Thoughts Upon Thoughts

Long Live, the Queen

We have these walks, Abdelfatah and I. Began, once a week, became once in 6 months, and lately exceedingly infrequent as our days become more governed by routine—their onslaught more identical. We now count them from bill paid to when we have to pay the next. And inside this mundane yet overwhelming quest for survival, it’s no surprise life feels a little more constricting at times, more…

Content: A Brief History of the Blog

I’m going against my better judgement to be writing here again. A year ago, as you might have noticed from the hiatus (some of you reaching out), I decided to call it quits. More people were reading than I initially intended and I guess that can be a scary thing for a blog whose seed was anonymity (a sleuth of name-changes over the years before settling on this) and now suddenly you’re on public…

A friend calls to ask if I recommended her for this ‘opportunity’ she’d been called to attend, which I did not, and then calls again the following day, ecstatic, to tell me how it went. Her voice is higher-pitched than normal, elated. She tells me she’d have to explain in full detail for me to understand the eye-opening experience she just had. Having time on my hand, I let her proceed. A group…

On the Writer’s Desk

The lie in fiction is on the reader’s part; convinced what he’s witnessing is all the musing of a compulsive, uncontained imagination.

All fiction is autobiographical. What a delightfully tormenting truth. You’re always hoping that it’s not─ that your imagination is somehow as vivid and wild, original and infinitely replenishable; a world of its own, and anyone who encounters your work would echo…

How To Start a Successful Youth Initiative in Mombasa in 10 Easy Steps

It happens that I was minding my business when a friend who had been recently transferred to Mombasa, and we share a similar first name didn’t stop to exclaim that it seems everyone here runs their own mentorship scheme. We were at the Old Town tea place. Confession, other than the occasional conversation I’m actually a bloody bore but made an effort since he came, keeping him company as he…

That Time of the Year

It was buried that October. The seeded fear I’d enshroud my uncle with after my parents died, was planted that unbelievably sunny-for-5-O’clock Friday when Hajj was insisting on the important function of period blood as an anchor to the supernatural. Our school bus, meandering through the Lights’ Kongowea traffic, advertently was mobbed by hawkers flashing their sellable to assailable passengers…

The Ocean Walks the Aisle

The ocean walks the aisle

Marries the sand underneath my feet

A thirsting ankle for what’s heel deep.

Foam confetti sands the in-between

My wriggling toes. The stinging friction

Craning the big one skyward. Sloping

To where the sun once was― Anchored

by the remaindered four. A blackening horizon

Drowns the half suspended fiery oblate coal

Palates the infinite blue canvas. With cacophonies

With…

When We Talk About Love

As much as the next person, I’m a tiny bit obsessed with the notion: everything happens for a reason. I clench onto it─ I wear it, for comfort. That, in the great grand scheme of things, everything that life throws at me has meaning and purpose. There must be or else what is the point. And in places where life doesn’t hand me the luxury for answers, when it all feels like a tale told by an idiot,…

As she walked into the Fort Jesus that early Wednesday, an ocean breeze ballooning her abayafrom the back, Suu’s heart hammered unpleasantly. Despite the years, she hadn’t shaken off that welling fear in anticipation of meeting someone new. The sky looked down on her, ripe yet undecided; to fall or not to fall, as she sliced through the air, meekly, towards the entrance. She wondered if she’d…

What are you waiting for? What do you stall for?

There’s a tea place in Old Town by the edge of the sea. I don’t frequent it that much these days but… when life gets too much, that’s where you’ll find me. Drowning it all in a steaming sweet dark cocktail of coffee, cinnamon and ginger─ a lot of ginger; watching the ocean outstretch like a trembling blue carpet to the other side of Marina hotel. There’s a quiet understanding between the regulars…

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

I’ve often wondered why death is called a final rest.

I was seated in the left row, the last chair right next to the door; in a conference-style U-shaped arrangement at the red cross boardroom. There were about 15 of us and by the look of it, we were all there for likely the same reasons. It was the future we were worried about and these were the investments we saw fit to make, praying they would…

2 Songs of Despair

Remembering

This candle melts like my heart at your first hello

Teasing me with skin at the tip of shoulders

Then slow, like a tear, falls, undressing, to piles on the floor

The naked flame does a dance that lulls me

Against all odds, against the wind, dances to my forgetting

The memories that burnt bright like it now leave me cold

No fire could ever warm me

A trembling blue heart beats faintly,…

Spotlight: A meditation on this Pageantry of Vanity

Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever” ­─Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

The eyes look down below─ At the ever-trembling water surface, that metastasizes into suicidal waves, and explode into this reef; into perfectly suspended droplets, arrowed down by the golden sunrays─ I note the strength and vividness of my feelings in that perishable instant which suddenly break and…

Aunty Halima’s Place: Men, Marriage and Corona

“So, when will we know that we’re ready for marriage?”

We all cowered around him in anticipation, looking at him intently as he wistfully stared beyond our heads. Then he broke into a definitive smile.

“When you’re ready to take orders from someone else.”

He pursed his lips, bobbing his head with a slow intermittence, scanning the faces in the room.

“Yes, when you’re ready to take orders from…

The esteem to which any secondary school is held in this country is dependent on how many students it sends to universities. I remember the prize-giving days back in school. When the crowds would roar with thundering excitement on the announcement of how many students from the previous year were to proceed for higher education. As ongoing students, that prided us, momentarily turning universities…

The Attitude of Gratitude

Abu Yahya Suhaib bin Sinan reported that the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said: “How wonderful is the case for the believer, there is good for him in everything and this applies only to a believer. If prosperity attends him, he expresses gratitude to Allah and that is good for him, and if adversity befalls him, he endures it patiently and that is better for him.” (Muslim)

Having a positive outlook…

Of growing Up in Mombasa

“Nyama! Nyama! Nyama!” Those words would put cheer in the air. All the kids would gather in attention and respond, “nyama,”in giggles, waiting to see who’d be first to mess up. The rules of the game were simple; jump at the mention of every type of meat one can eat. Meaning you’d lose if you jumped at mentions such as snake, bat or anything likely to cause a global pandemic. I think our world be…