Present day After three days of careful deliberations, I went to watch Nicolas play football on Wednesday evening. The sun had gone down by the time I arrived in a taxi at the venue. Bright white halogen lamps illuminated the five-a-side pitch. The small stadium could take about five hundred people, but only three of us were there watching the match. The other two spectators, both male, sat several seats away, but close enough that I could hear them commenting on the game.  Behind us, Alfred Rewane Road was busy with rush hour traffic—okadas honked rudely, cars halted with sudden…

Every time I order a book and finally hold it in my hands, my excitement rivals that of a child unwrapping a long-awaited present. I love the smell of new books. Whenever I buy a new book, my first instinct is to bring it close to my nose. The aroma evokes joyful memories from my childhood.During my early teenage years, one of my favourite pastimes was visiting Abiola Bookshop in Yaba on my way home from school. I knew I had to be exceptionally well-behaved when I was in there because it was the only bookstore I knew with air…

Every time I order a book and finally hold it in my hands, my excitement rivals that of a child unwrapping a long-awaited present. I love the smell of new books. Whenever I buy a new book, my first instinct is to bring it close to my nose. The aroma evokes joyful memories from my childhood. During my early teenage years, one of my favourite pastimes was visiting Abiola Bookshop in Yaba on my way home from school. I knew I had to be exceptionally well-behaved when I was in there because it was the only bookstore I knew with…

 Before I was thirteen, I was content with being a reader. After this period, I began expressing grief through poetry, because I didn’t think I had the voice to sing out my pain. But poetry couldn’t contain everything I had to say, nor could the short stories I began to write after I met the owner of True Love Magazine.Long before I started writing Tearlessness, I knew I would write that story. I carried around notepads with plot ideas and themes I wanted to explore. Around 2004, I finally embarked on the odyssey and in 2007, I was priviledged to…

My hesitance to take the vaccine in the beginning wasn’t because I was an anti-vaxxer. It was simply because I was not ready. My husband received his first covid jab in April 2021. The first few days, he had a sore arm, followed by headaches and fatigue. As for me, having gone through four days of extreme uterine contraction pain induced by stillbirth labour and Bakri balloon – which had me begging for death weeks before – I was not ready for any type of pain, as little as it may be. I knew however that I would take it…

The acknowledgement of race to improve lives and livelihood in France’s Black communities.In France, race is taboo and immigration a hot potato. These are two of the first lessons I learnt upon relocating back to the country in 2012. The French Republic is officially “color blind” because the law bans the collection of data on race, ethnicity and religion, asserting the idea that all citizens are equal and free from these distinctions. This practice dates back to the Holocaust, when the Vichy regime singled out Jews for deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Today, the reality is that France’s color-blind policy…