Light Between Duas

18/07/2026

Its been a while

THE GIRL WHO WORE HIJAB TO UNIEKO (BOOK 2)

CHAPTER FOUR

Nurse Fatima's Case; The law is supposed to be for people. This is one of them.

The case file arrived in Aisha's email from Justice Suleiman-Kuti on a Wednesday morning with a subject line that was, characteristically, four words: For your second year.

Fatima Yakubu. Thirty-four years old. A registered nurse with twelve years at a federal teaching hospital in Lagos.

Dismissed seven weeks ago after she refused to remove her hijab during clinical rounds, citing a policy the hospital claimed had always existed and which she claimed had never been applied to her in twelve years of employment.

She had filed a wrongful dismissal claim. The hospital's lawyers had responded with three hundred pages of procedural arguments designed to ensure the case never reached a hearing on its merits.

She was represented by a legal aid clinic whose lead solicitor was competent but overworked and had not, the Justice noted in a handwritten margin comment, identified the strongest argument available to him.

The Justice's instruction was the same as for the Ramatu case: read the file. Come to the next session with three arguments the lawyer should be making but isn't.

Aisha read the file in one sitting, three hours in the library on a Wednesday evening.

Then she read it again. Then she put it down and stared at the wall for four minutes.

Nurse Fatima had twelve years of performance reviews, every one of them excellent. She had a photograph, included in the file, from a hospital award ceremony two years ago, dressed in full clinical uniform, hijab and all, shaking hands with the hospital director. The director was smiling. The policy that had apparently always existed had not, it seemed, existed at that moment.

This was not just a wrongful dismissal case. This was a case where the evidence was sitting in the hospital's own records, and no one had looked carefully enough to find it.

"They buried it in plain sight," she told Abdullahi. "The photograph is in the file they submitted themselves. Their own lawyers included it and didn't realise what it proved."

"What does it prove?"

"That the policy was either not applied or not enforced for twelve years. Which means it cannot now be applied retroactively as the basis for dismissal. You cannot selectively enforce a policy and then claim it was always a firm rule."

He looked at her. "That's the case."

"That's argument one. There are two more."

At their next session the Justice reviewed all three arguments. She was quiet for a long time.

"The photograph argument is airtight. The legal aid solicitor missed it because he was looking at the policy documents and not the exhibits."

"Yes, ma."

"I am going to do something unusual," the Justice said.

Aisha waited.

"I am going to give these arguments to the solicitor. With your permission. I will tell him they came from a research associate. Your name will not appear."

"Why?"

"Because Nurse Fatima needs these arguments in court, not in a mentorship exercise. And because you are not yet qualified to file them yourself. But the work is yours and I will not take credit for it."

Aisha thought about the prayer spaces. Her name not in the document. The students who prayed there never knowing who drafted it.

"Yes," she said. "Give him the arguments. What matters is that Nurse Fatima keeps her job."

Day twenty-seven, second year.
Nurse Fatima has been without a job for seven weeks. She has three children. The hospital thought they could bury the evidence in their own file submission and no one would look. I looked.

The Justice is giving my arguments to the solicitor. My name will not appear. That is fine. It has always been fine. The work is what matters.

I think about Nurse Fatima choosing to wear the hijab to work for twelve years without incident and I think: that is courage of a different kind. Daily. Unwitnessed. Twelve years of a small decision that was also a large one.

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A story by D-Pen Queen

18/07/2026

THE GIRL WHO WORE HIJAB TO UNIEKO (BOOK 2)

CHAPTER FOUR

Nurse Fatima's Case; The law is supposed to be for people. This is one of them.

The case file arrived in Aisha's email from Justice Suleiman-Kuti on a Wednesday morning with a subject line that was, characteristically, four words: For your second year.

Fatima Yakubu. Thirty-four years old. A registered nurse with twelve years at a federal teaching hospital in Lagos.

Dismissed seven weeks ago after she refused to remove her hijab during clinical rounds, citing a policy the hospital claimed had always existed and which she claimed had never been applied to her in twelve years of employment.

She had filed a wrongful dismissal claim. The hospital's lawyers had responded with three hundred pages of procedural arguments designed to ensure the case never reached a hearing on its merits.

She was represented by a legal aid clinic whose lead solicitor was competent but overworked and had not, the Justice noted in a handwritten margin comment, identified the strongest argument available to him.

The Justice's instruction was the same as for the Ramatu case: read the file. Come to the next session with three arguments the lawyer should be making but isn't.

Aisha read the file in one sitting, three hours in the library on a Wednesday evening.

Then she read it again. Then she put it down and stared at the wall for four minutes.

Nurse Fatima had twelve years of performance reviews, every one of them excellent. She had a photograph, included in the file, from a hospital award ceremony two years ago, dressed in full clinical uniform, hijab and all, shaking hands with the hospital director. The director was smiling. The policy that had apparently always existed had not, it seemed, existed at that moment.

This was not just a wrongful dismissal case. This was a case where the evidence was sitting in the hospital's own records, and no one had looked carefully enough to find it.

"They buried it in plain sight," she told Abdullahi. "The photograph is in the file they submitted themselves. Their own lawyers included it and didn't realise what it proved."

"What does it prove?"

"That the policy was either not applied or not enforced for twelve years. Which means it cannot now be applied retroactively as the basis for dismissal. You cannot selectively enforce a policy and then claim it was always a firm rule."

He looked at her. "That's the case."

"That's argument one. There are two more."

At their next session the Justice reviewed all three arguments. She was quiet for a long time.

"The photograph argument is airtight. The legal aid solicitor missed it because he was looking at the policy documents and not the exhibits."

"Yes, ma."

"I am going to do something unusual," the Justice said.

Aisha waited.

"I am going to give these arguments to the solicitor. With your permission. I will tell him they came from a research associate. Your name will not appear."

"Why?"

"Because Nurse Fatima needs these arguments in court, not in a mentorship exercise. And because you are not yet qualified to file them yourself. But the work is yours and I will not take credit for it."

Aisha thought about the prayer spaces. Her name not in the document. The students who prayed there never knowing who drafted it.

"Yes," she said. "Give him the arguments. What matters is that Nurse Fatima keeps her job."

Day twenty-seven, second year.
Nurse Fatima has been without a job for seven weeks. She has three children. The hospital thought they could bury the evidence in their own file submission and no one would look. I looked.

The Justice is giving my arguments to the solicitor. My name will not appear. That is fine. It has always been fine. The work is what matters.

I think about Nurse Fatima choosing to wear the hijab to work for twelve years without incident and I think: that is courage of a different kind. Daily. Unwitnessed. Twelve years of a small decision that was also a large one.

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A story by D-Pen Queen

23/06/2026

CHAPTER THREE; Barrister Obi's Message

THE GIRL WHO ARGUED BEFORE THE COURT (Book Two of The UniEko Series)

The message arrived on a Friday at eleven-forty a.m., to her faculty email, which she checked every morning and sometimes forgot by afternoon. The subject line was simply: Introduction.

She read it standing in the corridor outside the library, leaning against the wall with her phone, the way she did when something required her full attention and she didn't trust herself to walk and think at the same time.

Dear Miss Bello-Lawal, My name is Chukwuemeka Obi. I am a barrister in Lagos and I argued the government's position in the Ramatu appeal that you helped prepare.

I lost. I am writing because Justice Suleiman-Kuti, with whom I have a longstanding professional relationship, has indicated that you are someone whose development the Nigerian bar should take an interest in.

I agree with her assessment, based on what I observed of your work. I am not making an offer at this time — you have two years remaining and that is correct.

I am writing to introduce myself so that when the time comes, the introduction has already been made.
Chukwuemeka Obi, SAN.

She read it twice. Then she called Chisom.

"Obi SAN wrote to you?" Chisom said immediately. "Aisha. Aisha. Do you understand who that is?"

"The Justice mentioned him."

"He argued in front of the Supreme Court last year. I covered the story for the student paper. He is — Aisha. He is the kind of lawyer that other lawyers study."

Aisha looked at the email again. The careful phrasing. I am not making an offer at this time. An introduction so that when the time comes, the introduction has already been made.

A man who planned four moves ahead, who invested in relationships before he needed them, who had already decided she was worth the attention of a letter.

"Should I respond?"

"Yes. Today. Professionally. Not too eager, not too cool."

She sat down on the corridor floor — she had a habit of doing this when she needed to write something important, a surface below her, gravity as an anchor — and drafted her response.

Dear Barrister Obi, Thank you for writing. I am honoured by Justice Suleiman-Kuti's recommendation and by your attention. I look forward to being worthy of both when the time comes. Aisha Bello-Lawal.

She sent it before she could revise it into something worse. Then she called the Justice.

"You told him to write to me," Aisha said.

"I told him you existed," the Justice said. "He decided to write to you himself. There is a difference."

"Why now?"

"Because the people who notice you early shape the next twenty years. I want the person who shapes yours to be someone whose standards you will meet."

A pause.

"Will I meet them?"

"You already have," the Justice said. "That is why I told him you existed."

She told Abdullahi at dinner. He listened, then was quiet for a moment in his full, attentive way.

"Obi SAN," he said. "My father knows him."

She looked at him.

"They are not friends," Abdullahi said quickly. "They have crossed in political spaces. My father respects him because Obi cannot be bought. It is the kind of respect one has for someone whose refusal is more valuable than their compliance."

"That is a very specific kind of respect."

"My father is a very specific kind of man."

She thought about this. A senator who respected a lawyer who could not be bought. An introduction arranged by a judge who had spent her career being exactly what she was. A thread connecting people who carried their convictions differently but carried them fully.

"December," she said. "Your father and mine. I think it will be interesting."

Abdullahi smiled — the full one. "That is one word for it."

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A story by D-Pen Queen

22/06/2026

CHAPTER TWO ; EVIDENCE LAW

THE GIRL WHO ARGUED BEFORE THE COURT (Book Two of The UniEko Series)

Dr. Adaeze Salami walked into the Evidence Law lecture on Tuesday morning at exactly eight a.m. She placed nothing on the podium. She carried no folder.

She stood at the front of the room and looked at them all for a long, comfortable moment as if she had all the time available and intended to use exactly as much of it as the situation required.

She was sixty, small, with close-cropped natural hair and reading glasses pushed up on her forehead like a second pair of eyes watching the ceiling.

"Evidence Law is the most human branch of the law. Contract law is about obligations. Constitutional law is about power.

Evidence law is about truth about what we can know, what we can prove, and the terrifying distance between those two things."

She paused.

"Most of you will spend your careers arguing about what is true. Very few of you will stop to ask whether the law's definition of truth corresponds to any truth that exists in the actual world.

The ones who stop to ask that question — those are the lawyers who change things."

She looked directly at Aisha.

Not a pause this time. A decision. A look that said: I know who you are. I have been waiting to see what you do next.

Aisha held it. Then she picked up her pen and began to write. Abdullahi, beside her, leaned slightly forward.

"She's different," he murmured.

"Pay attention," Aisha said.

Dr. Salami's first assignment arrived the following week. A landmark evidence case — Bello v. State, 1991 — in which a confession obtained under disputed circumstances had been admitted as evidence, and the defendant convicted.

The Supreme Court had upheld the conviction three to two. The two dissenting judges had written opinions that were now, thirty years later, considered among the finest legal reasoning in Nigerian jurisprudence.

The assignment: argue the majority position. Defend the admission of the confession. Build the case that the court was right.

Aisha read the case file twice. Then read the dissent. The dissent was devastating — precise, human, and correct. She was going to have to argue against it.

"Again," Abdullahi said, when she told him. "They keep making you argue the wrong side."

"There is no wrong side," Aisha said. "There is only the weak argument and the strong argument. My job is to make the weak one as strong as it can be. That's what the law is."

He looked at her. "You believe that."

"I have to believe it. Otherwise what am I building?"

She spent four evenings on the argument. She found, buried in the majority judgment, a principle that had not been developed — the procedural good faith doctrine, barely sketched by the majority judge, ignored by subsequent courts.

She built her argument around it. Not defending the outcome. Defending the reasoning that, if properly developed, could produce better outcomes.

When she presented it, Dr. Salami listened without expression.

Then:

"You found the procedural good faith strand."
"Yes, ma."
"No one in twenty years of teaching this case has found that strand."

A silence.

"Is that good?" Aisha asked.

Dr. Salami looked at her with the expression of someone who had just confirmed something they had suspected for a while.

"Come and see me after class on Thursday," she said. "Bring your notes."

Day fourteen, second year.

Dr. Salami told me to come to her office. I think this is good. I am not entirely sure. She has an expression that is impossible to read.

Abdullahi asked if I actually believe what I said about weak arguments. I said yes. I meant it. The law only works if both sides are argued well. Justice is not served by one side collapsing.

My father would say something about Rumi here. I will spare myself.

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20/06/2026

SHE cAME BACK KNOWING WHO SHE WAS. NOW SHE HAD TO PROVE WHAT SHE COULD DO.

CHAPTER ONE

THE GIRL WHO ARGUED BEFORE THE COURT (Book Two of The UniEko Series)

Second Year; She knows which gate to take now. Everything else is new.

The first thing Aisha noticed about second year was that the third row was already taken.

Not by strangers — by her. By the person she had become over the summer, the one who had gone home to Ilorin and returned to Lagos three weeks later with the same bag, the same midnight-blue hijab, and something in the set of her shoulders that had not been there before.

The third row had not changed. She had. And when you change, even familiar places require reintroduction.

She sat down anyway.

The second thing she noticed was that people looked at her differently.

Not unpleasantly — mostly not. But consistently. The look that said: I know who you are.

The look that in first year had been a pause, a categorisation, a half-second of a professor deciding what to make of her.

Now it was recognition. Which was, she was learning, its own kind of complicated.

A girl she had never spoken to stopped her outside the faculty building on the first Monday.

"You're the one who wrote the statement."

"I wrote several things last year," Aisha said carefully.

"The one about Professor Bello. My older sister showed it to me before I came here. She said: if you get into law school, look for this person."

Aisha looked at her. First year student. Small, serious, hijab pinned carefully at the jaw — the way it had been on the girl in the assembly hall in Ilorin, the way Aisha suspected she herself had pinned hers on day one.

"What's your name?" Aisha asked.

"Ruqayyah."

"From?"

"Kano."

The room in Aisha's chest rearranged itself quietly.

"Sit in the third row," she said. "Not too close to seem eager, not too far to seem lost. Pull out your notepad on day one. And—"

"And?"

"Don't let anyone decide who you are before you've spoken."

Ruqayyah looked at her for a moment. Then she nodded — not the nodding of someone receiving advice but of someone receiving confirmation of something they had already decided.

Aisha recognised that nod. She had given it herself once, to a young man outside a lecture hall who had understood what first time anywhere meant.

Abdullahi was waiting on their bench.

He stood when she came across the courtyard — a small, unremarkable thing. But she had catalogued it, along with everything else about him, filing it carefully under: the specific ways this person is good.

"Second year," he said.

"Second year," she agreed.

They looked at each other. The waterfront conversation had happened. The yes to the direction had been said.

In the weeks since, they had spoken on the phone — her in Ilorin, him in Kaduna — long calls that moved between law and family and the things you only say to someone you have decided to trust.

Nothing had been formalised. Everything had been understood.

"My father spoke to an intermediary," Abdullahi said. "He wants to arrange a visit. Both families. Ilorin. He suggested December, after your results."

She processed this. Senator Mahmoud, who had once told his son to distance himself from a controversy, was now arranging a family visit.

The distance between those two positions was not small. She had been watching it close, slowly, over months.

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him I would ask you first."

"Tell him December is acceptable. Tell him also—"

"Yes?"

"Tell him my father will have questions. And my father is a secondary school principal who quotes Rumi at dinner and is not in the least impressed by political titles."

Abdullahi's face did the thing she loved — the full unguarded joy, arriving before he could arrange it.

"My father will find that either deeply challenging or deeply refreshing."

"Either is fine," Aisha said. "Both are honest."

Justice Suleiman-Kuti's email arrived that evening.

The Ramatu case was decided in our favour at appeal. You know this.

What you do not know is that the lead counsel for the respondent — the government — has been watching your work. His name is Barrister Chukwuemeka Obi.

He is one of the finest commercial litigators in Lagos and he has a habit of recruiting exceptional students before anyone else identifies them.
He has asked about you.

I have told him you are not yet available. This is true — you have two more years of study. But I want you to know he exists.

Also: the second year curriculum includes Evidence Law under Dr. Salami. He is not as difficult as Bello. He is more difficult than Bello. Prepare accordingly.
A.

Aisha opened her legal notepad and wrote:

Barrister Chukwuemeka Obi. Note. Watch.
Evidence Law. Dr. Salami. Prepare accordingly.
December. Both families. Ilorin.
Day one, second year. Still here.

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A story by D-Pen Queen

12/06/2026

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE GIRL WHO WORE HIJAB TO UNIEKO

The Last Page of the Notepad: She fills it on the last night before second year begins.

She arrived back at UniEko on Sunday.

The danfo dropped her at the right gate this time.

She noticed this — the small, specific difference between the girl who had arrived at the wrong gate in August and the one who knew, now, without thinking, which bus to take and where it stopped and how to walk from the gate to Moremi Hall with her bag balanced correctly and her eyes forward.

Lagos greeted her the way it greeted everyone — without ceremony, without apology, with the full noise and insistence of a city that did not adjust itself for arrivals or departures. She had learned to love it, or at least to respect it, in the way you respect a difficult person who is also essential.

Chisom was already in the room when she arrived. Better bed, window side, makeup on the shared desk in the same arrangement.

But she stood up when Aisha walked in. And she crossed the room. And she hugged her quickly, without preamble, the kind of hug that means: you are one of my people now, and people like us don't say it outright, we just demonstrate it.

"How's your mother?" Aisha asked.

"Better. Working on it. How's Ilorin?"

"Exactly the same."

"Good. Some things should be."

Abdullahi was in the courtyard at six in the evening, sitting on their bench. He had arrived that morning, he said, and had spent the day settling in and thinking.

"Thinking about what?"

"About the year. About what comes next. About—" he paused. "My father called yesterday. He said he has been reading about a legal case. A land rights case in Kaduna displaced farmers, a state government acquisition. He said: I thought you might want to know about it. For later."

She looked at him. "He's giving you a case."

"In his way. Without saying that's what he's doing."

"That's — Abdullahi, that's his way of saying he sees you."

He was quiet for a moment. She watched it move through him the long accumulated weight of wanting to be seen by his father, and the specific unexpected weight of receiving it.

"I know," he said. "I think that's why I needed to sit here for a while before you came."

They sat on the bench as the sun went down over the faculty building and Lagos transitioned from its daytime register to its evening one, the noise changing pitch without reducing in volume, the sky going through the sequence of colours that Aisha had learned to watch for and still found, every time, better than she had remembered.

The Maghrib adhan rose from somewhere across campus.

They listened to it together.

Afterward he looked at her.

"My father would like to meet you properly," he said. "Not the way he met you in the administrative building. A proper visit. With your family present."

She was very still.

"My mother wants to meet you too," he said. "Very much. She has — she has seen the video approximately thirty-seven times."

Aisha laughed — the waterlogged kind. Then stopped.

"I will speak to my parents," she said. "Insha'Allah."

"Insha'Allah," he said.

They stayed on the bench until the last light was gone.

That night, before sleeping, she opened her notepad.

She had bought this notepad on the second day of orientation, from the small shop across from the faculty building. It was the fourth one she had filled this year. This was the last page.

She looked at the blank space.

She thought about everything the year had held. The danfo and the wrong gate and the Dean's speech and Abdullahi's kufi in his back pocket. Professor Bello's pause and the anger and the argument and the A. The video. The forty thousand strangers. The Justice's email signed with a single letter. The Senator's handshake. The statement. The prayer spaces. The moot court. The scholarship. The waterfront. The quiet conversation that had changed the direction of something.

She thought about the girl in the secondary school assembly hall — small, serious-faced, hijab pinned carefully at the jaw — who had asked: were you ever afraid?

She thought about the girl in Kano, watching a grainy phone video, who would be in law school in five years and would remember that it was possible.

She thought about her mother ironing the hijab at five in the morning and crying quietly so Aisha wouldn't hear.

She thought about her father at the motor park in his good agbada, holding her for a long time, saying nothing, because the holding was the thing.

She picked up her pen. She wrote on the last page:

Day two hundred and twenty-four. First year complete.

I came to this campus afraid and alone and carrying one bag and a promise.

I leave first year with a scholarship, a mentor, a best friend, a prayer space I helped build, a legal argument I am proud of, and a direction that feels — for the first time in my life — like something I chose rather than something I was carried toward.

The people who wanted to use me are still here. The people who wanted to dismiss me are still here. The noise is still here. Lagos is still here.

I am also still here.

More here than I have ever been.

Ya Allah — thank you for the difficulty. Thank you for the patience required by the difficulty. Thank you for the people You sent inside the difficulty.

Thank you for the law, which builds remedies.

Thank you for the faith, which builds the person who uses the law.

Second year: bismillah.

She closed the notepad.

Outside, Lagos continued — always continued — its enormous, specific, indifferent, miraculous noise.

Inside Room 14B, Moremi Hall, Aisha Bello-Lawal turned off the light and lay in the dark, and breathed, and was exactly and entirely herself.

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A story by D-Pen Queen

30/05/2026

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE GIRL WHO WORE HIJAB TO UNIEKO

Going Home; Ilorin is always the same. Aisha is never the same twice.

She left Lagos on a Friday morning.

The danfo from Yaba to Jibowu was late. The Jibowu bus park was its usual chaos, all noise and urgency and the specific democracy of public transport, where everyone's destination was equally pressing and no one's was more important than anyone else's.

She found a seat by the window. Put her bag on her lap. Watched Lagos do what Lagos always did — keep going, keep insisting, keep making noise enough for a thousand stories at once.

She thought, looking out at the city, about the girl who had arrived at the wrong gate nine months ago with an admission letter soft at the corners. She tried to feel the distance between that girl and this one. It was not large in years. In everything else, it was considerable.

Her father was waiting at the Ilorin motor park.

He was wearing his good agbada, which meant he had dressed up, which meant her mother had made him dress up, which meant this was — despite being a routine end-of-year return — being treated as an occasion.

He had brought her youngest brother, who was eleven and had grown two inches since January and greeted her by pointing this out before saying hello.

Her father held her for a long time.

He did not say anything. He did not quote anyone. He just held her, the way he had held her at every significant departure and arrival of her life, as if the holding itself was the thing, not preparation for anything, not a prelude, the thing itself.

"First in year," he said finally, into her hair.

"Alhamdulillah," she said.

"Alhamdulillah," he agreed.

The house smelled of jollof rice and her mother's perfume and the particular smell of a home that has been cleaned for the specific occasion of your return. Every surface had been straightened. There were flowers on the dining table, which was not a usual thing.

Her mother was in the kitchen when Aisha walked in. She turned from the stove. Said nothing. Just looked at her daughter for a moment in the way mothers look when they are reading something that cannot be read from a distance.

Then: "You're thinner."

"Mama—"

"Go wash your hands. Food is ready."

Aisha went to wash her hands. When she came back to the kitchen her mother was ladling rice into a bowl and did not look up.

"Tell me about the boy," her mother said. Still not looking up.

Aisha sat down at the kitchen table.

"His name is Abdullahi. He is from Kaduna. His father is Senator Mahmoud Suleiman."

Her mother set down the ladle. Looked at her.

"Senator Mahmoud."

"Yes."
"The one who was on the news last year about the—"

"Yes. But Abdullahi is not his father. He is his own person."

Her mother was quiet for a moment. Then she picked up the ladle again.

"Is he a good Muslim?"

"Yes."

"Is he kind?"

"Very."

"Does he respect your mind?"

Aisha thought about every conversation they had ever had. About the way he waited when she was thinking. About the way he said her name when she had done something he found extraordinary.

"More than anyone I have met," she said.

Her mother placed the bowl of jollof rice in front of her.

"Eat," she said. "We will discuss the rest with your father."
She spent two weeks at home. She slept. She ate properly. She prayed all five prayers at time, without rushing, without squeezing them into the gaps of a schedule that did not account for them.

She sat with her father in the evenings and they read together — he his newspapers, she her case files, both in the same comfortable silence of two people who love each other and do not need to fill every moment with it.

She went to her old secondary school and spoke to the Form Four and Five students at the request of the Vice Principal, who had seen the video. She wore the midnight-blue hijab. She did not prepare a speech. She answered questions.

One girl, small, serious-faced, hijab pinned carefully at the jaw, raised her hand and asked: "Were you ever afraid?"

Aisha looked at her.

"Yes. I was afraid on orientation day and in the lecture hall and when the video went viral and when I wrote the statement. I was afraid before every exam and before the moot court and when the Justice fell ill. I was afraid almost constantly."

The girl looked at her. "But you still went?"

"Fear is not a stop sign," Aisha said. "It is a signal. It means: pay attention, something matters here. So you pay attention. And then you go."

Day two hundred and ten.
Home. Ilorin always smells the same.
Mama asked about the boy before I had finished washing my hands.
I told a Form Four girl that fear is not a stop sign. I think I needed to say it aloud to believe it fully.
I believe it now.

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A story by D-Pen Queen