25/09/2025
🌙 The Silent Dreams of Mariya
Mariya was born in a small village where life was measured not by dreams but by survival. The houses were made of mud, the roads of dust, and the people of stories passed down from one generation to the next. From the very start, Mariya was different. She wasn’t just a girl who helped her mother fetch water or grind millet. She was the girl who, under the fading evening light, would sit with a broken piece of chalk and scribble letters on the ground.
She loved school. Oh, how she loved it. She was always the first to arrive, sweeping the dusty classroom before her teacher walked in. Books fascinated her; each page was a window into another world. When she read, she imagined herself standing in front of a class one day, teaching other children how to hold a pencil and write their names.
But the world around her was not kind to girls with dreams.
Her father often said, “A girl’s education ends in the kitchen.” Her mother, though softer, carried the same belief, whispering, “Don’t fill your head with books, Mariya. What matters is marriage.”
At 14, Mariya’s world began to crumble. She overheard her parents whispering one night. Her father had promised her hand in marriage to Alhaji Musa, a wealthy trader nearly 40 years older than her. He had cattle, land, and money. For Mariya’s father, it was an opportunity too good to resist.
When Mariya heard, her heart stopped. Marriage? To a man older than her father? She ran outside, tears streaming down her face, and looked up at the night sky.
“God,” she whispered, “don’t let them take my dreams away. I want to learn, I want to live. Please.”
But prayers do not always change traditions.
The wedding was rushed. One day she was a student, laughing with her friends over arithmetic mistakes, and the next she was wrapped in fine cloth, her arms painted with henna, her face veiled. The drumming and singing around her felt like a funeral to her spirit. Her friends cried quietly in a corner, helpless.
The night she was taken to Alhaji Musa’s house, Mariya felt her childhood being buried. She was no longer Mariya the dreamer. She was now “Hajiya Musa” — wife to a man who never cared about the little girl behind the veil.
Life with Alhaji Musa was suffocating.
She woke before dawn to cook, clean, and serve. When he touched her, she felt cold and hollow inside. When he forbade her from visiting the school, she broke down in silent sobs. Sometimes, she would sneak to the back of the compound, draw letters on the ground with a stick, and whisper the multiplication table to herself so she wouldn’t forget.
Her body was too young for childbirth, but within a year, she was pregnant. The labor was long, painful, and left her with tears in her body that never healed properly. She survived, but barely. The baby cried in her arms, while she lay broken and bleeding, feeling like her life had ended at 15.
The villagers called her lucky “At least she has a husband, at least she has a child.” But Mariya knew she was trapped.
Years passed, and her dreams turned into silent screams. Yet, deep inside, a fire refused to die. She refused to let her daughter, little Zarah, inherit the same cage.
When Zarah turned five, Mariya began teaching her secretly. She taught her letters using charcoal on broken pieces of cardboard. She sang her the alphabet as lullabies. She told her stories of women who could read, write, and stand tall.
One night, as Zarah slept peacefully beside her, Mariya looked up at the stars again.
“If my wings were cut,” she whispered, “I’ll make sure hers are strong enough to fly.”
Her determination grew stronger each day. She sold vegetables in the market, hiding small savings in a calabash buried under her bed. She begged the schoolteacher in the village:
“Take my daughter. Even if I can’t, let her learn.”
At first, the teacher hesitated Alhaji Musa would be furious. But Mariya’s eyes held a desperation that could move mountains. He agreed.
When Alhaji Musa finally discovered that Zarah was attending school, he was enraged. He shouted, he threatened, but Mariya stood firm for the first time in her life.
“If you stop her,” she said with tears streaming down her face, “you will bury both of us alive. Let her live my dream.”
Surprisingly, he relented. Maybe it was her courage, or maybe he was simply tired. Whatever the reason, Zarah continued school.
And Mariya, though broken, smiled again. She smiled because her story would not end in silence. She smiled because she had given her daughter the gift she had been denied.
Years later, Zarah stood tall, dressed in her graduation gown, holding her certificate high. The crowd cheered, but Mariya’s tears flowed silently.
She had not just raised a daughter. She had raised a dream.
That night, under the same stars she had spoken to as a girl, Mariya whispered once more:
“You heard me. Even if it wasn’t through me, you answered me through her.”
