some memories are survived, not relived. I became a woman who apologized for things she hadn't done, who learned to read a room before she dared to speak in it, who began to disappear a little more each day inside a marriage that was supposed to be her beginning.

By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I had two small children — a daughter not yet two, a son barely eighteen months old — and a body and mind that had absorbed more violence than any person should have to carry. I was put on antidepressants, not because I was weak, but because survival at that level takes a toll no one warns you about. I remember sitting with a bottle of pills in my hand and thinking: is this what my life has become? Is this the whole of it?

And then, one night, it ended the way these stories sometimes do — not gently, not with dignity, but with cruelty. I was thrown out of my own home in the dark, with two babies who did not yet understand why their mother was crying, why there was nowhere warm to go. I remember the cold. I remember the shame that isn't mine to carry, but that society hands to women like me anyway — as if surviving abuse is something to be embarrassed about, rather than something to be honored for enduring.

I want to be honest here, because this story only means something if it's true: I did not feel strong that night. I felt erased. But somewhere underneath the fear, something in me refused to stay erased. I have always believed — and that belief did not leave me, even in the darkest hour — that when everything human fails you, something larger does not. Call it faith, call it grace, call it the stubborn will to live for two small children who had no one else. Whatever it was, it became the floor beneath my feet when I had nothing else to stand on.

I made a decision in that darkness that would define the rest of my life: I was not going to let this be the end of my story. I was going to make sure my children never inherited my fear as their own inheritance.

So I studied. I rebuilt, one certificate, one course, one late night at a time, often with a baby on my hip and exhaustion in my bones. I did not have the luxury of a linear path — my education came in fragments, stitched together between motherhood and survival — but I never stopped stitching. Slowly, painstakingly, I built a professional life I could not have imagined for myself on that cold night. I went on to work across international assignments, in humanitarian and public health spaces, standing in rooms with government ministers and global institutions, advising on crisis response, training others in resilience I had once had to teach myself from nothing.

There is a particular kind of irony in a woman who was once silenced becoming a voice for others. In a woman who was once told she was worthless becoming someone whose expertise is sought across countries and continents. But that irony is exactly the point. The same hands that once shook with fear now write policy briefs, lead teams, and mentor other women finding their way out of their own darkness.

Today, my children are eighteen and twenty-one. They are not scarred replicas of what they witnessed as toddlers — they are thriving, curious, hardworking young adults, still studying, still becoming, unburdened by the violence that once surrounded their earliest years. Watching them grow into secure, whole human beings is, without question, the greatest achievement of my life. Every late night of study, every silent tear swallowed so they wouldn't see it, every year of rebuilding — it led here, to them, laughing and safe and full of possibility.

I share this story not for sympathy, but because I know there is a woman somewhere tonight sitting exactly where I once sat — thrown out into the cold, told she is nothing, believing her story ends there. I need her to know it doesn't. I need her to know that the worst night of her life can become the first page of a story she never thought she'd get to write.

Survival is not the end of the story. Sometimes, it is only the beginning.

When people hear the name Afghanistan, many immediately think of broken roads, difficult times, and stories of struggle. They see the pain before they see the people. They see the challenges before they see the dreams. But Afghanistan has always been more than its hardships. Afghanistan is the sound of morning prayers, the warmth of a grandmother’s stories, the smell of fresh bread shared with neighbors, the mountains standing proudly beneath the sky, and the hearts of people who continue to hope even when hope feels difficult.

I carry an Afghanistan that the world does not always see.

I carry the Afghanistan of young children who still dream of becoming doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, and leaders. I carry the Afghanistan of students who open books with curiosity, not knowing how powerful that simple action can be. I carry the Afghanistan of mothers who sacrifice everything so their children can have brighter futures. I carry the Afghanistan of people who choose kindness even after experiencing hardship.

A country is not only its history. A country is also the dreams of its people.

For many, education is something ordinary. It is a classroom, a teacher, a notebook, and a daily routine. But for many Afghan students, education represents something much deeper. It represents possibility. It represents freedom to imagine a different tomorrow. It represents a door that leads toward opportunities, confidence, and belonging.

A book can be more than pages. It can be a window to another world. A classroom can be more than a room. It can be a place where dreams begin.

I have learned that hope does not always arrive loudly. Sometimes, hope is a student studying late at night. Sometimes, it is a person sharing knowledge with someone else. Sometimes, it is a young person saying, “I will not give up.”

Afghanistan’s greatest strength has never been found only in its landscapes or its history. Its greatest strength has always been its people—their courage, resilience, and ability to continue moving forward.

I often think about the young generation of Afghanistan. A generation growing up between challenges and possibilities. A generation that has witnessed difficulties but still chooses to dream. They are not defined by the obstacles around them. They are defined by the future they are trying to create.

Every dream carries a story. Every learner carries a voice. Every person has the power to create change, no matter where they begin.

Sometimes, the world asks, “How can one person make a difference?” But history has shown us that change often begins with one person who believes, one person who acts, and one person who refuses to stop caring.

A single candle may look small in a dark room, but it still creates light.

Afghanistan has many candles.

They are the students who continue learning. They are the teachers who continue teaching. They are the dreamers who continue imagining a better future. They are the people who believe that compassion, knowledge, and creativity can rebuild what has been damaged.

I believe stories have the power to connect people. They allow us to see beyond statistics and headlines. They remind us that behind every country, there are millions of human experiences—dreams, fears, hopes, and memories.

Afghanistan is not only a story of what has happened. It is also a story of what can happen.

It is a story waiting to be written by a new generation.

A generation that believes education is not a privilege for a few but a right for all. A generation that believes women’s voices, children’s dreams, and young people’s ideas matter. A generation that understands that rebuilding a nation does not only happen through buildings and roads, but through knowledge, empathy, and imagination.

One day, I hope the world sees Afghanistan not only through the lens of its struggles but through the brilliance of its people. I hope people see the artists, innovators, learners, and leaders who are shaping its future. I hope they see a country filled with possibilities.

Until that day comes, we must continue telling stories.

Because stories preserve memories. Stories create understanding. Stories remind us of our shared humanity.

My Afghanistan is not only a place on a map. It is a feeling. It is the courage of people who continue despite challenges. It is the dreams hidden in the hearts of young people. It is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today.

And I believe that no challenge is stronger than a generation that refuses to stop dreaming.

Afghanistan’s future is still being written.

And I believe its most beautiful chapters are yet to come.scription

On July 19, 2002, at the break of dawn, a child was born into a family filled with joy and expectation. His parents and relatives celebrated not only the arrival of a new life but also the birth of a son who, they believed, would one day carry the responsibilities of the family. Named after his grandfather, Mr. Luh Pong: he inherited not just a name but a legacy- one that symbolized strength, dignity, and responsibility.

He was born as the second son in a remote and marginalized region known as the Naga mountainous area of Northern Myanmar. In this community, life revolved around subsistence farming, particularly shifting cultivation. Education was neither prioritized nor easily accessible. For many families, survival came before schooling, and dreams were often limited by geography and circumstance.

Although his parents did not initially recognize the importance of education, he remained determined to pursue learning. Despite the challenges and seeming impossibility of his situation, he firmly believed that education had the power to transform his life. One day, while his parents were away working on the farm, he went to the school admissions office and asked, “I want to study. What do I need to do to enrol?” The admissions staff informed him that the enrolment fee was only 20 rupees. However, because he did not have the required amount of money, he returned home and brought two packets of salt as an alternative form of payment for the admissions staff. 

At the age of twelve, following persistent appeals, he was finally granted the opportunity to begin his formal education. Though hindered by scarce resources, his journey was fueled by an unwavering determination. As his studies progressed, he recognized the transformative power of learning, maintaining a steadfast focus that allowed him to complete his lower secondary education with distinction. However, continuing his academic pursuits required relocating to an urban center where the regional high school was located. This transition presented a severe financial strain for his family. Faced with these economic barriers, his father made the difficult decision to liquidate their most treasured asset: a traditional gong, which stood as the sole remaining heirloom from his grandfather. By sacrificing this irreplaceable piece of family history, his father fully invested in his son's future, securing the necessary capital to finance his relocation and continuing education.

As he departed from his hometown, the profound hopes and aspirations of his parents became entirely clear to him. This realization instilled a deep sense of purpose, hardening his resolve to one day achieve a level of success that would bring honor to both his family and his broader community.He understood that education was not merely a pathway to individual advancement, but a critical mechanism for breaking the generational cycle of poverty. With every academic milestone achieved, his overarching vision intensified: he would eventually return to establish high-quality educational opportunities within his own community. Yet, the path ahead remained fraught with significant adversity.


In 2019, the world was shaken by the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools were closed, and his educational progress came to an abrupt halt. What began as a temporary pause soon turned into a period of profound hardship. During the pandemic, he experienced unimaginable loss-within a single year, he lost his elder brother, younger sister, and younger brother. As a result, he became the eldest son of the family unexpectedly. The emotional weight of these tragedies shattered his motivation and left his family in deep sorrow. Despite the pain, he chose not to give up.

Holding onto the belief that education remained essential, he slowly rebuilt his strength.

In 2023, he resumed his educational journey with renewed determination. His parents, though grieving, offered him their unwavering support, telling him, “We believe in you. Do your best in everything.”

Returning to school, he transformed his pain into purpose. He was elected as a school council leader, a role he held for two years. In this position, he actively worked to address community issues, demonstrating leadership and resilience. One of his most impactful initiatives was organizing a town-wide cleaning campaign, bringing together students and local stakeholders. This effort marked the first real step toward realizing his vision for community development.

Today, he stands as a symbol of perseverance and hope. Having overcome trauma and adversity, he understands the deep inequalities that exist in access to education within his community. Many young people are still forced to abandon their studies and enter early marriages, believing that their future holds no alternatives.Determined to change this narrative, he began teaching basic English to youth in his community after completing high school. Through education, he seeks to inspire others to dream beyond limitations and to believe in the possibility of a better future.

His story is not just one of personal resilience-it is a call for social change. It highlights the urgent need for equitable access to education, especially in marginalized communities. Because for him, and for many like him, education is not just a right-it is the only path to hope.

After long nights, the sun rose again, and it has illuminated the entire city of Kabul with its light. Suhrab was asleep on the floor, clutching an old red blanket; the sound of wood burning in the heater reached his ears, while the cold air drifting in through the gaps in the window chilled the room. The sound of birds—seeking refuge near the windows to escape the freezing cold—broke the silence; a sound that awakened the butterfly of hope in every heart.

Suhrab woke up with sleepy eyes and looked at the beauty of sunlight for a while, that sunlight which was shining in the sky without fear.

Suhrab, still tired, rubbed his hands over his eyes and took his fathers Pato —Afghani handkerchief— and got up and went to draw water from the well near the house, and prepare tea. With thick hands—whose scars were clearly visible—it had become like a dried flower. He took the bucket in the well and got water; taking water from that old well was like a fun for him. And for a while, he stared into the deep water of the well; on that pure water, he could see the damp walls, which reminded him of the high, black mountains that had become the soldiers’ refuge and home, and perhaps the place where death followed them. He threw the bucket once again; this time, he took a little fish. A strange smile appeared on his lips, the golden baby fish which was scared and hit the sides of the bucket to escape.

“I will set you free,” Suhrab said loudly and excitedly, and throw the water into the well. A joy appeared in him that he had freed a living soul.

His mother, Ziba, stared at him and felt happy.

“She said, Suhrab, came here. I have something for you.”

“What is this envelope, Mom?”

“I have received this yesterday, and because I can’t read and write, I have waited for my little boy to read it for me.”

Suhrab took the envelope with his wet hands and opened it; there was 1000 AFG with a letter. He opened it, and he paused for a few seconds.

“Read it, Suhrab,” she whispered, glancing nervously over her shoulder.

While his voice trembled, he started reading loudly!

“Salam alikum to my dear son, Suhrab, and my lovely wife, Ziba. I am writing this letter to tell you that I am good. Actually, the general told us we only have equipment and food for three days, and the Great War will begin tomorrow. If I cloud return home, I will definitely take you away from Kabul, and will move to Pakistan. If I don’t come back, Suhrab, remember Dad always loved you, and take care of your family; don’t let our family name be forgotten.

Pray for me.

Your Dad,

Khalid.”

His hands started shaking, and suddenly, tears flowed from his eyes. Suhrab was a young boy who was standing there, there was a heavy responsibility which was put in upon his shoulders. 

With his injured hands that were as red as tulips and dripping blood, he held his father’s letter tighter. He closed his eyes. His lips dry. For a while, he imagined that everything was a nightmare. He was saying to himself, in a very quiet voice that only he could hear, “Everything is fine,” he went back to those beautiful days that had become a memory for him.

“I could hear the sound of a horse’s hooves passing through the alley, and I heard the sound of bells which were tied with red and green strings around the horse’s reins.”

While blood was pouring from his hands, he held the letter so tightly, as if he were holding his father’s hands.

He walked down the alley with his father, the old shops in Kocha Kah froshe; every shop was decorated with wooden cages hanging on the corners and sides, adding to the beauty of the place. The sound of birds breaking the silence, like the voices of singers singing from the heart for freedom, could be heard.

We were only passing the alley. My father saw his best friend, Farhad. Yes, Farhad, who was working there. He had a small shop and was selling different types of animals. He hugged my father and said loudly in a friendly tone, “Salam alikum, Khalid jan, how are you? It’s been a long time, if I am not wrong it’s about twelve years, right? What’s up? How did you remember us?” And he laughed.

“Hey, Farhad, thanks. Today I came here with my brave son, Suhrab. Ooo, come on, I always remember you. Hey, Suhrab, say Salam to your uncle.”

My eyes were fixed on the caged parrot, and I was thinking to myself, “I wish this was mine. What if my father didn’t buy it for me? What should I do?”

Khalid whispered loudly, “Suhrab, you have to say Salam to your uncle; don’t touch the cage!”

“I am so sorry. I was just looking. Salam alikum, Uncle.”

They laughed, and Farhad said, “It’s ok. Everyone loves this place; once you come here, you can’t leave it because one part of your heart always will belong to this place.” Farhad took the cage with his big hands and gave it to me. A beautiful smile came to my lips, and he said, “This is yours, son; take care of it.” We left Uncle Khalid’s shop happily. My father, seeing the smile on my lips, hugged me and said, “Take care of this bird, ok.”

We continued on our way while I was holding the cage tightly. I couldn’t feel how much I was tired or felt uncomfortable; that little bird was like a hope for me.

While Passing the alley, I noticed that every shop and every person had their own stories; you hear traditional songs and poems, in every place.

Kabul was alive! Kabul was alive, with every legend which was passed down from generation to generation. Kabul was colorful with poems and stories.

In the sky, my eyes caught sight of colorful kites that reflected the mirror of Kabul from afar. Kites that made the sound of freedom and the scent of its peace, danced in the air.

I live on the first floor of a three-story house;
a place where I live with my father’s wives.

The moon,
on the night of the full moon,
is looking at me with a smile.

I am‌ tracing the mark of the electrical cable on my body
that my father beat me with.

My tears are gone;
but not my mother’s.

He beat me, but it was as if my mother felt the pain.

My father,
a man who never loved my mother.

How could anyone not love a woman with such beautiful eyes?
A woman with three daughters,
all three looking like her.

A father who, when I was born, refused to take me into his arms.
He did not recite the call to prayer into my ear.

He wanted a son,
and my mother could not give him a son.

So he married again, and again,
until his third wife gave him a son!

He loves him,
his son.

He has forgotten
that 
I am Elaheh,
his daughter,
once his only child.

He has forgotten
that I used to buy cigarettes for him
from the shop at the end of the street, barefoot.

He has forgotten me.

Today he was so angry that he wanted to destroy the house.
He smelled of hashish.

He wanted to sell me by force
to a man like himself.

My mother said I should not marry.
My mother, my protector.

And I, brave but trembling,
said,
“I will not marry.”

But he
swore that he would kill me.

He had become like a wild animal.
He beat me and beat me,
and I am still alive.

My father does not know that I am studying. Four years ago,
when the neighbor’s daughter said she was studying at an online school, my eyes lit up and I could hardly breathe.

I was shocked. Was it possible for me to study?
And go to university?
Online, from home?

But I did not have a mobile phone,
my mother bought me a phone with the money she earns from the embroidery she does day and night.

On the fabric, she embroiders flowers;
she buys happiness for her daughters.
She buys a secret freedom for us.

I studied;
at night,
in secret,
I embroidered and studied.

This year I will graduate from school.
Teacher Zahra says she will enroll me in an online university.

Teacher Zahra,
a woman who feels like a mother.

She taught me to heal my wounds
and to write poetry.

She connected me to the world; from this dark corner of my room,
at night, secretly, I read books. So many times the internet goes out,
and my tears unintentionally fall onto the screen of my phone.

My mother embroiders, and my sisters learn from her.
This is the only way to make money; our fingers burn with pain,
but it is worth it.

My mother, a woman from the mountains of Badakhshan, with a deep courage like a hidden mineral inside mountains where a white wolf lives.

I look at this house.
A house where my father is afraid of my books,
afraid of a quiet woman with thread and needle.

My father never went to school himself.
From childhood, he worked on his father’s land to survive.

Here,
power means
a man who has more sons.

And I, his rejected daughter,
will break the chain of this dark injustice.

I will go to university and save my mother and my sisters from the claws of this house, from this prison surrounded by barren trees.
We will survive.
And 
I will write poetry.

He cannot sell me
to a man like himself.

Because if I inherited my eyes from my mother,
I learned resilience from the stones of the lapis lazuli mines.

It is the sound of rain
mixed with the crying of my father’s son
and the laughter of his mother.

I am Elaheh,
a pain
and a poem.

We have a history lesson,
with Teacher Zahra;
a woman who says:

Every day, I should write,
write the pain.

My phone has no charge
and I pray that the electricity will come back.

I do not even know which God I am praying to,
a God who does not see us and perhaps does not love us;
because our prayers have never been answered.

On the cold kitchen tiles
I was sitting and playing with my beaded bracelet.

My mother calls me:

“My daughter, come and eat.”

“I’m not eating.”

“Come and do your embroidery.”

“I don’t want to.”

This woman knows me, deeply;
she knows my silence too.

It was 7:15 p.m.
The evening call to prayer.

The rain is gone now, and the scent of wet earth is in the air.

The electricity came back.

My sister screamed.
I laughed.

I plugged my phone in to charge,
and our hearts began beating again;
we came alive.

I connected to the lesson.

I heard Teacher Zahra say:

“Elaheh has joined us too!”

I cried.

As if
the wounds on my body were hurting;
a part of my heart
or my soul,
I don’t know.

What did I want?

My school?
My desk?
Or
my father?

And Teacher Zahra said she had sent us PDFs of new books:

“Study, and study.”

“Elaheh, I want to publish one of your poems in a magazine. Please send it to me.”

“Thank you so much, Teacher.
I will definitely send it.
I love you very much.”

“I love you too.
Take care of yourselves, girls.”

Everything is quiet.
It is the absolute silence of Kabul.

My hair clip is bothering me.
My sisters are asleep.

My mother is praying;
she is complaining to God about my father.

She cries quietly;
a woman with a strange strength and weakness.

I cannot sleep
because of the sound of the crickets.

I took my notebook
to write a poem;
with freedom as my intention.

Word by word,
with hope the color of a yellow wildflower.

Mariam was twenty years old when she found out that she was pregnant for the third time. That night, she felt a mix of nervousness and happiness, unsure of how to explain her feelings. She looked at the moon and stars from her windowed room and said to the moon, “You know, when I was a child, I asked my mother where children come from. She always said to me, ‘They come from the moon.’” She said with a smile, “But now, I am the mother of my own stars. Are you the mother of the stars? Hey moon, don’t laugh at me,” she said to herself. “I will surprise my husband with this news in the new year.”

The weather is a little cloudy. It seems like the first day of the new year will be rainy. When she woke up in the early morning, she could hear the sounds of sparrows and the rooster crowing. When Mariam heard this sound, she knew that spring had come. She guessed that people were still not waking up to go to provinces like Herat, Bamian, Kapisa, and others for picnics, especially Mazar for the “Meli Gul Serkh” or red flower picnic.

She turned on the radio and listened to Ahmad Zaher sing, “Gar zulf perishanat bar dast saba aftad”:
“If your hair is tangled, my love,
Then your lover is restless.
What sorrow can I tell
When you are the cure and the ailment?”

Her husband, Shams, had already left the house. He was a cart driver in Kabul city. Mariam lived with her husband’s family. Her mother-in-law, Shakila, was her aunt.
Mariam had two daughters named Farah, who was four years old, and Asma, who was two years old. All of them had short hair. Mariam always remembered her mother’s advice to dress her younger daughter in boys’ clothes, in the hope that the next child would be a boy.

When Mariam woke up, she didn’t wake her daughters. When they woke up, they would say, “Let me go to the yard. Let me feed the chickens mother.”

Mariam washed clothes for her daughters, her husband, and her mother-in-law. She hung the clothes on the rope to dry. She drew a pail of water from the well and washed every window with a rag. Suddenly, she noticed Freshta the neighbour is gesturing from the second floor of her house and drew an imaginary mustache above his lip to show that his sister-in-law had given birth to a boy; if she gestured with her hand as if wearing a headscarf, it meant that a girl had been born.

With yearning Mariam started to sweep the floors and open the windows, as usual, to air out the house. She used flour to make fresh dough, kneading it the way her mother had shown her. When she pushed the dough, she remembered her father’s advice—he was a farmer. “For a girl: first, pray four times daily. Second, morality. And lastly, cooking is important.”

Mariam pushed the dough with the heel of her hand, folded the outer edge, turned it, and pushed it away again. Once she had floured it, she wrapped it in a moist cloth, put on a hijab, and set out for the communal tandoor, which was located down their alley.

In her neighbour’s house, lived Frishta, a barren woman who had been married for fifteen years and still did not have any children. She was thin and five years older than Mariam. Her husband, Ghani, was the wealthiest man in the city and ten years older than Frishta. Mariam and Frishta often discussed their mothers-in-law. Frishta would complain to Mariam about how critical her mother-in-law was, constantly criticizing everything from the food she cooked to the cleanliness of the rooms.

When Mariam and Frishta were young and living in neighbouring houses, Mariam didn’t have any siblings, so she would often come to Frishta’s house to play with her. Mariam could never forget the day Frishta got married and how much she cried when she was just five years old, while Frishta was ten. Frishta would often tell Mariam, “Before going to the public tandoor, knock on my house door. It’s good to go to the public tandoor together.”

Women in groups of two or three, all of them wearing hijabs. When Mariam and Frishta arrived at the public tandoor, they joined the other women. Some of the women were too fat or too thin, some wore panjanbi, others wore long dresses, and the aroma of the fresh bread from the tandoor filled the air.

At that moment, an old woman named Gulali, with a face full of wrinkles and missing teeth, joined the conversation. She directed her words towards Frishta, referring to her as “sterile soil” and suggesting she should swallow a goldfish alive. Addressing Mariam, Gulali asked if she was eating cockfighting. Both Frishta and Mariam simply smiled and chose not to respond.

Shortly after, Shafiqa, a woman who had five boys, arrived. Gulali, who had nine sons and two daughters herself, commented, “Are you still not eating chilijam? But your situation is better than these two queens. Boys are saving the family name when you have a boy. Don’t worry. You have everything. You are honorable people whom others respect,” Gulali said patronizingly.
It is worth noting that Gulali herself lived with her older daughter in the same alley as Frishta and Mariam.
When Frishta and Mariam came out of the tandoor, they put their bread on the top of their heads.

Mariam noticed that Freshta's eyes filled with tears. 

Mariam didn’t say anything. Freshta sobbed, “I wish I had a blind daughter, but I wasn't worthy to have a blind daughter.”

Amina was a simple woman who believed that marriage was a partnership built on love and compassion. When she married young, she thought she had begun her journey to happiness, but she didn't know that her coming years would be filled with trials.

She worked as a teacher, waking before sunrise to prepare her young children and going to work with utmost dedication. At the end of each month, she would hand over her entire salary to her husband, who convinced her that men knew best how to manage money. Days passed, then months, then years, and it became an unquestionable habit. She deprived herself of even the simplest necessities, while her husband spent money as he pleased, without a thought for the family's future or the needs of his children.

God blessed them with five children, and Amina was both mother and father in many situations. She monitored their studies, stayed up with them when they were sick, and rejoiced in their successes, while her husband was preoccupied with himself, quick to anger, and saw his wife only as a source of money and service. Twenty years passed with her patience, telling herself, "Perhaps God will improve things." But one day, she was shocked when her husband coldly told her he wanted a divorce. He made no attempt to repair their relationship, nor did he consider the years she had spent by his side or the sacrifices she had made. A few days later, he married another woman and started a new life, leaving Amina to face the world alone with her five children.

That day was one of the hardest of her life. She felt as if the world had closed in on her, but she looked at her children's faces, wiped away her tears, and said, "I will not let despair defeat us."

She worked in the mornings and gave private lessons in the evenings, using every hour of her day to provide her children with a decent life. She often returned home exhausted, her feet heavy from long hours of work, but she hid her weariness with a smile so her children wouldn't worry. The years dragged on, heavy with hardship. People saw a woman struggling, but they didn't know how many tears she hid in the dead of night, how many times she raised her hands to the heavens, saying, "O Lord, You are my sufficiency and the best of guardians. Do not leave me alone."

And because God does not let the reward of the patient go to waste, the doors of relief began to open for her. Her children excelled in their studies, for they witnessed their mother's sacrifices every day. The eldest graduated as a doctor, the second as an engineer, the third as a teacher, the fourth as an accountant, and her daughter became a pharmacist. None of them forgot their mother's kindness, the sleepless nights she endured, or the meals she deprived herself of so they could eat.

One day, her children sat around her in a spacious house they had bought for her with their hard-earned money and success. The eldest, kissing her head, said, "Mother, today it is our turn to bring you joy, just as you have brought us joy throughout our lives."

Her eyes welled with tears, but this time they were tears of joy. She looked up to the sky and whispered, "Praise be to God who did not forsake me, and praise be to God who made my patience a gateway to good."

As for her ex-husband, he discovered years later that money cannot buy happiness, and that a loyal woman is irreplaceable. But when he tried to return, he found that times had changed, and that Amina was no longer the broken woman she once was. Instead, she had become strong, by God's grace, surrounded by her children who were her greatest support.

Amina knew that life can be harsh, and injustice can persist, but God's justice never fades. She was certain that God may delay relief, but it comes at the perfect time to heal hearts, mend broken spirits, and grant the patient what they never expected.

And so her story remains a testament to the fact that patience is never lost, and that whoever puts their trust in God, works diligently, and entrusts their efforts to Him, God will transform their sorrow into joy, their weakness into strength, their loneliness into support, and make their children the greatest blessing and the most beautiful compensation.

It was my first job interview since October 7, 2023.

I couldn't quite believe it. Nearly three years had passed since I last prepared for something as ordinary as a job interview, since I last looked for formal clothes or worried about making a good first impression.

Dressing for the occasion was my first real battle. All my formal, elegant clothes had burned to ashes along with my house. I wore the cleanest clothes I could find, determined to look good. They had been hand-washed the night before and left to dry in the summer heat. I tried to smooth the wrinkles with my hands. There was no electricity to iron them.
After all, this was my relief interview, my first step toward living again.

I left home two hours early. There was almost no public transportation left in Gaza, so I walked through streets buried under rubble. Rats darted between broken sidewalks, and every damaged building above me felt like another danger waiting to fall. When a livestock cart stopped nearby, I climbed aboard without hesitation. It was uncomfortable, crowded, and humiliating, but it was the only way to arrive on time.

At last, I arrived. I walked into the reception area and, for the first time that morning, sat down on a chair to wait for my turn.

Ten minutes later, my name was called.

I walked into the interview room wearing the warmest smile I could manage. My simple clothes were even more wrinkled from the long, harsh journey, but I forced myself not to think about them.

I sat across from the interview panel.
The first question came almost immediately.

"Could you please introduce yourself?"

My heart froze. The air in the room felt tight, heavy with the sharp, comforting smell of fresh coffee, a stark contrast to the world outside.

It was such a simple question. Yet, after everything that had happened, it felt impossible.

How do you introduce yourself when the life that defined you no longer exists?

What should I say?

Should I introduce the woman I was before the war? Or the woman forged by three years of relentless genocide, displacement, and survival?

Should I tell them I graduated from the Faculty of Commerce? Or that I graduated from three years of surviving?

Which version of me did they want to hire? The woman who managed development projects? The woman who lost her home? The displaced woman? The woman who had forgotten what it felt like to plan for tomorrow? The woman who had learned to measure success by simply surviving another day? Or the woman who was still trying to believe she had a future?

In that breathless second, I finally knew how to introduce myself. Not by the career I used to have. Not by the house I lost. But by the simple, undeniable fact that I was still walking forward.

If I told them about my true experience, would they believe it after looking at my wrinkled shirt? If I spoke to them about leadership, would they notice the deep exhaustion etched across my face first? And if I spoke about resilience, would it just sound like another hollow buzzword people use when they don't know what else to say about Gaza?

My hands were trembling beneath the table, though I tried not to show it.
For a brief moment, I forgot every interview I had ever attended before the war.

I looked up.

No one interrupted.

No one looked impatient.

They simply waited.

The room fell silent.

For the first time that morning, I wasn't thinking about my wrinkled clothes anymore.

I wasn't thinking about washing them by hand because there was no electricity.

I wasn't thinking about cooking over firewood.

I wasn't thinking about searching for an internet signal just to send a single email.

I wasn't thinking about another day of displacement.

I was thinking about one question:

Who was I now?

I took a deep breath.

Then, at last, I found my voice.

"My name is Heba..."

I paused.

“And I'm still surviving."

It was seven in the morning, in the cruelest heat of August. There was no electricity, so we had slept on the rooftops, beneath an open sky.

Everything was still. I was deep in sleep, somewhere untouched by the morning, where nothing was urgent, where nothing was ending.

In my dream, the world was quiet. There was no running. No voices. Nothing to leave behind.

Usually, it was my mother who pulled me gently from sleep— because I was late, because she needed something from the market, because mornings had ordinary reasons.

But that morning, another voice reached me before my mother’s.

“Get up.”

A pause.

“We have to leave the house.”

Leave? Why would anyone
have to leave their home?

I lifted my head.

The dream disappeared.

Around me, people were waking from their places, one by one, slowly, uncertainly—as if everyone had opened their eyes to the same words I had just heard.

I looked at the faces around me.

No one spoke.

Fear had arrived before understanding.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone to explain what was happening.

But no one did.

And among those faces, I saw Dalou.

For the last time.

I never said goodbye.

How could I? I did not know
that someone could disappear
between one morning and the next. I did not know that a face you saw in the morning could become a face you would spend years trying to find again.

We climbed down from the rooftop. We began getting ready to leave the house. And I think, somewhere inside all of us, we wanted to stop time.

To pause that morning.

To remain there just a little longer.

To sit beneath that same sky, inside that same home, and pretend that nothing was asking us to leave.

But we had to go.

Not because we wanted to.

Not because we had somewhere else to go.

But because, that morning, staying was no longer a choice.

We left the house that had given us a life. The walls that had watched us grow. The rooms that knew our voices.
The corners that had witnessed
ordinary day we never thought we would miss.

We had never called anywhere else home.

We took almost nothing with us. Perhaps there was no time. Perhaps we thought we would be back before long.

Or perhaps we wanted our things to remain where they belonged. Inside the house. Because at least
they knew their destination. They knew where they were.

We did not.

We were going somewhere we had never chosen, toward a place
we did not know.

Before I got into the car, I turned around. I looked at my home. I tried to hold it with my eyes—every wall, every corner, every familiar piece of it.

I wanted to remember it exactly as it was.

I don't remember closing the door.

I don't remember checking whether it was locked.

I only remember that we left, for the first time, I was leaving my house
because I had to.

For the first time, the house was empty. For the first time, I did not look back to make sure the door was closed. Because we had never imagined that leaving home could mean leaving it behind.

We drove away.

And through the car window, I watched my village.

For the first time, I saw it empty.

Not quiet.

Not asleep.

Empty.

The streets that had once carried voices held nothing. The houses stood beneath the morning sun,
silent and open, as if they, too,
were waiting for someone to come back.

I kept looking.

I wanted to find someone.

Anyone.

A familiar face.

A child.

A neighbour.

Someone standing at a doorway. Someone waving. Someone who could make me believe this was still the village I knew.

But there was almost no one.

Only one family behind us. They had no car. They were running. I could see them through the window — their bodies moving as fast as they could, their faces carrying a fear that needed no explanation.

I watched them.

I kept watching until the distance swallowed them. And the car kept moving.

That was the last picture my village gave me: an empty road, and a family running along it, trying to reach a safety that was already moving away.

I did not know where they would go. I did not know what would happen to them. I only knew that I was watching them from behind a window, and that I could not stop.

Inside the car, no one spoke.

We sat close together, but silence had filled every space between us.

No one asked where we were going.

No one asked when we would return.

Maybe because there was no answer.

Or maybe because everyone already had an answer they were afraid to say.

Perhaps we were all still waiting to wake up.

Waiting for someone to tell us this was temporary. Waiting for the road to turn us around. Waiting for home to still be there when we come back.

But the car kept moving.

And perhaps the last words anyone heard before everything changed were the same words that woke me that morning: We have to leave the house.

And we did.

We left.

And the years passed.

Twelve years later. I almost arrive, but I never do. It is the same city, unchanged, untouched. The streets still whisper the names I once knew, but one thing is different — silence.

Never before has it been this quiet. What has become of it?

On my way, I wait for someone to greet me. Will my mother come? Will the children run to me? Will someone call my name from a doorway? Who will come?

I walk for hours.

No one arrives.

This is the longest journey of my life.

The city is the same. I recognize it. But it does not recognize me.

I call out— it does not hear.

I cry— it does not answer.

I look for the voices I remember, but the streets give me nothing back.

For the first time, I am a guest where I once belonged. Or perhaps only a passerby.

Everything stops as I walk through the streets.

The houses remain.

The roads remain.

The walls remain.

And yet, something is missing that I cannot name.

I wonder— where will the wheels rest? Where do you stop when the place you once called home
no longer knows how to receive you?

But the wheels do not stop.

I pass through without resting.

For the first time, my city is not a destination. It is only a crossing. And as I leave, I see sorrow in its eyes, as if the city itself is whispering, “I have no choice.”

And I want to answer— “But you know me. You have always known me.”

I want to tell it that I did not choose to become a stranger. That I did not choose to leave. That there was a morning when we were told to leave the house, and we did not know we were carrying our last pieces of home
with us.

I leave my heart behind, just as I did before. Only this time, I know exactly
what I am leaving.

And perhaps that is the cruelest part—
the first time, I left without knowing what I was losing.

The second time, I return knowing
exactly what is gone.

I almost arrive.

But I never do.

Because somewhere between the home I remember and the home I return to, there is a distance that twelve years could never cross.

This weekend I’m determined to jot down as many of my mother’s recipes as I can. It’s an important exercise but also a frustrating one because mama keeps telling me all the spices she puts in andaazey se (intuitively). That does nothing for me. 

My introduction to the kitchen was through baking. All the ingredients measured, 2 cups this, half teaspoon that, baked at 350 degrees fahrenheit. Now while trying to make my mother’s dishes, not only am I juggling the stove settings between low, medium and high, I’m supposed to know exactly what is meant by hazbe zaiqa (salt to taste) and trust my unpredictable gut. 

Despite having to play this guessing game, I do savour this opportunity to document mama’s recipes. Like it is for many of us, my mother’s food is what has anchored many of my days. And I have so many favourites! So many dishes that feel right only when she makes them. I understand there’s a lot of sentimentality to it all, and at the end of the day, me noting down mama’s recipes is quite an exercise in nostalgia. 

Right now, I’m watching mama make meetha paratha (a sugary layered flatbread) like her mom, my nani, used to make. She adds a pinch of salt to the dough, some ghee, and gently kneads it until she feels the texture is right. I’m imagining nani, spreading it out and sprinkling a generous amount of sugar in the middle the same way mama is doing, then folding in all four sides before rolling it out again. 

Mostly what I’ve heard of my nani has been that she was a woman of few words and abundant patience. For almost all her life, one or all of her sisters-in-law lived in the same home, and she graciously took care of them and hosted other relatives on top of that. Her food, which she made with a lot of care, was well loved by everyone, and to this day I’ve heard mama’s cousins talk about her generosity with a lot of admiration. 

Having never met her, I’d lap up these stories, trying to form a picture of her in my mind. But as I’ve grown older, that story has given way to a lot of questions. Unfortunately, most of these questions only she could have answered. How did she really feel with all that responsibility? Was it exhausting? Did she want to ever put her hands up and just not do it anymore? Did she have dreams before she got married that she’d slowly given up on?

I know that even though my nani only taught mama to make roti (bread) and chai, she inherited a lot of those expectations. The kitchen and the food and the hosting in our home was her forte, whether that was what she wanted to do with her life or not. She was of a generation that was given the “choice” of working or pursuing hobbies, but all of that was still secondary to maintaining the house and putting food on the table for breakfast, lunch, tea, snacks, and dinner. Thankfully she didn’t inherit the silence. She often expressed her anxieties and frustrations and demanded ease where she could get it. She put in time and money in things that interested her which included buying a PSP, taking graphic design courses and memorizing the Quran. 

Oops! I’ve let my thoughts wander again and missed vital instructions while the paratha was on the tawa. I can smell the sugar melting into the ghee between the layers. I’ll have to pretend I’ve noted down the technique, hoping I can fill in the gaps in the process by asking questions later. 

I often find myself trapped in this mental quagmire. On one hand, I admire the warmth and nourishment that have been given to me by the women in my life. On the other hand, when I look deeper, I catch a glimpse of a certain cost that has been incurred by most of them. A cost they’ve paid over decades; the constant mental load, postponement of dreams, exhaustion not even acknowledged at times. And then I grieve. 

I’m afraid my mental quagmire is going to make the meetha paratha bitter just by proximity. Mama is putting in her final touches, and I’ve mindlessly put the saucepan on the stove to make chai. I mean, of course, how else am I supposed to have the paratha. 

I like our kitchen. One of my favourite things to do on the weekend is make my own breakfast in the morning when everyone is asleep. It’s been my refuge, more times than I can count. However, I’m slowly understanding that my relationship with cooking, baking or the kitchen is what it is because I have actively worked to not inherit the expectations my mother did. I’ve been anything but silent. I’ve felt this imbalance within these traditional roles, sometimes so, that it has inadvertently spilled out of me on dining tables and drawing rooms even when all everyone was looking for was polite conversation over the tea trolley.

This is no surprise anymore because I am part of a generation of daughters who have felt their mother’s exhaustion or the unseen labour and tried to build their lives differently. At the same time, I am also acutely aware that not everyone has this choice. There are many young women who are still operating within dynamics where the pressure of society is so immense that fitting into the mold laid out for them is akin to survival. So, they continue holding the weight of a family’s expectations while they still try to build a life for themselves. 

Mama and I finally sit down to have our meetha paratha with chai, and I look at her, do a little happy shoulder shimmy, and we both laugh. Along with the recipe, I note, the warmth and laughter that comes with food on the table will only deepen when the effort being made is born of choice, not unchallenged expectation.

I knocked on the door and entered my baby sister’s childhood bedroom cautiously. Catherine was sitting up in bed, wearing a comfortable sweater and yoga pants, loungewear she had been wearing for most of the endless lockdowns, like the rest of the world. I smiled from the door and approached the bed. I climbed slowly in relieved to see her again after many months.  

I’m cold’ Catherine said softly, in the voice of a timid child.  

‘It’s not cold today’ I answered ‘and the heating is on’ I continued, placing my hand on the radiator by her bed to double check.  

I hugged her tight to try and warm her up. She allowed me to hug her longer than usual, to mother her, where normally she would shrug me and most people off. 

‘Why did you have me sent to Saint John of Gods and locked away’ she asked, eyes wide staring at me.  

‘Is that what you believe happened, sweetheart?’ 

‘That IS what happened’ she snapped back venomously. ‘That’s what everyone told me happened’ 

This must be the reason I had lost precious months with her, the reason she had not even looked at me on Christmas Day, the one time we had been in a room together since she left that godforsaken psychiatric institution. It had been easier for everyone to blame me. There had to be a scapegoat. I swallowed the anger I could feel building within.  

Looking her straight in the eye and trying to embody the nurturing older sister I wanted so badly to be, wishing I could be her Florence Nightingale, I quietly and slowly explained. 

‘The Mental Health Act allows a doctor to refer someone who is a risk to themselves to be committed involuntarily to Saint John of Gods institution but in order to do so they must get permission from the next of kin’ 

I had memorised parts of the Mental Health Act over the prior months, I had phoned and spoken to mental health experts in organisations with names like Shine and Aware. I had trawled the internet in desperation, scribbling notes in a copybook which I carried with me everywhere. 

‘Catherine, I am not your next of kin.’ My voice was calm and collected. ‘Who is your next of kin’ I asked as gently as I possibly could.  

She looked long and hard at me as tears welled up in her eyes. She had held me responsible and cut me from her life based on an untruth.  

She allowed me to lean in and hug her again and I hung on as long as she allowed me to. I wanted to comfort her, swaddle her like a baby in that duvet, wrap her in love. I recalled how in all the googling I had done on mental health I had read about star blankets, hand stitched by grandmothers among the Cree people, grandmothers who infused each blanket with prayers, which they whispered under their breath as they stitched, each geometric patch telling a part of the person’s story, stitching the person whose mental health was frail back together again.  

Our own grandmothers were both long gone from this world. I wanted there and then to manifest a grandmother archetype to stitch and sew a blanket for Catherine.  

The Cree people hold a ceremony to gift the stitched blanket when completed to the loved one in their community who is suffering. They hold a sacred space enveloped in prayers and song, connecting their loved one to their community. I imagined the duvet wrapped around Catherine was a healing blanket stitched by a loving grandmother and that the ceiling above us was the vast Milkyway with its billions of stars looking down on us, the generations of women that came before us in that constellation ready to hold and support us.  

Interrupting my thoughts and pulling away from me, Catherine spoke quietly. ‘I hate the medicines they’ve given me. ‘I feel numb, I feel dead’  

A shudder went through me. ‘Those medicines are just for now’ I assured her. ‘Please just be patient, please wait for them to find the right combination’ ‘Please promise me you will wait,’ I reiterated feeling a heaviness descend on the room. 

‘And you will find other things that work well for you alongside the medication. Everyone is different. I know what helps me.  

‘I’m not as strong as you’ she said flatly. 

A silence filled the room.  

‘Let’s run away to a sweat lodge on an Indian reservation in America’ I proposed laughing trying to fill the silence. ‘We can burn sage in the tent as hot rocks make us sweat’ I was trying hard to cut through the despondency.  

‘Or closer to home, let’s walk the Camino pilgrimage, now that you can walk well again, we can hike 10 km a day through France or Spain or Portugal until our feet are sore with blisters and we can scream into the sea’ I said trying not to sound frantic. ‘We can go now, it’s almost Spring’. ‘I stopped to catch my breath ‘We will get you feeling better. You will smile again’  

‘I like the sound of those sweat lodges’ she answered, a faint smile on her lips, a glint in her eyes as she remembered her many travel adventures ‘Yeah, maybe, maybe we can travel when they lift Covid restrictions’  

‘Oh yeah, I forgot,’ I said, deflated. ‘But you do know I’ll do anything for you, anything at all. You need only ask.’ 

She never asked.  

A knock on the door. 

‘Are you two coming downstairs? Will I stick on the kettle?’  

In unison, we yelled; our mother quickly retreated.  

Oh for a few minutes longer, a few hours, a few days. I could have stayed under that duvet chatting an eternity. I had missed her so much these past few months. I missed her now even sitting with her. I missed her before she was even gone, before she took her own life.

I don’t know exactly when I stopped writing. I don’t know when what once felt like a refuge began to feel like a cage. What once gave me solace and comfort slowly became painful, a process that would pull out the dark things and force me to relive them or make sense of them. How can you make sense of hundreds of fluorescent orange lifevests washing up on sandy beaches next to tourists sunbathing and children building sandcastles, their skin slick with the oily sheen of sunscreen? Are the tourists aware that the greatest danger here is not just a red hot sunburn? Are they aware that these beaches have been war zones, bodies spilling out onto the sand, kissing the ground, gasping for air? I remember praying that the vests were abandoned by those who had made it safely to land, and that they were not the life vests which had slipped off of desperate bodies frantically waving their arms in choppy waves, crying out for help. 

Until my son was born, there was something that did not allow the dark things to take up space, to move into the light of my mind’s eye, to be examined. After he was born, it was as if I felt everything I had ever seen, felt, or heard, all at once. Everything changed. Now I think of life vests emerging on the coast when I buckle my own child into his. He is excited, and a smile spreads wide across his face at the thought of going on a ride in the sea kayak. My fingers tingle as I try to clip the cumbersome vest to his tiny little body and for a second I think about the other mother, the one who buckled her child into one of the vests I found discarded on the beach all those years ago, small enough to fit a toddler. 

These days I make my morning coffee and pack my son’s lunch. I prepare myself for another day of mental checklists - did we buy blueberries? Did I remember to hang the clothes to dry? Did I schedule his next check-up? What will we have for dinner? I feel guilty that these are the tasks that exhaust me now. I am not sure I was prepared for what this phase of life would feel like - the most profound work I’ve ever done: raising a human - would also feel at times, quite frankly, so mundane. 

Today we are at the beach and I try to ignore the laundry list of tasks waiting for me when we get home. I try to ignore the images of war and migrant pushbacks and detention centers flooding my news feed lately. The world is on fire, and I am here, digging holes in the sand. Holes. I flash back to a funeral I once had to organize for a family whose son had drowned while trying to get from Turkey to Greece. They didn’t have the money to ship the body back home to Afghanistan, and they didn’t know where they would end up. “Anywhere safe” didn’t have any meaning anymore, the worst had already happened. The summer earth was so dry it cracked and crumbled into dust with every jab of the shovel and the Aegean wind whipped it up in swirls into everyone's faces. A tiny hole for a tiny body wrapped in white muslin, a child buried on land it never had the chance to step foot on. The mother wailed and fell to the ground and I, a 25-year-old aidworker at the time, tried to imagine the depth of her loss and simply couldn’t. All I could think about was what a horrible deal it was that this mother had me by her side instead of someone better equipped, the support she deserved. Even if there wasn’t someone else to speak her language, at least we could have found someone who could understand what it felt like to hold within your belly the beating flesh of another heart, a heart you created, someone who knew what it felt like to hear that heartbeat from within. This mother deserved someone who understood the relentless daily care and love that every mother pours into her child from the moment it exits her body. We could have found another mother to stand by her, at least. I didn’t know what to do so I patted her back through the rhythmic wailing, wailing, wailing and thought I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. 

“Mommy?” my son’s little body squirms with excitement. 
“Yes?” I say.
“Why do we wear life vests?”
I pause, “Well, they keep us safe.”
“Keep us safe from what?” He fiddles with his swimsuit drawstring, somewhat distracted.
“They keep us safe if we fall in the water…” I take a moment to think of a way to avoid the word ‘drowning’. “They help us stay afloat until help arrives, so we don’t get too tired swimming.” I scan his face for reactions and playfully sprinkle him with sea water to lighten the weight of the conversation. 
“Yes but you are a good swimmer and you will be able to pull me out,” he continued.
“Yes, that is true, mommy’s always going to do whatever she can to keep us safe, but it’s always good to take precautions.”  

This seems to satisfy him. He does not yet have awareness of my own fallibility, my mortality, my own limitations. I start paddling out deeper and my mind travels to a story a fellow aidworker had told me while we were working on the Greek islands in 2016. At the time refugees were travelling the narrow channel between Turkey and Greece just to be met with bureaucracy, and occasionally hostility, on the other side. She told me of faulty life vests sold to eager mothers taking the journey. The vests were filled with porous material that becomes unfathomably heavy when wet, leaden anchors instead of buoyant flotation devices. Unknowingly, the other mother, the one risking everything to get her children to safety, spent her final savings on vests that would weigh them down rather than keep them afloat. 

My breath catches in my throat at the anguished thought of being deceived into playing a part in your own child’s drowning. At just three my son is still so dependent on me, I am the center of his little world. I think about the energy and effort I expend just to shield him from the slightest discomfort, the lengths I go to to conceal my own anxiety and fears. 

“Mommy look, a fish!” he squeals and points with delight. I force a smile. Did the other mother force a smile while loading up her children in a Europe-bound dinghy under the darkness of night? Perhaps she concocted a story for them, as I do when trying to quell my child’s fears. “Ahh look!” I had told my son as his school bus rounded the corner to pick him up on his first day of school. “It’s Odysseus’ ship coming to take you on a grand adventure!” He had been obsessed with the heroics of Greek mythology at the time. “Whenever you feel overwhelmed you will remember what a courageous adventurer you are, my little Odysseus, and I will be right here waiting when you come home to Ithaka!” He nervously giggled. “Yes,” he whispered, not fully convinced. “I am Odysseus.” I had even felt guilty, yes, for sending him off to school. I knew it was safe and good for him, but still, he seemed so fragile climbing the tall school bus stairs, so vulnerable.

I think about the other mother dressing her children for a journey she does not want to take, realizing that they look to her so fragile, so vulnerable. What did she pack in their backpacks? Did she still have to think of what to make for dinner the night before? Hands running over buckles and straps in the pitch dark, her fingers check and re-check that they are snapped and tightened around bodies still too small to support the weight they must carry. I imagine her heart pounding, her eyes straining through the night to see who is on this perilous journey with them. Chaos breaks as too many people scramble into the boat. “Hurry up, children” she tries to say calmly, but the words spill out of her mouth all at once. Maybe she exchanges glances with another mother, different from her and yet somehow able to speak the same language. “I see you” they say without uttering a word. Maybe these mothers encourage their children to take refuge in their own imaginations by telling the same stories I used to persuade my child to get on the school bus. Maybe they tried to make it a game. 

Once my son and I have paddled back to the beach he plays amongst friends and I succumb to the urge to check the news on my phone. The headlines wash over me. The waves wash over his miniature footprints in the sand.

“Mommy look! A seashell!” He shouts. 
Yet another sunken ship full of souls, off the coast of Chios, ten years after I witnessed the orange life vests bobbing up and down in its crystalline waters. Everything has changed and nothing has changed. I smile back at my son’s joy over the seashell. I call out to him reminding him not to go too deep without his floaties, and a Warsine Shire poem I once heard pulses through my body: “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.”

I want to know the other mother’s name. I want to hear the dreams she has for her children, the dreams she has for herself. I want to know what snacks or extra clothes she packed in their bags. Did she bring their favorite stuffed animal? I want to know the story of her children’s names. I want to know how she deals with bedtime and how she survived the sleepless post-partum months.

I want to know her and I want to know how I am meant to enjoy a day at the beach, my children bathing in the same waters that she feared would swallow hers. I want to sit with the other mother, rest my hand on hers, and remind her she is a good mother. We will watch our kids dig in the sand, resolve their spats and remind them to “play fair” and “be kind”. We will trade recipes and laugh and complain about the endless task of reapplying sunscreen to little sandy, slippery, bodies. During naptime we will dream up a different world, one where we are free to nurture and create and feel and write. As we dream, we will do. This, after all, is not foreign to us. Holding a child’s dreams in one hand, so gently, careful not to crush them, while we hold a hammer in the other, building futures and communities, staving off any threats. In this world all children are precious and sacred. All mothers are brave guardians of the future. In another world there will be no “other” mothers - just mothers with the same dreams.

She stands in front of the mirror.

Her hair has grown a little longer. She has always wished for it to grow long enough to fall below her waist, long enough that when she runs, it dances in the air behind her. She runs her fingers through her thick, tangled hair, and her fingers disappear somewhere among all that darkness.

She calls for her mother.

She comes. She takes the comb and stands behind her. She combs her hair, and whenever she reaches a knot, she gently loosens it so it will not hurt.

At the end, she ties the blue hair tie around her braids.

For her, her hair is the only thing that remains from her childhood and continues to grow with her.
---
That same day:

Morning is not yet complete. The sky remains somewhere between night and day, and the pale, distant moon can still be seen in the sky.

Sometimes I imagine the moon smiles too. Perhaps those dark patches on its face are its dimples.

I tell myself, I must write.

About children whose childhood ended before they understood what childhood was.

About children who saw kites less often than warplanes in the sky; about those who heard the sound of explosions before they knew the sound of fireworks.

But perhaps it is better to start with myself.

There were days when I dreamed of becoming a footballer.

I wanted to run across a vast, endless green field, with new white shoes and a ball beneath my feet, while people called my name. 

I had been waiting for my father since morning. Waiting for the sound of the key turning in the door and running toward it.

My father was a soldier and was just about to retire, and this was supposed to be his last service.

After every departure, he would turn back once and ask:

“What should I bring you this time, my girl?”

This time, however, he had promised me a new pair of shoes—white shoes.

That cold autumn morning, the smell of winter could be felt in the cool howling wind. My ears were red from the cold. I wrapped my green flowered scarf tightly around my head. I put my hands inside my pockets and slipped my numb, cold feet into my slippers.

With the money in my pocket, I left the house to buy bread.

I had walked that road a hundred times.

It was the same alley.

Until that day, I thought that alley was simply a place between a house and a bakery.

Suddenly, the seconds stopped, and for a moment, the world stood still.

Then the disheveled, broad-built man with a large body and wide shoulders stood in front of me.

I took one step back. But he came closer and blocked the way.

He reached out his hand and grabbed my wrist tightly.

My voice was stuck in my throat, and no sound came out of me.

It was the first time a hand other than my mother’s had come near my body without my permission.

In a muffled voice, I said:

“Let me go.”

He tightened his grip on my wrist.

Then his hand reached my hair and pulled one of my braids so hard that my head jerked backward.

He said:

“If you let me stroke your hair, I’ll give you one hundred afghanis.”

One hundred afghanis.

I understood the number.

But I did not understand why my fear had to have a price.

I tried with all my strength to pull my hand away, but he would not let me.

He stood so close that I could smell the strong scent of his clothes.

He looked at my braids showing from beneath my scarf. Then he reached toward me again, and I felt his rough hand on my body.

Suddenly, something inside me woke up.

I bit his hand with all my strength and ran behind me.

My scarf fell from my head.

I had always imagined running differently.

On a vast, endless green field, with a ball beneath my feet.

One of my slippers slipped off, and I did not look back.

I just ran.

And one word kept spinning in my head:

Guilty.

Guilty.

Guilty.

I had only learned that a stranger, a non-mahram man, was not allowed to touch me.

But I was only twelve years old.

I still did not know that breaking that rule was not my fault. 

I was out of breath.

When I reached the courtyard, I hid behind the hallway door.

My mother called me.

I did not answer.

If she asked, “Where is the bread?” what would I say?

How could I explain something for which I did not even have a name yet?

I fell to the floor. I did not cry, because my body was only beginning to warn me that it was afraid.

Suddenly, I wanted fresh bread.

I remembered Eid night; Baba had brought two oily breads and gave me the blue hair tie as Eidi. 

The smell of bread had always been the smell of home to me.

I quietly said:

“I wish Baba were here.”

But Baba was not here.

And I was only twelve years old.

My eyes fell on the scissors in front of me, lying on the shelf.

I took my hair in my hands and began cutting it, one by one.

The scissors closed.

One lock of hair fell.

Then another. And another.

I held the blue hair tie tightly in my fist.

I thought I had to erase something from myself.

Years later, I understood that what needed to be erased was not my hair.

Nor was it guilt.

Guilt had never belonged to me.
----
In my dreams, I still ran.

I still danced.

I still painted my nails, read books, and drew pictures. And I still ran in my white shoes.

Then I learned to write, and finally found the courage to tell someone what had happened that day.

It took years to change one word.

I no longer said:

“Guilty.”

I said:

“A twelve-year-old girl who was afraid.”

Today, I found the blue hair tie among my old things.

I hold it between my fingers.

It is still blue.
---
It is already noon. I have to go.

I hear the call to prayer.

I pray and open the Qur’an. I recite Surah Al-Nas.

Then I open my notebook and begin to write.

My hair has grown long again.

This time, my hand reaches its ends.

Sometimes I still dream that I have become a footballer.

Somewhere far, far away, in another world, I am still waiting for Baba to come.

But I no longer wait for someone to come and save me.

I look in the mirror.

This time, I see a girl who has returned from that alley.

Back to herself.

She was only a girl.

With long hair.

And a dream of running.

And somewhere inside me, that same girl is still running. 

Mr. Adebayo had been the lollipop man for forty-seven years.

Every morning, he stood at the crossing on the corner of Merton Road and Kingsley Avenue. His fluorescent jacket was faded now, but it still glowed like a small sun against the grey London dawn. In his hand, he held the stop sign, its pole polished smooth by decades of grip.

He had helped three generations of children cross that road. He remembered their names. The shy ones. The bold ones. The dreamers who walked slowly, their heads in the clouds.

"Morning, Mr. Adebayo!" they would call.

"Morning, little one," he would reply. "Mind the kerb now. Off you go."

It was a small job. But to Mr. Adebayo, it was the most important job in the world. He was not just stopping traffic. He was guarding the future.

But now, the world was moving too fast for him. Cars rushed past. Children walked by with eyes fixed on screens. No one waved. No one smiled. No one said his name.

The council had sent a letter last week. Words like "restructuring" and "efficiency." The crossing was being upgraded. New technology. Automated signals. No need for a man in a yellow jacket anymore.

His last day would be Friday.

He had not told anyone. He carried the letter in his pocket, folded and refolded until the paper was soft as cloth.

On Wednesday, a little boy stopped at the crossing. He was small, with dark skin and big eyes and a backpack that looked too heavy for his thin shoulders. He stood at the kerb, waiting, clutching a piece of paper.

Mr. Adebayo raised his sign. The cars halted. He gestured for the boy to cross.

But the boy did not move. He just stood there, staring at the ground.

"Come along, little one," Mr. Adebayo said gently. "It's safe now."

The boy looked up. His eyes were wet. His lip was trembling.

"I don't want to go to school," he whispered.

Mr. Adebayo lowered his sign. He walked over and crouched down, his old knees creaking. Up close, the boy was even smaller than he had seemed. His uniform was too big, the sleeves hanging over his hands. His shoes were scuffed, the laces untied.

"Why not?" Mr. Adebayo asked softly.

The boy held out the paper. It was crumpled, squeezed too tightly. Mr. Adebayo smoothed it out. It was a drawing. A stick figure, small and alone, standing in the corner of a playground. The sky was grey. The sun was hidden. And in the corner, written in childish letters: "Nobody plays with me."

Mr. Adebayo felt something crack inside his chest.

He looked at the boy. He looked at the drawing. And he remembered all the children who had crossed this road over forty-seven years. The ones who laughed and the ones who cried. The ones who walked alone. The ones who carried invisible weights on their small shoulders.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Tobi," the boy whispered.

Mr. Adebayo smiled. "Tobi. That is a strong name. Do you know what it means?"

Tobi shook his head.

"It means 'God is great'. My grandmother told me that. She was from Nigeria, like your family, I think. She said names are powerful. They tell the world who you are."

Tobi looked up. "My grandma is from Nigeria too."

Mr. Adebayo nodded. "Then you are carrying a whole country inside you, Tobi. A whole history. That is not nothing. That is everything."

He reached out and tied the boy's shoelaces. Slowly, carefully, the way he had done for his own children.

"School is hard," he said. "But you are not as alone as you think. There are other children who feel the same way. They are waiting for someone brave enough to say hello first. Maybe that someone is you."

Tobi sniffed. "What if they don't like me?"

"Then they are missing out on a friend who knows how to draw," Mr. Adebayo said, holding up the picture. "This is good. The shadows are wrong, but the feeling is real. Art is about feeling."

Tobi almost smiled. "You know about art?"

"I have been standing on this corner for forty-seven years. I have learned something important."

"What?"

Mr. Adebayo stood up and held out his hand. "The small things matter. The quiet things. The moments no one notices. A kind word. A smile. A hand to hold when the road is dangerous. That is what changes the world. Not the big things. The small things."

Tobi took his hand. It was warm, despite the cold. Small and trusting.

They crossed the road together, slowly, the stop sign held high. The cars waited. The world, for a moment, was still.

On the other side, Tobi turned. "Will you be here tomorrow?"

Mr. Adebayo felt the letter in his pocket, soft as cloth, heavy as stone. He thought about Friday. He thought about the end of forty-seven years. He thought about the small things, and how they mattered, and how he was not ready to stop mattering.

"Yes," he said. "I will be here tomorrow. And the day after. You just worry about saying hello first."

Tobi smiled. A small smile, fragile as a new leaf, but real. He turned and walked towards the school gates, his backpack bouncing, his shoes now tied.

Mr. Adebayo watched him go. Then he walked back to his post, raised his sign, and did what he had always done.

He guarded the future.

And he decided, standing there in the cold morning air, that he would not go quietly. He would not be erased. He would not let a letter, however formal, tell him that his small things did not matter.

He would be there tomorrow.

Because the world was full of Tobi's. Children carrying invisible weights. Children waiting for someone to notice. Children who needed a hand to hold when the road was dangerous.

He straightened his yellow jacket, adjusted his grip on the stop sign, and smiled at a passing mother.

"Morning," he said. "Mind the kerb now. Off you go."

The mother smiled back. It was a small thing.

But it mattered.

Tonigh‌t⁠, everything fe⁠els diffe‌r‌ent​.

I cannot e​xpla‌in it, bu⁠t there is something in t⁠he⁠ air that mak⁠es me a‌fraid. Someth​in​g invisib‌le s​i‌ts h⁠eavily o​n my chest a‍nd make​s it difficu​lt to b⁠reathe. I have be⁠en⁠ quiet f‌o⁠r days. I barely s​p⁠ea‍k anym⁠ore, as⁠ if even my voic⁠e has beco⁠me​ too heavy to carry.
Somethin⁠g is changing in‌side me, or perhap⁠s someth‌ing around me is slowly f⁠alli‌ng apart.
W‌hat fri‌g‌h‌tens m‍e‍ m‌ost is not knowing.‍
For d‌ay​s, I have wondered why my parents sud​denly stopped shouting at me.‍ Why ar‌e they speaking so gen​t​ly? Why ha‌v‍e they stopped‌ insul​tin‍g me and maki⁠ng me‌ feel as though I am nothi‍ng?‍
Before, eve​ry word th‌ey spoke car⁠ried a wound.​ T‌hey mad⁠e me feel hopeless so oft‍en that I had almost become used to h⁠op​el‌essness.
‌
I remember som‍eth⁠ing I once‌ read from Mawlana:
“The​ lamps are different, but​ the Lig​ht is the s‍ame.”
I u⁠sed to think those words were b​eautiful.
Ton​igh‌t, I wonder i‍f t⁠her⁠e is any light l‌eft for me at all.
Everyth⁠ing is too q‌uiet.
Even my‌ little sister barely s⁠pea‍ks to m‍e. Som​etimes I catch her l​ookin​g​ at me, but when our‌ eyes meet, she looks away. I know something is wro‍ng, but whe‍n​ever I try to understand it, my thoughts​ disapp‌ear into‌ dar‍kness.
‌I cannot sl‍ee​p.‌
The darknes‍s ar‍ound me feels as though​ it has ente⁠red my b⁠ody.​ Somewher‍e deep inside, ther⁠e is a soun‌d I cannot silence. It feels like a hol⁠e insid​e me, and I⁠ am trapped‍ at the‍ bott⁠om‌, st​ar‍ing upward a‌t a wo​rld that seems⁠ impossibly far away.
I reach‍ for the book b‌eside my⁠ bed.
I open⁠ it, but the words refuse to stay in my hea‌d.
I r⁠emember Viktor Fr‌ankl​ writing​ about sufferin​g, meaning, and‍ the possibility of finding s‍ome‍th⁠i‌ng wort‌h living for.
I cl‌o‍se the book.‍
W​hat d‍o you do⁠ when someone else has already decid⁠ed wh⁠at your life i⁠s w​orth?
Mo‌rn​ing co⁠mes​, bu‍t I have not slept.
I get up and‌ prepa​re​ brea‍kfast fo⁠r my family. While I am s‌ettin‌g the table, my⁠ father enters t‌he kitchen.
“D​on’t make yoursel‍f too tired,” he says.
His voice is gentle.
So gentl‌e that I⁠ almost‌ do not recognize it.
I stare at him.
Fo​r the first time, h‍e speaks‍ to me wi⁠thout anger. I wonder what has happened.
⁠Why is every‍one suddenly kind?
Wh⁠en breakfast is ready, my father tells me to get dressed because they are expecting a gu​est.
“Who is coming?⁠” I ask.
H‌e do‍es not answer.
Later⁠, my mother enters carrying a dress.
“We‌ar t​his.”
It is beautiful.
⁠It‌ is wh‌ite.
F‍or the fi​rs‍t time th‍at morning, I​ smile. I hold it again‍st mys‍elf and look in the mirr‌or. I have never worn anyt⁠h‍ing lik⁠e i⁠t before.
Then the happiness slowly disappea‌rs.
⁠Something‌ feels wrong.
Why t⁠his d‌ress?
Why today?‌
Why is every​o‌ne ac⁠ting as t‌hough something important is ab⁠out‌ to‍ happen?
I t​hin⁠k about all the books I have r⁠ead.
None of the​m e⁠ve‍r told me tha​t so​met​imes a beautiful​ dr​ess can feel like a‍ wa‍rnin‍g.
Three older men enter th​e house, followed b‍y another man I h​ave neve​r seen before​. He‍ has gray hair, a lo‍ng be​ard, and a voice so deep that fear mo‌ves throu‌gh me before I even understand why.‍
I stay near the do⁠or and listen.
The​y recite words in Arabi⁠c that‌ I cannot‌ understand.
Then I hear quest‍ions.
“Ye​s.”
Another‍ question.‍
“Yes.‌”
A th⁠i‍rd.‍
“Yes.‍”​
Three questions.
Three answers.
‌And n‍o​t one of them is mea‍nt for m‌e.
I return to⁠ the kitche‌n and pretend nothing happened.
A while later, my mother calls my name.
I enter‍ the room.‍
My parents a‍re standing toge‌ther.
My mother looks at me.
“⁠Li‌sten, daugh‌ter. You are growing up now. You ha‌ve respon‍sibilities. You must obey an‍d lis⁠ten to what‌ever they​ tell⁠ you. And you mus​t n​ever rais​e your voice.”
I stare at her.
Then she says the words that s⁠plit my lif‍e​ i‌nt⁠o two pieces.
“Daughter, now y‌ou are‌ mar​rie‍d. Your husband will take care o⁠f you.”
For a moment, I th⁠ink I have‍ misu‍nde⁠rstood her.
“Wha⁠t?”
She tells me that the man w‌ho came‌ to our house has⁠ ju⁠st ma‌de nika⁠h with me.
“Bu​t I didn‍'t know anythin​g‌. Ho​w could you mar‌ry me without ask‍ing m‌e?”
My fat⁠her’​s voic​e rises.
“W​e do not ne​ed your permi⁠ssion.”
​T‍he words hurt more th‌an‌ his s​houting ever ha​d.
“You are married now. You will‍ leave thi‍s house‌ and live​ wi⁠th your husband.”
I begin to​ cry.
“P‌leas‍e,​ Dad. Don’t do t‍his to me. I am your child.”‍
‌He looks at m​e wi‍th‍out emo⁠tion.
“It is too late. You are somebod‍y’s wife.”
I fall⁠ to his knees.
“Please.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me up.
“Don’t be stupid. Do what​ I told you.”‍
Then the man ent‌e⁠rs.
He s⁠mile⁠s at me.
It is not a kind smile.
It is the smi‌le​ of someone who be​lieves he has b⁠een give‌n somet‍hing.
I realize how he sees me.
Not as a pers‍on.
No‍t as a daugh‌ter‍.
As propert‌y‍.
He reach‍es for my hand‍.
‍I pu⁠ll a⁠way.
“Please, Dad. Don’t let​ him take me.”
My father shouts.
“‌You are his wife now. You​ mu‌st obey him.”‌
Somethi⁠ng in‍sid⁠e m‌e breaks.
No one is com​in‍g.‍
No one will open the door and⁠ tell them that what th‍ey​ are doing is‌ wrong.
The man⁠ takes me outside.
“I don⁠'t know you,” I tell him‍. “You ar​e not my husba‍nd. I never accepted t‌his.”
He loo‍ks at⁠ me angr⁠ily.
“You‍ are mine now‍.”
Those w‌ords rema‍in inside my h‍ead.
You are mine now.
As if my life can be owned.
As if my body is land som‌eone else has been given‌ permission to posse⁠ss.
He forces me int‍o the car​.
As we drive away, I watch my home dis⁠appear through t​he window.
The house beco‍m‌es​ s‍m‍alle​r.
The‍n smaller again.
Unt⁠il it‍ is gon​e.
When we ar⁠rive at his h‍ou⁠se, he gets out of the car and turns away for a mo​ment​.
T‌here is an‍ ope‍n‌in‌g.
⁠A small one.
But it i⁠s enough.
I remember my childhood teacher‌’s word‍s:
When‌ever you fee​l unsafe, do not waste time thinking abo​ut what⁠ might happen.
‍Run.‌‍
So I r​un.
I ru​n without looking bac⁠k.
The man shouts for his sons. Footsteps follow me.
Two men.
Maybe three.
I run fa​ster.
My lungs‍ b⁠urn. My legs ache. M⁠y white dress catches against my knees,‍ but I keep going.
I know‍ I m⁠ight be kil​led.
But s⁠taying‍ feels⁠ w⁠or‌se than d⁠eath.
As I run,‍ I realize something.
I have spent most o‌f my l‌ife running.
I ran from my father⁠’s cruelty.
I ran from fe‌ar.
​I ran from dreams‌ I was ne‍ver‌ a‌llo⁠wed to⁠ follow.
But this time, I am not runnin⁠g from​ my dreams.
I​ am⁠ running fo​r my life.‍‌
Behi⁠nd me, they shout.
“Stop!”
“Stop‍, or w‍e will kill y​ou!”
I ke‌ep ru​nn‍ing‌.
​Then I hear it​.
A gun being pulled from a‍ pock‍et.‌
“Stop‌, o​r I will shoot you!”⁠
I still do no⁠t⁠ stop.
I cannot.
There⁠ is no⁠thing left f⁠or me to‌ lo​s‌e.
⁠Then co‍mes‍ the gunshot.
Ever​ything become⁠s quiet.
I fall.
The g‌r‌oun‌d is c​old beneat⁠h​ me.
I l‍o‍ok down.
Blood is sprea‍d‍i⁠ng across​ my white dress.
The same d⁠ress that made m⁠e smile that mor‍nin​g.
The same⁠ dr​ess that felt like a warni‌ng.
Now I understand.‌
I think o⁠f my⁠ little sister.
‌M‍y m‍o‌t‌h​er.
My father.
⁠And all the girls whose live‍s have been decided in rooms where​ nobody ever asked w​ha‍t they wanted.‍
I‌ was no‌t the first.
I will no​t be the las‍t‌.
Mayb‍e that is wha⁠t hurts th‌e most.
I close my eyes.
I think of the books‍ beside m​y bed—th​e pages⁠ a​bout love, freedom, su​ffering, cou⁠rage, and the meaning of being alive.
I once t‍hought books⁠ were places p⁠e‍o​ple went to escape life.‌
Now⁠ I unde​rstan‌d.
So⁠metimes b⁠oo‌ks are the only place⁠s where a‌nother life is al⁠lo‌w⁠ed t​o exist.
I remember Mawla‌na’s wo‌r‌ds.
Th​e ligh‍t⁠.
I wo​nder if ther‍e is still​ a‌ny of it lef‍t​.
The m‍ornin⁠g s‍ky is‌ abo⁠ve⁠ me.​
Nobody is shouting anymore‍.‍
Nobo⁠dy‌ is telling me​ to obey.⁠
Nobody is telling me wh⁠ere I belong.⁠
F‌or th‌e fir​s‍t time in my life, th‍ere is no one‌ left to dec⁠ide where I have to go.

And I stop runnin‌g.

I come from a family of sensitive men and strong women. A win over patriarchy? Maybe. 

But also a reflection of fractured mental health systems. Men feel the emotions - rage, sadness, anger, depression, fear. Women absorb it, fix it. Or atleast that was the case with her parents. 

Once I fell into the same rhythm too. But I learned to adapt. Throwing myself into my studies and work, all leading up to the biggest moment of my career.

I stared at the screen...my colleagues peering eagerly in excitement. 

3-4 months back this promotion was all I wanted. Stepping into a new role, I loved the rush of mastering a new stream.

It felt like what you are supposed to do at 25...Be a career woman, take the corporate world by storm. Be independent, be smart. 

For so long, I was driven to do better, be better...but for what? 

The pursuit of knowledge or to not feel less within?

I had been waiting, had been preparing for this promotion for months. 

But now that it was all here - all I felt was emptiness. My very first promotion, it meant nothing when my mum instead of congratulating me, shakily said..."Your dad had a dream he was killing himself."

This moment…it broke something in me. 

Maybe somewhere I knew that my family had changed forever. This grief I felt, I thought couldn’t I survive with. Over time, I learned to live with it. And even name it. 

I call it, “perpetual grief”. A grief that you feel over and over again. One moment my dad is there, everything is the same, and the next it’s not. 


A loss I mourn deeply. For my family and myself.

I am no longer just the daughter now, I have to be a caregiver. 

Few months later, when I dared to move away for work for a while. I remember talking to my mother on the phone, folding my laundry but absentmindedly wrinkling the shirt and folding it again as I felt the frustration and tiredness in her voice. 

“It’s so difficult to deal with him. He is unwilling to do anything or focus on anything. He just keeps asking me the same thing. Uff!

He even said that he feels like ending it all….”

I couldn't respond for a minute. My mum, unfazed, carried on. 

She wasn’t being unsympathetic but taking care of my dad day in and day out had worn her out emotionally. So much so, she barely had the mental strength to deal with her own father passing away. 

I hated that she had to take it all alone. Though I admired the way she managed to hold on to her own identity, hobbies, and passion too. Even in a dessert, no one can stop a social butterfly from blooming. It was still unfair that her entire adult life was caught up in the ebbs and flows of my father’s mental illness. A challenge no one prepared her for. One she adapted to her, thanks to her own resilience. 

It’s because of everything she went through, that she wants the best for her daughters. I knew my family wanted me to do well and focus on myself. I knew it was the practical thing too. Going home the very next day, I remembered how Papa would excitedly greet me at the door with a big smile and arms open for a big hug. 

He would always say, “Bacha aagaya, aagaya - my child is home”. 

Now, he didn’t even get up from the bed and could barely manage a smile. 

His phone pinged, a client called and he cleared his tone and spoke calmly, “ Yes, Sudhir ji, the order is on the way, I have confirmed with the factory, it will be dispatched soon...”

I was amazed how he could focus and engage with work even in the depths of despair when I haven’t been able to concentrate on my own tasks at all since yesterday. 

I guess it comes from going through financial difficulties early in his life. Being the breadwinner of the family, he always felt responsible for giving his family a comfortable life. Now, the duct tape was coming off the hasty repairs and the cracks are weeping. 

My dad calls me Khushi meaning happiness but I don’t know how to help him and my family find theirs. 

There is a little corner in my garden that I have claimed as my sanctuary, though to call it a corner feels dishonest because what happens there is too sacred. It sits at the far end of my backyard where I have created a bed for all the spices and vegetables I am trying to grow. I cleared it all myself. That’s the one thing I was most proud of last year. 

On the 5th of December 2025, I came back home after a long day of work and went into my backyard to sit and watch the stars like I always do. Frustrated by the sight of things on the ground of the backyard, I knelt to the ground and started to pull out the weeds with my bare hands. Some of the dirt from that night lives permanently beneath my fingernails. I still see it till this day. 

In this sanctuary, I am a modified version of Lot’s wife or something of the sort. I am a pillar of salt looking up to the stars in worship, unable to stop looking back at the life I had before. And when I do go back inside, I am Naomi. The woman who, after burying a husband and everything that she loved, told her people to stop calling her by her name and call her Mara instead. Because whether you like it or not, grief has a way of creating a completely different version of your ‘self’. What is left of you will demand a new name. My new name is Nabilah. I have been called many things in this life but I still don’t know what I am. 

Every morning at 8am, I swallow three small yellow pills and I have been doing this for the last 4 years. For four years, those pills have been my daily communion. They are immunosuppressants that help prevent my body from rejecting the new organ I received 4 years ago. It has also been 4 years since my husband, Arian, died. He died on an operating table next to mine. When my kidneys failed, his blood matched mine in a miraculous way that made everyone at the hospital, including me, think that it was fate. Right before he went under, he kissed my forehead outside the surgical bay and whispered, "I'll see you on the other side." 

I woke up in the ICU to a functional body and an empty world. The doctors said that he had suffered a catastrophic anesthetic reaction. So here I was, alive, while the reason I was fighting to be alive was gone. 

Since then, my survival has felt less like a miracle and more like a sentence. I have been unable to live my life, at least not fully. To enjoy a cup of coffee, to laugh too loudly, or to dream about a future felt like desecrating his memory. How do you permit yourself to live when the only person you wish to live with is dead because of you?

On a hot summer evening, I was waiting at the airport for my flight when I heard a familiar sound. It was that distinct rattle of a prescription bottle. When I looked up, I saw a man in his late fifties sitting two chairs away and pouring two yellow capsules into his palm. He held up a bottle of water to take the medications and caught me staring. In the peculiar universe of chronic illness, the truth is that we recognize our own. He looked at me and smiled softly. "Tacrolimus?" he asked.

"Mycophenolate," I responded, my voice was almost as low as a whisper. "And Tacrolimus."

He nodded and said, "Eight years for me. A liver."

His name was Thomas. He had the kind of face that seemed permanently crinkled by laughter, his eyes were bright and so full of life. His voice had a seductive cadence to it. I had not found anything remotely seductive for four years. We began to speak as though we were familiars which is oddly something that strangers in transit do. For a brief moment while we wait for our flights, we tend to speak to others around us as though we share a sense of commonality. Out of a desperate curiosity, I asked him about his donor and once the question escaped my lips, he smiled very deeply.

"My wife, Sarah," he said softly. "There were complications in her recovery and she passed forty-eight hours after the surgery."

Immediately he said that, a cold chill ran down my spine. And then all of a sudden, that familiar and suffocating feeling of survivor's guilt started to build up in my chest. I stared at him, hoping to see a trace of that same survivor’s guilt but I didn’t find that.

"How do you do it?" I asked. "How do you breathe? How do you wake up every day and not collapse under the weight of knowing she died for you to sit here?"

Thomas put his water bottle down on the chair next to him and moved closer to me. 

"For the first two years, I lived in a dark room," he said slowly. "I didn’t allow myself to feel joy or peace. I thought if I suffered enough, if I stayed miserable enough, it would somehow balance things. But then I realized that my wife didn't give me her liver so I could build a shrine out of grief," he said. "She died because she loved me. And there is joy in that for me."

There is joy in that for me. Those words began to echo all around me as if suddenly the airport’s PA system was instructed to amplify the impact of those words in my chest.

It amazed me how he didn't say it with arrogance or detachment. He said it with the authority of a man who had come to learn that love is a gift to be honored through living. He went on to explain that he knew that to turn her sacrifice into his own version of hell was more of a betrayal than devotion. We spent the remainder of our time waiting together talking about all the ways I could begin to live my life without feeling guilty. Thomas was deeply interested in my likes, dislikes and what my perspective on love was before losing my husband. 

Whilst still speaking, the boarding for my flight was called. Thomas stood up, gave me a warm embrace, kissed me on the forehead and said "I'll see you on the other side." I didn't say anything back. I just nodded and walked toward the boarding gate. It was not until I had settled into my window seat that those words sunk in. At that moment, I knew that Arian was still with me.