ANEESAH by Sobur Olalekan

ANEESAH by Sobur Olalekan

by | Dec 17, 2018 | CONTESTS, FLASH FICTION, SHORT STORIES

ANEESAH

by Sobur Olalekan

Aneesah – Second Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Flash Fiction Category)

When I had my first daughter, I saw Aneesah in my sleep for seven days.

Sometimes she was a child of six or seven, fashionably dressed in a pink gown that stopped at her knees and gave way to a pair of black leggings.  For her wrists, there were always a plastic bracelet and a pink watch. In the last image of her that’s left in my memory of her childhood, of our childhood together, she wore that same gown, she wore the watch and the bracelet. I remember. It was at an international airport and only a pair of toy glasses that made me laugh so hard at her were missing in the dreams. Sometimes she appeared as an adult, as the beautiful adult I had only seen on Facebook. And because she always stood in total silence, her sad brown eyes staring at me with an unblinking stare while her eyebrows slowly reddened until the they became like a lump of solid blood, both of her appearances were equally scary.

Both of her appearances – as a child and as a beautiful grown lady – made me break out in sweat and on waking up, drained of all energy. Both of them made my fingers tremble so fast I had to muster all the energy left in me, ball them into a fist, sob uncontrollably into the pillow, and wait for my late father’s voice saying “The greatest sin in this world is the theft of all things that cannot be returned. A man’s life, his honor. Anything that cannot be returned.”  

I stole things that cannot be returned. Her name was Aneesah. I was nine, she was four. Then, ten and she was five. Then I was eleven and she was standing with me, her mum and my parents at the departure longue of an airport, holding her mum’s hand – my aunt – while she laughed and said to me “Baba Aneesah. Aneesah doesn’t want to leave you. Thanks for being a good cousin to her. I hope we can always visit Nigeria. We’ll miss you.”  

The therapist watched me as I sobbed into my hands and choked on my words. She waited patiently through the silences that came between my words, silences cold and hollow, dense with a special kind of guilt, of shame. Silence, icy cold and heavy against my chest, in my lungs, on my tongue. Silence like a cloud filled with rain that never fell. Sometimes, the psychiatrist asked a question or two, carefully, and I had to ask myself in my own words, to feel the trembling of my voice as I scavenged tiny moments from my memories to find answers.

When I learnt that what I was doing was wrong? When did this guilt start?  Had I seen her in a dream before I had my daughter? I didn’t know it was wrong, or didn’t have time or a reason to think about it until the guilt started, until I saw her again ten years after she left. I saw her on Facebook, and by the time I saw the third picture, I couldn’t look any further. In the following days, the shame washed over me like some warm sticky liquid – it still does. Some days, I can feel the guilt rising from me, like steam, and forming a cloud around me. A cloud I can never find my way through. This is the first time I would see her in a dream.

Sometimes she nodded – the therapist – said I didn’t deserve the shame, I didn’t deserve the guilt tormenting me, I was only a child, but I was sure she didn’t believe herself. That was only what therapists are supposed to say. I thought about all the sexual abuse victims who would have sat on the seat I was occupying and now, here was the kind of human who caused their suffering. I searched behind her glasses and I thought I saw hatred, disgust. I think I saw what I expected to see. She finished “You’ve been this way for five years. I do not think you can possibly forget this part of your childhood anymore. This would take a lot of courage, but I think, at this point, that you need to see her and talk to her. It could help you. It is evident you can’t forget.”
I do not want to forget.

 

 

I saw Aneesah for three days after I saw the therapist. And in those three days, after I had woken up and finished sobbing silently into the pillow, I remembered the therapist’s words and planned my escape. I would write a book. I didn’t know about what, or how I would, but it would be for children. For children who would not have known what abuse was until they had their daughters, until they had their guilt, had their own dreams like mine. Then I would call Aneesah. I would tell her I needed to talk. I would still my body for whatever came after then.

On the eighth day, I held my daughter and brought her to my chest, sobbed silently into her shawl and gave her my cousin’s name. I called her Aneesah, and repeated my final words to the psychiatrist: I do not want to forget.

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY by Angel Nwobodo

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY by Angel Nwobodo

by | Dec 17, 2018 | CONTESTS, POEMS

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY

by Angel Nwobodo

Girls like you have no history – Second Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

i
Women like us carry shame in our names – mother.

ii
Your mother shows you pictures of her – the honey-gold beauty that is her skin, the thick docility tucked in her small body and your Father’s gaze lost in the fiery brown pits that are her eyes. You trace the line where their hands fold into each other, their bodies enclosed in a familiarity that confuses you, bewilders you. Your Father whispers something in her ear and she lets out a shy, mechanic laughter, something that rings in your ears later because you keep comparing it with the unrestrained summer that is your mother’s. Your mother sticks a knife where her mouth opens and you know she is carving a home for silence.

 

You see the next picture as you head to her shop at the mall, the one Father pays for each month with a cheque addressed to the manager, the one she pays for with his cooked meals and his starched suits and her wild-summer laughter behind closed doors. You see them with little moving pictures of themselves, three little boys with her honey-gold skin and her fiery brown eyes and your mother looks at you with regret because the image stuck to your body has no claim of her, you are all your Father.
This is the new woman in our lives, Ada. This is the solid proof of my shame.
Her voice is a deep shade of sorrow and you realize she has lost this war even before it started.

iii
You will learn that girls with no homes tucked beneath their skin are like birds who never learnt to weave nests. You will learn it from your Father and you will learn it from your mother. You will remember this on days you crave for the laughter in your father’s voice and find nothing but empty memories.

 

You will learn that the truth changes nothing- each day your mother will appear with his cooked meals and his starched suits and a smile on her face like old paint peeling from walls because any fire can be quenched by the silence of a man’s face.

You will learn that you can surrender your consciousness for the taste of a man’s mouth, for the feeling that loving gives you, like your mother did.

You will realize that girls like you were not made to find love, that they are like ghosts, looking for love and for names and for histories in strange faces just to come to life. That your mother was one of these girls. That like you, she has no claim over your Father. That like you, she was only meant to fit her body in small spaces of light to get rid of her own darkness.

You will realize then, with grief so palpable your chest splits in two, you are the echo of your mother’s shame.

GIRLS LIKE YOU HAVE NO HISTORY

by Angel Nwobodo | POEMS

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN by Abu Bakr Sadiq

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN by Abu Bakr Sadiq

by | Dec 17, 2018 | CONTESTS, POEMS

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN

by Abu Bakr Sadiq

She forgets she’s a woman – First Runner-up of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

I’ve watched her body grow in leaps
Breaking the boundaries of sins unseen
Where women are forbidden to dream
Of stretching the cries on their hands to
She forgets the songs carved into her body
Hates to be reminded of the broken choruses
Her tongue had drawn her mind to death
Trying to keep to memory

She forgets she’s from a land of ashes
Where women are unfinished novellas
Written without titles
By sages who only spoke in silence

 

Some days, she unfolds into a song
Empties the gray haired lyrics
Bottled deep in her throat
On the circled edges of my heart
Until her voice is the only tune in my ribcage

She forgets the names tied to her neck
Answers to every noun too strong for vessels like her
Weak; she forgets her shadows in the kitchen
Allows her body to freely entwine
With the frozen smokes treading the skies

 

Some days, I want to envy her
But envy is not a song for men like me
The boys who taught me how to be a man
Said men are rap songs

With sounds of gunshots of their hooks
And lyrics jiggered by the rhythm of their messages
Who forget everything their bodies
Were never meant to be, and go chasing after
Women who’ve forgotten they are women

 

Some days, she cries her body to sleep
And calls it an act of bravery at dawn
Says that’s how women become men
Without asking who took the who

 

Out of the who whom their womanhood
Was ought to be defined by
A lot times, that’s how she forgets she’s a woman

SHE FORGETS SHE’S A WOMAN

by Abu Bakr Sadiq | POEMS

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN by CJ Onyedikachi

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN by CJ Onyedikachi

by | Dec 17, 2018 | CONTESTS, POEMS

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN

by CJ Onyedikachi

My Father Hew Out Himself on My Skin – Winner of the 2018 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

& my body like the blue bed—called a man
to existence. My father’s mouth’s the size
of a Song thrush—I linger for his morning rhapsody.
The third time, in a year, he marks my body.
& he says these spots are love. A father’s
way of burning the little leech.
I wear his brooch of forms while I grow like a weed on a fence.
He says, sometimes, I am as mild as the sea
& haunting as Chucky. I relax
and days after it falls out like a nail unstable.
My father is a chap with grass blessing his
bed of pink flesh. He buys his seeds with naira notes
given. He blisters the nipples of
a female—not mother’s—& cast a joke about it like
a clown on a pearly stage.
He pours gin on a skull; he prays I find myself in a net.
He prays to his roots, but I’m clay in feet.
too much eyes on a fem boy.
It feels like night in my body. My father dies
in one of our conversations.
He’s like a child with fairy gifts. I turn out
like Blacks on a ship sailing to America.
My father builds dreams on a rainforest
like drought it dries.

 

 

MY FATHER HEW OUT HIMSELF ON MY SKIN

by CJ Onyedikachi | POEMS

“Anyone who is able to weave a good story is my hero any day” – Interview with Olakunle Ologunro

“Anyone who is able to weave a good story is my hero any day” – Interview with Olakunle Ologunro

by | Dec 17, 2018 | THE TABLE TALK

TABLE TALK

“Anyone who is able to weave a good story is my hero any day” – Interview with Olakunle Ologunro

As the Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest enters its second year, we had an engaging chat with the winner of the maiden edition in the flash fiction category, Olakunle Ologunro. His short story ‘Pampers’ was published in the Queer Africa 2 anthology, and republished in Queer Africa: Selected Stories, his flash fiction ‘And They Were Laughing’ was published in LitroUK.
In this interview, Ologunro discussed his passion for writing and the struggles he has encountered on his journey to find his voice in the literary world. Enjoy.

 

KD: Who is Olakunle Ologunro? Let’s meet you!
 
Ologunro: Hello! I am Olakunle Ologunro, a final year student of English in the University of Ilorin, Nigeria.

Olakunle Ologunro

Winner of the 2017 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Content (Flash Fiction Category)

KD: When did you first discover your passion for writing, what inspired you?

Ologunro: I honestly don’t know. I read quite a number of books while I was growing up, and because reading and writing go hand in hand, it is possible that my writing must have picked up from there.

KD: What are some of the challenges you face as a writer? What steps do you take to overcome them?

Ologunro: Oh, the general ones: Self-doubt and acute self-criticism; moments of feeling like I’m not made for this writing thing; moments of ‘Why the heck is this story not surrendering itself to be written?’
How I overcome it: I sleep. Or I go visit a friend. Or I check my WhatsApp and Facebook. Or I count my blessings. Anything, I just don’t remain at the table mulling over my problems. I leave them to cool and them come back to attack them or be attacked (again) by them.

KD: Who are some of the literary figures that inspire you/you look up to?

Ologunro: I’m not specific/limited. I draw inspiration from a number of sources that would be too numerous to list. But to put it simply, anyone who is able to weave a good story is my hero any day. I am not bothered if that person has never published a book, or if s/he is a multiple award-winning author.

 

” But to put it simply, anyone who is able to weave a good story is my hero any day. I am not bothered if that person has never published a book, or if s/he is a multiple award-winning author.“

KD: In 2017, you won first prize in the flash fiction category of Kreative Diadem’s annual writing contest. How did you feel about winning?

Ologunro: Surprised. Then excited. And then panicky.

KD: Let us get down to your flash fiction. What was the inspiration behind Imole? Was there a specific message you intended to pass along to the reader?

Ologunro: Would you believe me if I said that the idea for ‘Imole‘ came to me from nowhere? I can’t remember what I was doing then, but the line, “Your mother, belle of the ball, wanter of things beyond her capacity,” came to me. I think I wrote it down so I would not forget, or maybe I did not. The rest of the story followed that line of thought. The writing happened speedily, but the editing was not as speedy.

And no, I wasn’t interested in passing a message. At least that was not my foremost intention. I understand that people who read it might take away a lesson or two, but while I was writing it, all that mattered was telling a story that seemed ripe enough to be told.

KD: Apart from winning first prize in the flash fiction contest last year, what are some of your other achievements? (Awards, nominations, published works, etc.)

Ologunro: I placed second in a writing contest by Naija Stories, was a finalist for the Awele Creative Trust Award, was shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak award anthology, longlisted for the inaugural AMAB-Home of Books Foundation Prize. My short story ‘Pampers’ was published in the Queer Africa 2 anthology, and republished in Queer Africa: Selected Stories, my flash fiction ‘And They Were Laughing’ was published in LitroUK, and my recent short story ‘A Nonrequired Guide to Writing Love Stories’ appears on Brittle Paper.

KD: Are you currently working on any books at the moment?

Ologunro: No, I am not. I wish I was, though.

KD: What advice would you give to aspiring writers like yourself, especially in Nigeria?

Ologunro: “When it gets too tough to go on, remind yourself that if you can survive in Nigeria, a thing like writing is too small to break you.”
Just kidding. I cannot think of a good advice presently, but I’d suggest listening to Hall of Fame by will.i.am and The Script. The song found me years ago, and every line of it could easily be a watchword.

 

KD: What do you think about Kreative Diadem?

Ologunro: I think that they are doing a good job. To find a space (online or physical) invested in the growth and support of young writers and talents, is a great means of encouragement, something that we all need in large doses.

KD: Any final words?

Ologunro: Thank you so much for this chat. Thank you for thinking I have something important to say, something worth reading, and for reaching out. I hope we get to do this again.

 

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