Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the nominations for next year’s Pushcart Prize Anthology. This list includes writing published during the 2025 calendar year. Congratulations to the nominees!
Poetry
Jesse Gabriel Gonzalez – “Moon Blues”
Yanis Iqbal – “and how shall i walk when the street sings of fire?”
Short Stories
.Chisaraokwu. – “The Visitor”
Essays/Memoirs
Bright Aboagye – “Do They See You?”
Stone Mims – “A Letter to My Grandfather”
Kimberly Nao – “I, too, am California”
the soil does not shake—
it memorizes.
here, even the stones rehearse their lines
in syllables of smoke.
a man’s words dry in mid-prayer,
still tasting dust from last week’s funeral.
the wind is a radio station now—
it plays a scream remixed into pop beats,
“go back, snake, traitor, rapist, rootless goat,”
the chorus looped with the smell
of sandalwood and burning tires.
a pony rider in the hills
bled into a pine tree,
and the sap does not know
whether to clot or to weep.
he was reciting,
not a creed,
but the names of his daughters.
in the plains,
a woman strings her silence
into a necklace of broken SIM cards,
walks sideways past the temple’s loudspeaker
blaring the anthem of a war
she never enlisted in.
her grocer now sells her rice
as if measuring gunpowder.
every window is a gun barrel,
every child’s name
a reason to evacuate the future.
in Agra, they buried a man
without his name—
only a label:
“retribution.”
it is easier that way,
easier for the press release,
easier for the bullet.
who attacked whom?
the question dies in the first comment thread.
facts are too slow.
truth is throttled by 4G
and dressed in a uniform of pixels—
AI-generated martyrdom,
HD nationalism with export-quality rage.
they uploaded a song
before the blood dried.
it asked us to leave.
leave what?
the land that remembers our ancestors’ coughs,
the wells we named after heartbreak,
the callouses of our dead
still softened in its soil?
He wears his beard like a crosshairs.
his name is a GPS tag.
he walks into a clinic,
and the doctor’s eyes
scan him for nations.
no illness,
only allegiances.
tell me,
how shall i carry my skin
when it is now a declaration?
how to walk into a school
where history has been rewritten
as an eviction notice?
the country
is an anthem sung backwards.
its rivers choke on slogans.
its justice is a bulldozer
that has forgotten how to pause.
and still—
we mourn the dead.
even when mourning itself
is suspect,
surveilled,
licensed.
they ask:
why didn’t you go?
but tell me,
what do you call leaving
when your body itself
is the country’s last remaining witness?
Yanis Iqbal is studying at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of the book Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia (Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2024) and has a forthcoming book on Palestine and anti-imperialist political philosophy with Iskra Books. His poems have been published in outlets such as Radical Art Review, Rabble Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Culture Matters, Live Wire, Apocalypse Confidential, Neologism Poetry Journal, Bitter Melon Review, Cafe Dissensus, Palestine Chronicle, Frontier Weekly, and others. Two of his poems were also selected for inclusion in The Anthology of Contemporary Poetry: Meet the Poets of Today. You can find him on Twitter/X at @yanisiqbal.
When my daughter was in daycare, I wanted to let everyone know about Eid. I bought dates, teamed up with another mom, asked to go to a class and share what Eid was with the class. I read a Bengali folk tale for children from a children’s book. Then, we lit candles, and the smoke alarm went off. It was her third year in daycare — a time when my daughter was falling off the end of the world. In her first year, she was happy. At first, she didn’t know the language, so she would wait the whole day until she saw me, then run towards me and burst into tears.
But the third year, it was the bullying. She wanted to be white. She drew herself white with blonde, straight hair and blue eyes. When a friend bleached his hair white, she kept asking him questions. Another friend and I locked eyes. We both knew what was going on in her mind. At that time, I asked many friends what to do. I asked my classmates who then referred me to other moms who also spoke to me about what children of color face in school at a young age and how to deal with it. So much figuring out, how to fit in, how to make things better for my daughter — a child growing up in America.
“I sacrifice so much for her. Why doesn’t she understand how loved she is?” I said to my husband. “I don’t even brush my hair!”
“Why don’t you brush your hair? Why do you look like that? Maybe if you dressed nicely, she would look up to you.”
In the end, this was the strategy I chose, which seems strange to me now. I’m not the same person. I dressed up in shalwar kamiz with the gold earrings my mother had given me. I also wore a teep on my forehead.
I went to pick up my daughter.
“What’s that on your head?” a child asked, pointing.
“Hush,” the teacher said, as if what I had on my head was something shameful.
I brought teeps for all the girls as gifts. I went to Bangladesh in the summer, and I brought back bangles and little cloth dolls to give away. We watched Hindi movies on a VCR, and I dressed my daughter in gaudy dresses, jewelry, teep, so she would have her own standard of beauty, her own role models, her own cheap, cheesy way of being feminine.
The atmosphere among girls at that age in America is toxic. Girls watch Disney movies and dress and think of themselves as Disney princesses. She didn’t watch TV. She didn’t know anything the other girls were talking about, so they excluded her. But also, the clownish racist exclusion of someone with dark skin and curly hair, and adoration of another girl with white skin seems outlandish to even write about. The teacher said, “There is no racism here.” Of course. So, we watched these movies so my daughter would be able to join in the conversation and fit in. My professor explained that at this age, girls are arranged in hierarchies according to the status of the moms — like a hive around the queen bee. I scheduled playdates, threw parties, positioned us as a family in the hive.
Another dad with a daughter in an older class suggested bending the princess trope, introducing her to other versions of fairy tales, so we read The Paper Bag Princess and watched Kiki’s Delivery Service at his recommendation. (I really admired a lot of these fractured, fairy tale picture books and still love them.)
I surrounded myself with allies and we survived.
I don’t do that anymore. I don’t want to share, to be known, accepted. I write fiction rather than essays because what I have to say is not welcome. Even in my stories, I want to establish a faraway voice at a remove. It seems so long ago, the earnestness, the frenzy of wanting to be known, to explain. I would be embarrassed by the me of that time.
I don’t enjoy being in these spaces or the ways in which I have to compromise, grovel, demean myself to be in the room. In 2014, Obama had iftar in the White House. Many Muslims attended, gleeful, while Gaza was being bombed, with full support from Obama and the Senate. I asked one of them online why they would go to such an event, and they mumbled something about making space for Muslims. During the Ramadan one year while I was a student at Princeton, Bill Clinton was bombing Iraq. All the years that I have lived in the US — first as an international student, then as a mom, and an employee — have left me wandering the halls alone during Ramadan and Eid. I associate Ramadan and Eid now with silence, a complete erasure in our schools and places of work, with the added bonus of a bombing campaign somewhere.
Now it is Eid again. My daughter is in college. Sick, I asked for leave from work. I asked to teach online. While negotiating, I realized it’s Eid. Every year, I either have to take the day off as a personal day, have my children miss school, or come to work, and just go about quietly pretending nothing is going on.
I am an atheist.
I thought I would send an email out to everyone at work, wish them Eid Mubarak. Just to let them know. Then I asked myself, “Why? What does it matter when countries are being bombed?”
Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the short story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, Spring 2025) and the novel The Children of This Madness (7.13
Books, Fall 2023). Her fiction is in or forthcoming in Granta, Third
Coast, River Styx, Chicago Quarterly Review, and other magazines. You can find her at GeminiWahhaj.com.
In the Great Room of the mansion his father’s father built with the purse the colonialists paid him for his service in the first war, my Papa, dressed in full regalia, his favorite pipe snug between his lips, motions the visitor to join him at the table. Papa, a shrewd-minded military man with a penchant for stout and three-fingers whiskey on the rocks, had successfully commandeered a ragtag troop into battle over the amply equipped rebels and won. Three times, officially. Unofficially, ten times. When he demanded retirement after achieving the rank of General, the President was so distraught he named Papa the first and only Field Marshal in our nation’s history.
Above Papa’s head, the fan whirls a frantic hum into the room. Sweat builds across the visitor’s brow despite the simple white and silver agbada he is wearing without head covering. He removes a pale red handkerchief from his pocket, dabs his eyes — avoiding Papa’s — and folds it in his hands. Papa daftly moves his pipe to the other corner of his mouth. The visitor shifts in his seat and licks his lips. He ignores the glass of water before him, his leg quivering beneath the table. Papa eyes the visitor patiently, swirling the ice cubes in his glass of whiskey to shapelessness. A passing police siren joins the fan’s hum.
The visitor, not much older than Papa, has the lazy demeanor of a lousy crook whose sole talent is to steal stolen things from those who have already committed the crime. The type to boast of his feigned bounty while dribbling palm wine from his lips, staining his shirt. The kind our people dismiss until necessary. A scar from his left ear to his chin assaults his otherwise unremarkable face. His scent of malt, sweat, and menthol cigarettes fills the Great Room, invades my lungs. Papa is testing him.
Papa breaks the silence with a joke meant to insult the visitor. The visitor laughs loudly, at first, then chuckles as if he understands nuance. Papa knows the laughter is false, but he indulges him. This, after all, is the way men are with my father: they love him and fear him at once, show all their cards while desperately trying to convince him that they have no cards at all.
“Adanne,” I recall Papa saying to me while we hunted deer, “Not everything we do is about right or wrong. Rather, it is about hierarchies of power and powerlessness. Know where you stand.”
If my mother had her way today, I would be with her at the market or sipping tea with wives and daughters of military men. But I find solace in Machiavelli and Dante, the speeches of Azikiwe, the discourse of men. Papa never discourages it, indulges his first-born’s proclivities. Gives me seat at his table, always. Permits me to speak at will. To the chagrin of his peers, though they’d never show it. I have learned secrets in the Great Room — its high ceilings and oversized furniture conceal nothing, expose everything.
Today, I sense something amiss. I do not speak. My hands press into my lap. Waiting. After the briefest of exchanges, of which no one outside this room will ever know, the visitor rises from the table, walks past my chair, and brushes my shoulder with a single finger. His touch lingering long enough to brand me in the manner of old men, from the old days. This done in the same manner as in the stories my mother used to tell me when I was small, before I thought them too childish to remember.
“Nne,”Papa says, “Please show our visitor to the door. Eh-heh, you’ll be going to his place next Tuesday to pick up a gift for me.”
“Yes, Papa.”
I, too, rise, joining the men.
The visitor smiles, this time his gapped teeth showing, his tongue at the edge of his dry lips. He follows me to the door, bows his head, then leaves. I won’t soon forget the smell of him.
.CHISARAOKWU. (she/her) is an Igbo American transdisciplinary poet artist. Drawing inspiration from her Igbo heritage, quantum physics, indigenous healing practices, and the natural world, her poetry weaves archives, film, and collage to explore memory in the African diaspora. Published in literary and academic journals, .CHISARAOKWU. has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, Vermont Studio Center and more. Learn more about her practice at www.chisaraokwu.com, and you can find her on instagram at naijabella.
Hey, big sister. Just my weekly report. So, I met someone.
It was Sunday afternoon, a time when Johannesburg, but for a brief moment, is its beautiful best.
“How quiet the sun sets,” he said.
We shared the bench, just sitting, watching the children play in the park. Children and mothers like us, so far away from home. It was how our conversation began as the sun dipped into a fiery horizon — the sky sprayed with colours of gold dust over the mine dumps.
The golden glow softened our words. We exchanged stories — he left home; I left home.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because home had become impossible.”
“Yes?” he replied.
“Maybe one day we won’t need to cross borders to find happiness.”
He laughed. I liked the way he laughed, a sense of sadness in his eyes.
I asked him to take my picture.
“It’s to send to my sister,” I explained.
He laughed again. “Are you not afraid that I will take more than your picture?”
And to quickly assuage the hesitancy of my response, he asked, “And will you take mine?” He passed me his phone; I took his picture. We scrolled down each other’s screens and laughed at how we imagined each other, such happiness in our eyes. I felt an intimacy when our fingers accidentally touched. A feeling of warmth.
In the excitement of our meeting, we did not exchange numbers when we parted. Then the light faded and so did he, into the Johannesburg shadows, a cold Jozi night.
That night, wrapped in blankets in my tiny room, I kept looking at my phone. Will we meet again? Johannesburg is such a lonely place, alone.
Bye, love.
Your little sister.
Bobby Marie is a South African living in Johannesburg, . He has been a worker and community activist. He is currently writing a memoir, re-membering his life in the liberation struggle in South Africa and the struggle of his ancestors as ” coolies” from South India.
The sky is cracked
The stars are not hiding
And the Earth suffers it all.
The moon shrivels to a sickle
I’ve been nibbling it every night
Now the constellations are my clock.
All the trees dry their clothes
Only the fig tree shares its shade
My garden has grown into a desert.
Heaven has sailed far from me
My Earth is sinking like a boat
Wind lifts dust to the mountaintop.
Everything that belongs to me scatters
Soya beans, sorghum, bananas blow away
My world has been swept away by wind.
You sink in sands of sorrow
Drenching all chambers with drought.
The well is far from my workplace
I’m drowning with a dry throat.
I dream of downpours pounding the dam
But rise to the reality of roughness.
Thirst has burnt the building
The blaze blocks all exits.
Your desert slithers like fire
You burn in a sea of sand.
Trycent Milimo is a Zambian based rising author of poetry, fiction and children’s books. His writing is featured in two Sotrane Publishers anthologies — Centennial Reflection: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Kenneth Kaunda, and the TriState anthology, Reflection on Political, Economic and Cultural Independence in Post-Colonial Rhodesia and Nyasaland. He is the 2024 regional winner of the inaugural Bridgette James online poetry competition. The poem was then featured in the PENNED IN RAGE online journal. He is the 2024 third runner up for Zambian Best Poet Valentine poetry competition and was shortlisted for Zambian Arts Publishing House Valentine poetry competition.
I teach poetry to my students at university.
I tell them all about
Eliot’s objective correlative
Keats’s negative capability
Coleridge’s organic unity
I make sure they understand
rhyme, rhythm, prosody
alliteration, allusion, apostrophe
metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche
imagery, symbolism, hyperbole
enjambment, anaphora, blah blah blah
I teach them
all that I’ve been taught
by my poetry professors
and they seem happy!
I teach poetry to my students
but
what I don’t teach them is that
none of this stuff makes great poets
or real poetry!
that to become a poet
you need to have had your home
stolen from you
your dreams confiscated,
your hopes held hostage
you need to have heard
the cacophony of the Merkava
the bellowing of the bulldozer
to have appreciated the irony
when your ancestral olive trees
became charcoal
you need to have heard
the onomatopoeia
in the roar of the rocket
in the bomb’s boom
to have spotted the alliteration in
“we will waste you in the womb!”
To write poetry
you need to have seen
your brother blown to pieces
you need to have spotted
your sister’s curly hair
under a mountain of rubble
to have removed her teddy bear
from her loosening embrace
to have wiped blood clots
off her face
you need to have seen
tearless mothers
identifying their sons
one after another
in mass graves
fathers
rocking their pale princesses to sleep
fast, sound, deep!
you need to have known
what it feels like
to write your name
on your small limbs
so they may identify you
when you become unidentifiable
you need to have learned
how to swallow
the sight of your best friend’s
charred body
to get used to the word “gone”
one
by
one.
To be a poet
you need to have seen this
known this
felt this
with every cell in your body
and that is why
Palestine
has so many great poets.
Forgive me, my students!
I have lied
and lied
and I am ashamed of myself.
Hossein Nazari is an Assistant Professor of English literature, a translator, and poet. He writes poetry in English and Persian and has translated poems between the two languages. His academic articles on English literature, including on such poets as W. B. Yeats, Czesław Miłosz, Robert Frost, John Milton, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath have appeared in many prestigious international journals. Hossein’s poetry explores the themes of displacement, exile, loss, home(lessness), memory, identity, and nostalgia.
University of Cape Town, 1966
Not six feet from me,
Bobby Kennedy,
about two countries
settled by the Dutch, British,
one went astray—
South Africa, I heard.
When I settled in America,
anti-apartheid meetings thrilled me—
injustice anywhere is injustice
everywhere scrawled on walls.
Now I know The Talk,
of men who produce a video—
a black man running from their guns—
as “evidence” that shooting him
was justified.
Kennedy’s strayed country
(I looked it up)
was not South Africa.
We felt South Africa from our feet,
toes browned by common dust,
for all that we knew
we knew by raw sole.
Worn paths among bush,
our quiet dread of snakes,
the hard reddish soil,
rose through our loins.
Avocado trees crept low,
branches for cradles. There,
when off our feet, we hung,
chatting till the sun blew out.
Alan Paton, a writer, led South Africa’s Liberal Party.
Brylcreemed, he scowls,
invoking The Almighty.
One Man One Vote.
The government threatens
to take him down
to solitary the instant
he slips from fame abroad.
Two men in hats and well-
pressed suits, backs to speaker,
shunt from listener
to listener, as if collecting
in a church—big one’s notepad
open for interrogations, small one
kneeling with his massive apparatus,
taking frontal flashbulb photos. I think
I’m followed home.
Eric Braude grew up in South Africa. He won the 27th annual Eagle-Tribune/Robert Frost Foundation Spring Poetry Contest and wrote the front matter poem for the anthology Songs from the Castle’s Remains. His poetry has appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Constellations, Apple Valley Review, J Journal. I-70 Review, Panoplyzine, Book of Matches, Frost Meadow Review and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Eric is a computer science professor at Boston University.
When cousin Primo came home
From the Viet Nam War,
I was in my junior year
At Roosevelt High School.
The same high school he attended
Two years earlier, kicked out
A week before graduation
For smoking a cigarette.
He enlisted that summer,
Otherwise going to jail
Was a real probability.
He was sent to Boot Camp
And Germany that first year.
The Army quickly determined
He was jungle-scout material,
Lead man in a three-man squad
Sent to the Viet Nam war.
He was shot five times,
The other two were killed.
Four bullets in the torso,
Shot once in the head,
He was given up for dead.
A surgeon at a MASH hospital
Found him on a stretcher,
Put a fiberglass plate
In his head under his scalp
To cover the path of the bullet.
The day that I saw him
He was in my mother’s kitchen
Wearing a hat to cover the wound.
He lifted the hat
Revealing a wide pink scar
The entire length of his skull
Growing his brown hair to conceal.
He never wore a hat before.
I reeled from the sight,
Wanted to cry for him,
That would have been un-manly.
He chortled a sardonic laugh.
One-hundred percent disabled,
He would never work again
Or lift anything heavy.
I also envisioned my fate
There in my mother’s kitchen,
A dilemma similar to Primo’s.
A dumb kid from the neighborhood
Unready for the likelihood
Of being drafted at age 18
And unable to vote until 21.
Stephen Barile is an award-winning poet from Fresno, California and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. His poems have been anthologized, and published in numerous journals, both print and on-line. He taught writing at Madera College, and CSU Fresno
Sola Adebayo lingered in her bedroom to avoid her family. As Brent Faiyaz crooned in her ears, she watched the ceiling fan swirl into blurriness and smelled dinner creeping into her room, making its way to her nose. Sola was ready to live on her own. Her mother nagging her to pick up the clothes on the bathroom floor and both parents inquiring about her whereabouts were no longer things she wanted to deal with. She wanted to be in her own space, to be free and spread her wings. She thought about what she would do if she had her own place: walk around naked, let her small, saggy breasts flop with abandon, blast Burna Boy, dance on top of the couch like a madwoman, have a pint of salted caramel ice cream for dinner without anyone judging her. That was the way she wanted to live.
Tonight, Tina stood over a hot stove, preparing a meal that reminded her of home — fufu, spicy tomato and okra stew with assorted meats, suya, and dodo. Fragrant spices and the smell of stockfish left a permanent stench around the house. When Sola was growing up, she hated bringing her school friends over to her home because it reeked of African spices and goat meat. Sola preferred sleepovers at her White friends’ houses because their homes smelled like fresh baked cookies; their parents never cackled loudly into the phone; and their siblings didn’t act like fools. Her friends had normal homes.
“Oya! Food dey ready!” Tina shouted. Her voice was as clear as day even through Sola’s loud music. Sola paused her R&B playlist, removed the AirPods from her ears and went into the dining area.
Sam, her father, was seated at the table, reading glasses hanging from his bulbous nose as he flipped through the newspaper. Sam was a tall, hefty man with a protruding belly full of pounded yam and Guinness beer. There was a burn scar on his left forearm marking the spot where hot water was accidentally poured on him as a child. His dark, shiny head was completely bald, hair having escaped him once he reached his mid-thirties. Sola could never relate to girls who had good relationships with their fathers. Sam was an old school Nigerian man who believed he was meant to be the breadwinner and dictate how the house should run. He believed he was responsible for providing for the house and guiding his family while the wife did domestic work and the children obeyed and listened to the parents.
Sola sat across from her dad, who continued flipping through his paper. Her sister, Chima, strode in and sat next to Sola. She wore an oversized faded black t-shirt with J Cole’s face on it and black leggings, her blond box breads in a messy bun. Chima had rich, dark skin that was fresh and clear thanks to her genes and her religious skincare routine. Her doe-like brown eyes were framed by wispy lash extensions. Her gap-tooth smile was slightly yellow and crooked, a flaw she was insecure about. Tina would always reassure her that her gap was a sign of beauty in Nigeria, but Chima couldn’t see it. In America, her gap was a deformity.
Without the assistance of anyone, Tina balanced dishes of food in both arms, setting them down at the center of the table. A bowl of oily, spicy stew with an array of meats swimming inside. A greasy plate of fried plantains with a paper towel underneath to capture excess oil. Well-seasoned beef on kabob sticks with sliced cucumbers on the side. Individually saran-wrapped, pounded yams on a serving dish. In front of each chair there were already plates, tumblers, and small bowls of water for washing their hands. Sam slapped his paper down and lunged for the serving spoon, piling his plate with fufu, dodo, spicy stew with shaki, fish, and chicken drums. The others silently piled their plates with food.
Sam rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, dunked his hand into the bowl of water, and tore himself a piece of fufu, dipping the sticky dough into the stew. He inhaled his food, making a loud, wet popping sound after licking his soiled fingers. Tina threw him a dirty stare.
“Must you eat without first thanking God for your meal?” Tina said in Yoruba.
“Oya! Praise Him then!” Sam snapped back in Yoruba. Tina kissed her teeth and forcefully grabbed her husband’s rough hand, closing her eyes. Sola and Chima followed suit as Tina blessed the food.
“Our Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank You for the food You provide for us every day and every night and for allowing us to be fortunate enough to put food on the table. We ask Father that You bless this food we are about to eat and let it nourish us, and that You continue to guide our family towards prosperity and peace. We give You all the praise. In the name of Your Son Jesus Christ we pray, Amen.”
“Amen,” murmured the others, in unison.
Sola dipped the tips of her manicured fingers into her bowl of water, flicking off the excess, and sinking her fingers into the soft pounded yam. She drenched her fufu in the spicy stew and popped it into her mouth. The spices of the stew tickled her throat, causing her to cough.
Everyone ate in silence, as the space filled with the sounds of smacking and swallowing. Sola pulled out her phone with her clean hand, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram as she ate.
Sam peered at Sola from the top of his reading glasses. “Put your phone away at the table. We are eating.”
Sola sighed and shut off her phone, slamming it face down on the table. Sam dropped his ball of fufu on the plate. “What’s wrong with you?”
Sola took several beats before saying in a low voice, “Nothing.”
“It’s something,” Sam pressed on. “You would not be disrespecting me if it weren’t so.”
“I’m not disrespecting you. I’m just tired.”
Tina glared at the side of Sam’s head, willing him to stop. Chima bit into a piece of beef, her eyes trained down at her plate.
“So, it is not disrespectful that you slammed your phone down?” Sam inquired.
Sola was growing tired of her father pushing the matter and wished he would let it go. “It was an accident.”
“An accident, ke?” Sam let out a loud cackle.
“Sam, leave it alone,” Tina hissed at her husband in Yoruba.
“Jo!” Sam exclaimed, his anger bubbling over. “Don’t allow this girl to disrespect me. I am her father.”
Sola knew her father resented her for wasting his hard-earned money on an art degree. These days, she spent her life sitting in a four-by-four cubicle talking to angry customers about overdue balances on their accounts. Working as a customer service representative was the only job she landed after graduating with a useless art degree. Her dad probably hated her even more for not using the degree. Like most Nigerian parents, Sam and Tina wanted their daughters to be doctors, accountants, and lawyers. They didn’t travel all the way to America for their daughters to live the same struggles they did.
Sam and Tina continued arguing in Yoruba – a language Sola and Chima never learned because their mother didn’t feel the need to teach them. As long as their native tongue was English, that’s all that mattered to her.
Sam slammed his meaty hands on the table, shaking everything on the surface, his anger growing stronger. Tina kissed her teeth and returned to the food on her plate, done with the quarrel. Their marriage was full of nonsense arguments, and love was never present in their union.
Sam returned to chomping in silence. Tension filled the space as everyone tried to get through dinner.
Because Sam wasn’t a man who could let things go, he said in a low, calm voice, “If you continue to disrespect me, I will kick you out.”
Growing annoyed with her father, Sola massaged her temple with the pads of her fingers. This was one reason she wanted to live alone. Dinnertime was meant for family to be together at one table and enjoy each other’s company. In the Adebayo’s house, dinnertime was a mere façade to act like they were one big loving family.
Sola was tired of biting her tongue, tired of caring what her father thought of her. Nothing she said or did was good enough for him.
Chima poked at her food silently, a tiny part of her grateful that their father’s wrath wasn’t upon her. Chima had made the mistake once by siding with her sister, and Sam took his anger out on her, claiming that his daughters were against him and needed to read the Bible so they could be reminded to obey their parents.
“I don’t care if you kick me out because I don’t want to be here anymore,” Sola said, the words spilling out of her mouth before she could stop them. Sam looked at her, his stare hard and menacing. Tina looked in disbelief. Chima poked Sola in the thigh, willing her to stop. Sola and Chima had never dared to talk back to Sam in his own home.
Fueled by the burning rage within her, Sola continued. “I know you hate me because I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be. You’re upset because I failed to secure a good career and thrive after graduation. I know that in your head you compare me to your friends, who have children who are successful doctors and engineers, and wonder where I went wrong. Why can’t you just accept us as we are?”
Silence followed after Sola’s outburst. Finally, Tina cut through the silence and said, “Why we no fe have a good dinner?”
“I agree. Let’s just let it go,” Chima said, uttering her first words that night.
“But Dad started it!” Sola shouted. “I just simply put my phone down, and he thought I was disrespecting him!”
“Do not raise your voice in my house!” Sam exclaimed, slapping his hands down on the table.
“I’m tired of you resenting me! I don’t want to be here anymore!”
“That’s enough!” Tina shouted, silencing everyone with her words. “Stop this nonsense! Just eat and shut up!”
“Tina, you are the reason why these girls talk back to us,” Sam said.
“Me, ke?”
“Yes you.” Sam stabbed his index finger at his daughters. “You don’t know how to set them straight. Because of you, these two don’t know how to respect their elders.”
“What did I do?” Chima asked.
Ignoring Chima’s question, Sam and Tina started back up on their own argument, throwing insults at each other in Yoruba. Chima, used to their loud arguments, continued to eat like nothing was happening. Sola stared at the food on her plate, her appetite gone. All she wanted at this moment was to be as far away from her dysfunctional family as possible.
Once they were done with their screaming match, Sam cleared his plate, licked the leftover stew off his fingers, and stood up.
“Sola, I want you out of this house by the end of the week. I will not take any more disrespect from you,” Sam said.
“Sam—” Tina started.
“Don’t question me,” Sam snapped at Tina. “That is final.” Without another word, he grabbed his newspaper and went upstairs.
Defeated, Tina got up and grabbed her and her husband’s empty plate. Sola and Chima sat alone.
“Did that make you feel better?” Chima asked.
Sola scoffed. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, did it feel good to ruin dinner with your outburst?”
“I didn’t ruin dinner. All I did was stand up for myself. You should try it sometimes.”
Chima shook her head. “You know how Dad is. He’s never going to change.”
“But that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate his disdain for us.”
“I just wouldn’t have gone about it that way.”
“Whatever. You don’t understand,” Sola said. Being around her family depleted her energy. They could never just have a nice, normal family dinner. From this day on, she was done caring about meeting expectations.
“I do understand. I understand that you’re frustrated. I understand that you want Dad to see that you’re trying. I just think there’s a different way to go about it,” Chima said, tearing into a drumstick with her long black nails.
Sola tapped her nails on the edge of her plate, not responding to Chima’s statement. It was useless explaining something to someone who truly didn’t understand.
Once they finished dinner, they helped their mother with the dishes. They wiped the table free of stew drippings and vacated into their rooms. Sam — who had changed into his plaid pajama pants and ratty white t-shirt — lay in bed, reading the rest of his newspaper. Tina lay on the other side of him, nightgown and bonnet on, watching the 10 o’clock news on TV, its sound lowered to not disturb Sam.
Chimah sat on the fuzzy beanbag in the corner of her room, listening to a guided meditation practice to cleanse her mind of the night’s debacle.
Sola, hoping to drown out thoughts of a dinner destroyed, popped her earbuds back in and listened to soft R&B music in her dark room. She wondered what it would be like if everyone in her family actually loved each other and worried if her father’s feelings would be the same tomorrow morning.
Rita Balogun is a Nigerian American writer who studied creative writing at Stephen F. Austin State in Nacogdoches, Texas. She currently freelances as a ghostwriter.
Nah bruv, you should be talking to me, still. Not them man who did all kind of foolishness and got caught and sent back after four months in Harlesden or Moss Side or Handsworth. I never really done nothing wrong and they still shipped me out to this place. Fuckery, innit?
Still, could be worse, I could be like one of them man that don’t have any family left here. Sometimes you see them walking around like zombies. All cracked out and thing. Nothing else for them to do, it’s not like anybody likes them. I used to think the British didn’t like outsiders, but I was wrong. This place don’t like outsiders. They don’t even like man from the next parish over. They tolerate tourists cos they come in with a little money and thing. But man like me. We are at the bottom of the shit heap, I’m telling you.
Yeah, I was born here, but I left when I was two and only came back for one holiday when they buried my nan. I didn’t know shit about this place before they sent me here. I thought it was paradise. Before they deported me, I thought well, I got family here, it’s warm, at least it won’t be so bad.
I was wrong. Fucking wrong.
When I first turned up they had me in that little deportee house where they just about have electricity and you got to share some little room with next man. One man was in that place crying like a little boy the whole first day. I was like, you need to turn the volume on that wailing down, bruv. It’s not no-one’s funeral, you’re still alive. Shut up, you get me.
Still, pure noise so we booted him out of the house for the day until he calmed down. Two twos, we hear one big old bit of noise outside and when we look out the window there’s like five or six people just thumping him up out on road. I was like, what is this? Man runs down the street and back into the house and hides in his little room and starts bawling even louder.
That was when I first realised that this place might not be the paradise I thought it was. Still, he might have done something to somebody out there, you know? That’s what I thought at the time, didn’t want to believe that this place was gonna be difficult for me.
They didn’t want you to stay in the house so there was just about enough electricity for a little lamp in your room and a shower. A cold shower. That might not sound so bad considering it’s always warm here, but when everything else is shit, a cold shower is what can break you.
I only stayed there a couple of weeks, until I moved out here with my uncle. But in that time it was a madness. I seen two man get into a fight that nearly ended in a stabbing, I seen a man get chased by a woman with a machete, fucking thing looked like sword, and no-one helping him, I seen a crowd of people chase someone who they said was a thief and they beat him with bits of board and stuff they found on the roadside until the police come and take him away. I seen crackheads and drug dealers and teenagers with guns, mad people walking the streets and everyone ignoring them like they might catch something if they go near, people dressed in white packed on the back of pick-up trucks singing religious songs loud over Tannoy speakers as they drive past kids sleeping on the roadside. Bruv, this place ain’t no paradise. Especially the city. Nah, that place is messed up.
When my uncle come and picked me up, I was so happy. It was like escaping hell. I don’t know what happened to the mandem I left behind. None of us had phones, some of them didn’t have no family here, they might have just kicked them out to make way for whoever is getting off the plane next. Nuff of them man were getting involved with shotters, smoking crack and whatnot. Nitty behaviour.
I’m telling you, bruv! These streets is rough. When I was a younger, we used to do some foolishness for the olders on the estate, run this bag here, carry this thing there, all for one little cheeseburger from Maccy’s. But down here, especially in the city? Life ain’t worth a packet of crisps. And because we come in now sounding different, not Black in the right way or some shit, we have to go to the bottom of the pile. Even when I go market, I hear people talking about me. Talking about my kind and how it’s people like me that are causing all the trouble going on in the country.
I know some of the mandem that get sent back here get involved with criminals, but them dons who give them guns was here before the deportees returned. It weren’t like we come down here and set up a whole criminal organisation that never existed. But that’s the way people are, innit? Looking for someone to blame and we was the last ones in so it must be us.
That’s, like, the worst part, get me. In England all the newspapers and thing always running a bruvva down. It’s always immigrants coming here and doing this, or if something goes wrong how dark your skin comes before they say your name. Asian lawyer caught in drugs raid. African businessman in tax avoidance shame. Live in that country twenty years and wake up to them reminding you that you don’t belong in size forty-two font on the front page of the newspapers.
And then they send you back home, or what they calling your home, some place you can’t remember, that you only ever seen in faded, sepia photographs that your nan and grandad have locked up in the guest front room and the people who sort of look like you start telling you that you don’t belong here neither.
I’d like to know where I’m supposed to belong. Like, where is my fucking home, yeah?
All this for some traffic offences. As if running two red lights and failing to pay couple parking tickets means you should be sent from the place you’ve lived for twenty-five years to some next place where you was born but can’t remember.
Look, yeah, they took me to the detention centre, Home Office and that said I don’t really have no ties to the country because I ain’t married, don’t have no children and don’t own a house. How can I afford a house in London? I don’t know no-one that owns their own house. Still, before I could say nothing or call no-one, I’m on a plane headed back here.
Then when I reach the place where they keep us it’s ramshackle. One bruk down place that had roaches and all sorts. I left, cos I ain’t staying in that place. Some of them man stayed cos they ain’t had no options, at least I had family I could come live with. I knew them from when my mum would send us home for holidays. And family look after each other here, even if they are always in your business and think they can give advice when you ain’t ask for it.
At first, yeah, people was cool. They would say good morning and all that, ask about London and thing. Then they heard the story that I was one of them deportees and people changed. It was like I had some disease. People started crossing the road and avoiding me. Making up their faces like they smelled shit. I heard them talking to my auntie and uncle and complaining loudly about England was sending back home the dregs of society and how we were England’s problem and we shouldn’t be sent here.
Like I wanted to be sent to this place. It’s nice for a holiday, but fucking hell, I like having electricity and water that don’t go off for the whole weekend, you get me? Yeah it’s warm, but I had central heating back home. Home. Fucking hell. Home feels a long way away.
So I left one place where they say I don’t belong and come down here and hear people saying I shouldn’t be allowed back, telling me I’m England’s problem cos they created me. Fuckery, innit? Bruv, where am I supposed to go and live and find some peace?
Stephenjohn Holgate lives in Aotearoa New Zealand and writes fiction. He is a member of Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 writer development program and HarperCollins UK Author Academy 2023. His story, “Delroy and the Boys,” won a 2023 Pen/Dau prize. His short story “The Skull of an Unnamed African Boy” was longlisted for the Guardian/4th Estate 4thWrite Prize. He can be found @mistaholgate on social media and his Substack is Jack Mandora Story.
If you’re willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;
but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Isaiah 1:19-20
“We are about to close sir.”
Elvis swiveled back to see the docent of Kelvingrove Art and Gallery Museum standing over his shoulder with a broad smile.
“Thank you,” he nodded. She walked away.
Since Molly got pregnant, he dreaded returning home at night. The setting sun was a reminder of the potential horror he would endure, and every night was a different kind of drama she blamed on hormonal imbalance. “Like you’re the first person to ever be pregnant!” he grumbled beneath his breath.
Elvis waited until the last person left the building before standing to leave. He flashed a smile to the docent as he walked past her holding on to the tip of his cap.
“Aye, he’s a gentleman now,” said the security man to the docent. “Why d’ye think he stays here so late?”
“Scared tae go hame,” she replied and shifted her gaze to Elvis as he walked down the stairs. “Probably got a naggin missus waitin fer him wi a fryin pan.”
“Aye! I feel for him, but I think mine’s is shittier. I’ll be goin’ hame to some charcoal tea.”
They both burst into laughter.
Elvis turned back, casting a long sad gaze at the museum and saw the pair laughing. They stopped at once, waved at Elvis, and feigned a smile. Elvis managed to wave back wondering what about him made them laugh.
He looked at his wristwatch; it was a little after 5pm. He shook his head and thought to go sit at the Kelvingrove’s Café but remembered coming across Molly’s best friend, Emily, the last time he was there. When Molly questioned what he was doing there when his shift had ended and asked if he wasn’t was supposed to be home, he’d lied and said he was with his boss.
He got into his car and drove down Paisley West Road to Cardonald, stopping to park in front of Jisto Misto, a small independent restaurant that served classic and contemporary dishes. The place was small and cozy, simple and welcoming, just as the owner and chef, David Brudnybn. Elvis had worked there as a kitchen porter when he first moved to Glasgow after absconding from Birmingham. Since arriving to the United Kingdom, the restaurant was the first place he was treated like a human being and not seen as Black.
“Elvis!” David exclaimed as Elvis walked in, “Alright!” He bumped his fist in a spirited fashion.
“It’s me in the flesh,” said Elvis feigning enthusiasm.
“I can see that! Just give me a few minutes. Let me do something in the kitchen.” He turned to a waiter and said, “Serve him anything he wants. It’s on the house.”
The waiter approached Elvis who sat at the far end of the restaurant away from prying eyes. Three months of working in the kitchen, and he still couldn’t name any of their dishes, except for Collin’s Italian Spaghetti. His mind was, however, too preoccupied to eat.
“A martini would do,” said Elvis to the waiter. “Thank you.”
He shifted his gaze to the Jisto Misto hoarding carved against the wall, grey and lit, its elegance adding beauty to the feel of the restaurant. His drink arrived just as David returned to sit with him.
“Yo my man, what’s up?” David asked.
Staring at David, Elvis contemplated telling the truth or replying with “fine” — a lie which had become a common response. He feared if he spoke the truth, the wind would blow his whispers to Molly’s ears and everything for him would be over. Molly was his last hope at cementing a better life or at least what would appear to be a better life compared to where he came from.
“I’m fine.” He feigned a grin.
“Alright!” David nodded. “And Molly? How’re she and the baby coming?”
“Fine,” Elvis responded in a low drone, then without warning, he burst into silent tears. “I am not fine David. I am in deep shit.”
“Fuck! What’s wrong? Talk to me.”
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Anywhere mate, anywhere.” David leaned forward.
Elvis sniffed, mulling over words to tell the man sat opposite him that he was an illegal immigrant and his love for Molly was conditional. He heaved a deep sigh and gulped down his martini for some form of courage but found none at the end of the cup.
“I’ve become an illegal immigrant and can be deported at any point.”
David’s eyes widened. “How did that happen?
Elvis looked into the cup; it was empty. He needed more than courage to tell him he was in this situation as a result of his stupidity, an eagerness to make quick money.
“Does Molly know?” asked David killing the silence.
Elvis’s phone rang. It was Molly. He silenced the phone with urgency and cursed under his breath. “Shit!” He looked around for any familiar faces then back to David who was staring at him in bewilderment.
“Are you okay?”
“No. Yes. I got to go.”
Elvis rose and started away leaving David agape.
In less than fifteen minutes Elvis was at Hillhead unlocking the door to his house. He walked in and met Molly sat on the couch in silence which he thought odd considering her routinely welcoming him with screams and questions of his lateness and whereabouts.
“Hey babe.” He made to kiss her protruded stomach, but she shoved his face away. “Are you okay?”
Molly folded her arm and looked away. Her countenance since Elvis arrived had been unpleasant. He followed her eyes and noticed his travel bag laid on the couch and his belongings scattered all over the sitting room.
“What is going on?” Elvis asked.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Molly asked.
Elvis winced. “Shit!” he exclaimed beneath his breath as he ran for the bag. “The letter!” He dived into the bag hurling the remains of his belongings until he reached the bottom, shaking the bag for something to fall out. He set it down looking terrified.
“Looking for this?” said Molly behind him.
He turned around and saw a familiar envelope on the center table. “Fuck!” he mouthed.
“Yes. You’re fucked.”
“Babe—I know you’re mad, but let me explain.”
“Explain what?” she scoffed. “You don’t even know what’s in the letter.”
Elvis opened his mouth to talk but found the words couldn’t come out.
“Go ahead,” Molly said. “Read it. I would love to know what the letter says.”
“Babe I don’t need to…”
“I said read the damn fucking letter!” she shouted, making a fist.
Elvis nodded.
“I’m trying hard to protect the baby,” she said rubbing her stomach. “So please just read the damn fucking letter.”
Elvis picked up the letter and cleared his throat. He looked at Molly, hoping she’d have a change of mind, but the anger on her face suggested otherwise.
“Dear Elvis Osahon,” he began. “This is to inform you that…”
“Won’t you at least let me know who it is from?”
Elvis scowled, concealing his distress.
“UKVI.” The tone of his voice was losing strength. Molly nodded and urged him on. “This is to inform you that we have withdrawn your right to live and work in the United Kingdom…”
Elvis paused as those words flushed his memory with recollected thoughts of how he could have avoided this letter, avoided Molly. “This is as a result of the University of Birmingham informing us of withdrawing your admission offer due to lack of attendance and tuition payment. You are hereby advised to…” Elvis stopped reading and slid the letter into his pocket. “Babe, let me explain.”
Molly’s face was livid. “You know I crosschecked the date the letter was sent. Isn’t it funny that we moved to Glasgow just weeks after that? And all of a sudden, you declared you wanted to have a baby with me.”
“Molly, you also said you wanted a baby.”
“No!” Molly shouted standing to her feet. “Don’t even go there, Elvis. Don’t!”
“The same want, just different reasons,” said Elvis in a fading tone.
“I want to be a mother. But you want a child with me to secure your stay in this country.”
“No,” Elvis said, shaking his head with impatience. “You’re an erratic junkie no white man wants anything to do with. You chose me because I am Black and can be used,” he retorted, “and if we’re being fair, you started using me before this letter ever arrived.”
She struck Elvis’s face so hard it sent a wave of shock down his spine. He paused a few seconds, holding his face, and when he lifted it, his right eye was sore red.
“I know you’re mad, but please can we just talk this out without cursing and fighting?”
“You lying bastard! ” Molly set out to hit him over and over again. As he stood allowing her to vent without impeding her punches, he closed his eyes disappointed that his secret was finally out, and he wasn’t sure what would happen next. With Molly, he wasn’t sure of anything. Her reactions made him feel worse than a cheating husband, like he had betrayed the very core of their relationship; yet in his guilt, he knew they had both betrayed themselves. Regardless of her fitful nature, he was sure she loved him, and he loved her, he always did — in a complicated way — until the letter from UKVI came. Then his love for her became selfish. He became focused on remaining in a land in which he was never welcomed in the first place.
Molly began to slam her feet against the couch.
“Molly please. Just stop. You’re hurting yourself and the baby.”
“Baby!” Molly exclaimed then burst into sudden capricious laughter. “You no longer have a baby.”
“Molly,” Elvis said with a sense of impending danger. “Whatever it is you’re thinking, don’t.”
Molly looked over Elvis’s shoulder with a humorless smile. Following her eyes, Elvis swiveled. She was staring at the kitchen. She made an attempt to run into the kitchen, but he clogged her path.
“Molly, whatever it is, don’t do it. Please, I beg you.”
“It’s too late for that,” she yelled, trying to circle round him. She made a run for it, but he grabbed her, and she yelled in pain.
“The baby, the baby!”
Elvis set her free attempting to rub her stomach from worry when she hit him hard on the face and dashed for the kitchen, renting part of his cloth in the process. He was still tending to his face when she returned with a knife.
“Babe. Why are you holding a knife?”
“Is it this baby you speak of?” she said, lifting the knife to her stomach, poised to drive it in. “You won’t have it. We won’t give you the pleasure of using us to remain in this country. Go back to where you came from, Monkey.”
“Molly, think about this. You’ll hurt yourself too.”
“I don’t care.”
She lifted the knife, ready to drive it down when Elvis shouted.
“Okay, okay, okay. Fine, I will leave, just don’t do anything to hurt the baby.”
“Just leave and never come back.”
“Yeah. Yeah. At least let me get my stuffs.”
Molly looked down at his scattered bag and clothes and nodded. Elvis bent to gather his things, and in one moment of Molly looking away, he leapt at her, grabbing the knife but cutting her arm as he overpowered her.
“My hand!” Molly screamed. “You fucking bastard! You want to kill me!”
“It was a mistake, I swear it.”
“You’re not getting away with this.”
Molly grabbed her phone, dialed a number and held the phone to her ear.
“Who are you calling?” Elvis asked.
“What do you think?” Molly replied without looking at him.
“Molly, drop the phone. You know my life will be over when they get here.”
“I don’t care,” Molly said with a broad malevolent beam. “Hello,” she said into the phone. “I have a crime to report. My partner just tried to kill me—”
“Shit!” Elvis cursed, looking about in disarray. He shifted his gaze to the car key on the table beside Molly, then ran out the house with the knife in his hands.
Elvis sat alone in the busy concourse of the Buchanan bus station. He stared as the world around him moved in a hurry whilst his came crashing down. Staring long at the Wincher’s Statue, he thought back to the beginning of the decline of his life which began at age sixteen back in Nigeria: when his mother could no longer give him pocket money for school, when he didn’t read along with his classmates because he could not afford to buy the class text, when he had to carry tray along the minor arterial highway after school to sell bread so he and his mother could eat. He was amazed the day Bashiru, their neighbor’s son who had left five months prior, returned home driving a tear-rubber Camry. He couldn’t help but wonder why Bashiru’s parents, who claimed not to know his whereabouts, didn’t scold him. Instead, along with other neighbors, they dashed out praising his accomplishment at such a young age, and collectively prayed his business would continue to thrive so he could change his parents’ lives for good.
“What business are you into?” Elvis had asked Bashiru after the charade came to an end.
“The business of being smart and fast,” he replied.
“And in five months you bought a car?!” Elvis exclaimed. “Introduce me to your business.”
Bashiru laughed. He looked at Elvis from head to toe and could feel his aura of ambition. “If you say so. Have you heard of Yahoo Yahoo?”
“Yahoo Yahoo!” Elvis reiterated in awe. “What is that?”
Bashiru laughed at Elvis’s innocence.
“Take a walk with me and I will tell you everything you need to know,” he said.
Six months later, Elvis bought his own car, renovated their old house and put his mother on a monthly salary. A couple of years later, after the success of his yahoo-yahoo ventures began to dwindle, he gathered the remains to sponsor himself to study in the United Kingdom with the belief it would be a greener pasture, promising his mother before he departed that he would make her proud. He arrived in Birmingham to find the green pasture wasn’t so green, and that his yahoo enterprise could not thrive, a realization which came after he had squandered the little money he had. “School is not for me, I need to make money,” Elvis convinced himself.
“Hey, you okay mate?” a security guard, in reflective jacket, nudged Elvis out of his thoughts. “You look lost,” the guard said.
Elvis feigned a smile and shook his head. “Thank you, I am fine.”
He watched the guard move back to his post, leaving him to his loneliness. He returned his gaze to Wincher’s Statue, trying to imagine the story behind the sculpture. He found himself thinking about his mother and home. There was no home to go back to, neither was there one to look forward to; he had come to terms with his fate. The fault was not in his stars but in himself. He thought to close his eyes and whisper a prayer to God; perhaps God in his mercies shall come to his aid. But at a second thought, he reckoned his remedy lay in himself, which he wanted to ascribe to heaven.
Rather than let his story end in the ink of another, Elvis decided he would write his own ending in his own ink with the hope that his story would not merely headline the Metro to sell the papers, but to deter others from making his mistakes. All may not have been well for him, but all would end well.
He brought out his phone and typed,“Sorry how things turned out, would have wished it differently. I did love you from the start, maybe complicated, but love you I did. Till we meet again.’”
After a minute of indecision, he sent the text to Molly. He took one last look around the concourse, then closed his eye to inhale the cold night air. He removed the knife from his pocket and started for the center.
“He’s got a knife,” a woman shouted, pointing at Elvis.
Elvis quickly grabbed the woman beside him who was attempting to run to the other direction. He put the knife to her neck.
“Just do what I say and I won’t hurt you,” Elvis told her. She nodded in terror, and lifted her hands in surrender. “Keep moving till I say stop.” The woman obeyed. “Stop,” he told her on reaching the center.
In a matter of seconds, the concourse was nearly empty except for onlookers in the distance capturing the scene with their phones. The security guards stood in disarray contemplating their next action.
“Stay where you are or I will hurt her!” Elvis raised his voice at the guards, and then whispered to the woman, “That is an empty threat. Don’t be afraid.”
The woman gulped saliva. It was hard to believe a man with a knife to her throat.
“Please don’t hurt me,” pleaded the woman with a shaky voice.
“I won’t. I promise.” Elvis took the knife off her throat. “You can put your hands down,” he told her.
The woman nodded and obeyed slowly. She took a look around the concourse. All eyes were on her and Elvis. She swallowed, took a quick peek at the security guards, then shifted her gaze back to Elvis. “Will you let me go then?”
Elvis shook his head.
The woman sniffed her tacit tears. “Why are you doing this?”
“Do you have kids?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she answered, concealing the terror in her voice. “Just one.”
“And are you proud of him? Or her?”
“Him,” she nodded. “Yes, I am proud.”
Elvis displayed a wide grin. “I have one too. Technically, still on the way.” He forced a laugh. “But I swear I love him, or her. Even though I did it for a selfish reason.” Elvis put his hand over his face in an attempt not to cry.
From the corner of her eye, the woman saw one of the security guards signaling at her to make a run for it. She shook her head slightly, swallowed, and refocused on Elvis.
“I fucked up,” said Elvis, between tears. “I really fucked up.”
The woman looked closer at him. She saw the sadness in his eyes, the puddle of tears hidden behind his cornea.
“You still have time to make corrections.”
Elvis shook his head. “That boat already sailed.” He burst out crying and placed his head on the woman’s shoulder. “Do you think my mother will be proud of me after she sees this?”
The woman lifted his face, searched his eyes, and with sincerity said, “A mother will always be proud of her children regardless of their actions.” She cuddled his face. Two police officers arrived pointing their guns at him while the guards kept the onlookers at bay.
Elvis turned the woman towards the police and held his knife firmly to her neck.
“We have you surrounded,” said an officer. “Put the knife down and kneel.”
Elvis ignored him and whispered to the woman. “At my signal, you’d break free and run left. Do you understand me?”
The woman nodded, her dread having returned.
“What direction?” he asked the woman. She made to point but he stopped her. “Stop,” he tapped her. “Just move your head that way if you understand.”
The woman turned her head to the left and back.
“Good,” said Elvis. “Now run.”
The woman broke free from his grip and ran to her left.
Elvis smiled and swiveled to the officer who shouted, “Go down on your knees!”
Elvis took a step towards the officer, who without hesitation, fired one shot to his arm, then another to his chest. The knife fell, then Elvis. And just before he hit the ground, he imagined hearing the uncultured cry of a toddler. He landed facing Wincher’s Statue and smiled. In an instant, he pictured himself arriving home. His travel bag landing on the floor as his mother ran into his open arms. Little by little, the life in his eyes withered. Nothing in his life became him quite like his taking leave of it.
Albrin Junior is an award-winning author, poet, scriptwriter, and director. His novel, Naked Coin, a historical-fiction, action thriller, was runner up at the Akachi Ezeigbo Prize for Literature and won the Lagos Book House Award for Book of the Year in 2020. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Albrin holds a BSc in Geography and Regional Planning from Ambrose Alli University and an MLitt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow where he was also honoured with the African Excellence Award. You can discover more about his journey at www.albrinjunior.com, on LinkedIn, and at Internet Movie Database. Across all social media, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and twitter/x, find him at @albrinjunior.
I prefer to be considered a particular person, although I’m from Nowhere. Where I come from doesn’t exist. This creates a confusing situation since logic dictates that everyone come from somewhere. It looks like I defy logic. I come from Nowhere. It has been told to me many times, by many authorities, and government officials, and all sorts of serious people in their decent suits. I see no reason to doubt them. I’d rather doubt your logic.
Strangely, I don’t have a language. People where I’m from speak in a nonexistent language. It has been stated by many experts and authorities, and there is no reason to doubt them. But I also don’t speak much of the nonexistent language. I speak some existing languages, but I cannot call any of them my native language. As a result, I have no language of my own. I borrow other people’s languages. I speak weirdly with my unusual accent and occasional pronunciation errors. I guess everyone assumes I must be speaking well in some other language. I don’t. To me, every language is a foreign language. Every word I utter is borrowed. I have no words of my own.
I speak in these foreign languages in my head when I take walks. They become entangled, creating a creole language that would be unintelligible to nearly everyone else. Maybe that is why I like talking to myself. I also like walking. I usually combine these two favorite activities of mine.
If I have to move from one place to another, I always prefer to walk. I enjoy walking the most when it isn’t directed towards the aim of arriving somewhere. Because when you aren’t walking towards somewhere, it can be said that you’re walking to Nowhere. So, I know that if I don’t walk towards a specific place and I still insist on walking, I’ll eventually arrive Nowhere. And that is where I’m from. I go out and walk aimlessly, secretly hoping that I may eventually visit my hometown: Nowhere. I miss Nowhere. All these somewheres have been tiring me for quite some time now. They are very noisy and full of unpleasant faces.
I never get to visit my Nowhere though. Sometimes I find myself in Nowheres that are not exactly like mine. I may see nonpeople there, sitting on both sides of the long street that runs through Nowhere; but they won’t be sitting on short stools. That is how I know immediately that this isn’t my Nowhere. They may drink something, but it won’t look like black tea. They may speak some nonexistent languages, but I won’t be familiar with them. “I’m at someone else’s Nowhere again”, I say to myself when this happens. It’s still good to visit Nowheres even when they’re different than mine. The familiarity of Nowheres is usually nice. But not always. Not when I see an intruder, for example. The intruders are also all too familiar to me, but there is nothing pleasant about them.
The intruders are actual persons in a Nowhere full of nonpeople. There are always some of them in Nowheres, but you usually manage to avoid them. They come from somewhere, you see, and they speak existing languages. They tend to wear nice uniforms. They are hostile to nonpeople wherever they find them. They can smell us. It doesn’t matter that I’m not from this particular Nowhere. Nonpeople are nonpeople. The intruders know that. They don’t like being in a Nowhere. They take it out on us.
You can also see these intruders in existing places. That is where they come from, after all. They look at us with disdain, they can tell that we are one of the nonpeople. They know we come from Nowhere and we don’t belong here. We don’t belong anywhere, except for Nowhere, obviously. They make us feel that. They talk about their somewheres, and their somethings, and their someones with absolute confidence. We can’t talk about our Nowhere, and our nothing, and our nonpeople with the same confidence. We become silent. Our weirdly pronounced foreign words become reserved for our conversations inside our heads. Until we decide to write them down.
Let us nonpeople take long walks whenever we can. It may get us Nowhere.
Serhat Tutkal is a Kurdish academic. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. He has a PhD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá) with a dissertation on the legitimation and delegitimation of Colombian state violence. He teaches courses on armed conflicts, dehumanization, racism, colonialism, and qualitative research methods. Find him on Mastodon at fediscience.org/@SerhatTutkal and on Bluesky at serhattutkal.bsky.social.
And we carry ours.
Our cross is an emblem of suffering and shame,
Pain specifically carved for us to carry.
The wood was cut down from an old tree,
A tree that was scrambled after by thieves.
Our cross carries memories of what it means to be less than human,
Its lore sounds like the swishing of whips before it breaks skin, courage, and bravery.
Our cross is embellished with charms of generational suffering:
A gold chain that our great-great-grandfather got from barter at the slave market.
Our great-grandmother’s wrapper, where she kept the money she got from selling her father’s land,
To have a slice of the white man’s intelligence in her family.
Our grandfather’s journal, where he emptied his confusion about being black and the need to be like the white man.
Our father’s degrees and accolades, which he swore he sacrificed his entire life to get.
Our family heirloom of a life lived on another man’s terms.
Heavy chains of capitalism looped together by a history of compliance and resistance.
We carry our cross as Jesus said,
We carry our cross as the preacher said.
We carry our cross down the aisle, in a white dress,
The piano sounds like shrieking heavy industrial metals; old and weary,
With thousands of eyes staring at us,
Anticipating if we can make it to the altar.
There is fight in my blood.
I am told it is from my journey across the seven seas.
The scars on my back don’t tell half of the tale that the eye saw.
Still, I have kept the essence of my mothers in my chest.
It teaches me to love the earth,
For like it, I am brown and carry the capacity for growth.
It tells me tales of dancing around the fire under full moon nights,
Where mothers told folklore and the men played draughts.
It reminds me of my mother’s unyielding faith in her creator—even if he was carved of stone.
It sings of my skin, luscious like camwood,
A beauty that shines with the luminosity of coconut oil.
Beads on my hips and feet applaud every step I take.
It shows me love and passion,
A fire started by a few coy looks yet committed till the end.
It shows me the divine feminine resting her head on the thighs of her masculine,
It shows me a society where goods were left unattended without fear.
It shows me a time when words were oaths,
And the fear of God made humans act decently.
It showed me strength,
How our men dug holes in the earth and reaped bountiful harvests,
And our hands delicately weaved and carved,
It tells me of really sunny days and heavy rains.
It tells me of resilience, faith, love, and duty.
It tells me that I am enough.
The maidens have come out to dance tonight,
Waist beads gyrating to the intoxicating sound of talking drums.
Anklets are adorned on our feet, while our legs create a symphony.
Today we celebrate in the face of uncertainty.
They say death shall come tomorrow.
When it comes, we shall beat the drums so loud that death will dance with us.
We shall soak the soil with hot gin;
Even sorrow shall be intoxicated.
The movement of our hips will leave death entranced.
The melodies of our voices shall pique the sun’s curiosity.
Down it would come to shine its light on us,
Its reflection against our skin blinding our enemies.
Prophecy said our waists held the answers,
So tonight we shall dance.
We shall let joy seep into us till we are lush like dew on green leaves at dawn.
We shall become one with our creator,
Ushering in a new season,
As we let waists gyrate to the beat of the drums.
Olubukola Odusanya is a poet, fiction writer, and illustrator. She holds a
B.A. in History from the University of Ibadan. She is passionate about
writing stories that document the richness of her culture and sparking
conversations to improve the African psyche. Find her on instagram and twitter/X @bukolathecreato and on Medium at Olubukola.A.
I am living on a love borrowed
in a home I’m too broke to own
See how the filth fills the acres of cold
day-by-day, like voices queuing for a vote;
arguing the best of the slaughterhouses’ regime?
Our bodies accrue roadside in a tally
of insanities born of tenements Jozi East
like city deep, stories the same –
leaving me nostalgic for rondavels again.
The coalitions are dead set on fumigating the being
of senses, reason & dream till there are no brighter days.
All around, necklaced freedom
plays favour-the-least-of-the-grim.
Meanwhile borrowed warmths,
and the occasional bluest of skies,
push past the greys, that is…
the hope of broken homes
Mthabisi Sithole,a poet and writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa, has presented poetry performances through various platforms including TPO x Chris Soal’s 2016 Fees Must Fall intervention, Lephephe Print Gatherings 1, Urban Zulu poetry, and Word Art – Young Voices poetry series. Mthabisi’s published work is included in publications such as Teesta Review: A Journal of poetry, Ja. Magazine, Best New African Poets 2019 Anthology, Yesterdays And Imagining Realities: An Anthology of South African Poetry (2020) and the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology (2023). Find Mthabisi on Instagram at @nodiction and on Facebook at MthabisiSithole.
the Decolonial Passage 