I don’t remember the exact day I realized I did not belong in my own life. Maybe it was the morning the adhan drifted over Karaye like a weary breath, calling the world awake while I sat inside myself, stunned, trapped in a life that felt borrowed. 

Allahu Akbar — God is the greatest. 

Ashhadu an la ilaha illallah — I bear witness there is no god but Allah. 

Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah — I bear witness Muhammad is His Messenger. 

Hayya ‘ala as-salah — come to prayer. 

Hayya ‘alal-falah — come to success. 

Assalatu khayrun minan-naum — prayer is better than sleep. 

And even as the dawn call lifted the world toward God, my father’s compound swallowed me like spit — reflexively, thoughtlessly, without pause or gratitude. A body present, a soul misplaced. 

Or maybe the knowing came long before, in the unseen realm, when Allah was handing out destinies and I — foolish, hopeful, too alive — reached for a dream larger than the body I would be given, larger than the life that would cage me. 

I was the twelfth of Baba’s twenty, a daughter tucked between daughters and sons, one more name that never felt like mine. He had four wives. My mother, the third, carried a quiet that sounded like surrender.

They called me Zainab, but for most of my life I felt more like no one. 

In Karaye, the earth is old and brown and tired. Dust rises like spirits when you walk, and sometimes I swore they whispered. Not voices like djinn, not madness… just a tug, a knowing that somewhere there was a world where girls did not come as apologies. 

For six years I sat under a neem tree and learned to braid Arabic letters like hair — alif, baa, taa — beautiful, holy, but thin compared to the hunger inside me. I recited Qur’an verses with the tender urgency of someone hoping to be heard by a God already burdened with many before her. And when I completed my Qur’anic recitation, everyone clapped like I had finished my life’s only assignment. 

That day, Ummi rubbed oil in my hair and said, “Kin gama. Allah ya albarkace ki.” You have finished. May Allah bless you. 

Finished? I was six. How can a girl be finished before she even begins? 

But that was the rule: once you could read the Qur’an, you were educated enough. And if your father was poor and your brothers were many and you were born with breasts waiting to grow into burdens, you will be made into a hawker. 

So I hawked. 

Awara. Bean curd, soft like my heart used to be. 

Every morning, the sun rose harsh — no gentle introductions in Kano. Hot wind slapped my face as I carried a tray bigger than my dreams. I walked miles, sand scalding my feet, voices swatting me away like flies. 

“Ki matsa!” Move. 

“Gyara hijab din nan!” Straighten your hijab. 

“Nawa ne?” How much? 

Sometimes drivers would whistle and laugh as I crossed the expressway, tires kissing road too angrily. I saw death many times, always quick, always greedy. One day a car brushed my hip and I spun like a leaf. I laughed after, but later at home, I pressed my hand there and wondered how one’s life could end so easily and still… nothing would change. Baba would marry again. Ummi would sit silent. And Kano traffic would not notice one less girl with awara. 

I hated hawking, but even in hatred I found small rebellions. If the muezzin’s voice carried across the streets, I would twist my waist and hum softly. I would watch schoolgirls in their uniforms, see the way they walked like their names meant something, and I would dream until a customer yelled. 

I was alive but floating, like dust. Not grounded. Not wanted. Not home. 

Then came the day I was sold. 

No one said “sold.” They said “an samu maki.” There is work. But language can be a thief; it can steal the truth and dress it in something gracious.. The woman came wearing gold bangles that clanged like chains and eyeliner sharp enough to cut childhood. She did not sit like a guest. She sat like someone inspecting livestock. 

She told Baba they needed a girl to yi aiki a gidan Alhaja Saidatu — work in Madam’s house. 

She did not ask my name. She said “Mun kawo dubu ashirin.” We brought twenty thousand. Twenty thousand naira. The price of one small goat. The price of me. 

I came home that evening with half the awara tray still full — one stubborn buyer had argued price until my knees ached and I believed hunger was a demon sent to test me. I entered the compound humming a tune I invented to survive the way each day felt heavier than the last. But the moment I saw the woman, my throat seized. 

She looked like one of the aljanu— the kind mothers warned us about in whispers, the type that will come for you if you spoke in the toilet or you went out at night without covering your hair. Eyes like she had swallowed anger whole, nose flared, and a perfume so sharp it smelled like punishment. 

“Ga ita,” Baba said. Here she is. Just that. No blessing. No softness. A pointing, like I was a goat that had been located. 

I begged. Oh Allah, I begged until my voice frayed like old cloth. “Rabbigh fir warham wa Anta khairur raahimeen” Have mercy on me my God for you are the most merciful. “Baba, please! I will hawk more! I will sell everything! I will not rest, I will sweep, I will cook, I will polish your sandals until they shine like Eid moons—” 

I turned to Ummi. My mother. The one whose belly once chose life for me. 

But she stared ahead, eyes glazed, lips shut tight as though speaking would break her open. She sat next to Baba like a monument to obedience. 

“Ummi…” I whispered. “Maaman chat…” A name I used only when the world bruised me. 

She blinked but did not look at me. 

That night I cried until I tasted metal, until I thought blood would follow tears and wash me into nonexistence. But morning came, indifferent as always, and I watched Baba take twenty thousand naira like it was not the price of a daughter but a needed convenience. 

That was the last day my parents saw me — and maybe the last day I belonged to anything at all. 

When we reached Alhaja Saidatu’s house, the walls looked taller than my future. 

Tall, painted cream, with a gate so black it swallowed the sun. One of those houses you pass and imagine the people inside eat meat every day and sleep with their hearts resting, not clenched like a fist. I remember thinking, maybe Allah brought me somewhere soft, even though my body still stung from crying. 

But Allah, You know — sometimes hope is just stupidity wearing perfume. 

The gate opened with a groan. A man in uniform looked at me the way people look at stray goats that wander into compounds. No greeting. Just, “Wannan ce?” — Is this her? 

Like I wasn’t even human enough for greeting. 

Ya Allah, was I ever human enough for anyone? 

Inside, the compound smelled like bleach and pride. Women moved like shadows, children ran without dust on their feet — imagine that — and there were more rooms than my tongue could count. I felt small. Not the innocent kind of small — the disposable kind. 

Alhaja appeared, wrapped in lace so stiff it could stand without her body inside it. Rings on each finger, like she married money and was still insecure it might leave her. 

“Ke ce Zainab?” she asked. 

I nodded. 

“From today, you answer when we call you. No stubbornness. No tears. Work well and you will eat. Misbehave and you will see.” 

I wanted to tell her tears were the only thing I had ever owned completely. But I nodded again. 

They gave me a small mat behind the kitchen. The kind of mat that collects every memory of pain and refuses to forget. I sat on it that first night, hugging my knees, whispering, 

“Allah, ka ji tausayina. I am only seven. My heart is still soft. Do You see me? Or am I one of the invisible ones?” 

I waited for warmth, for a breeze, for a sign. Nothing. Just the clatter of pots and the smell of onions frying for rich people’s stew. 

That night I understood: tears have no sound in big houses. 

Life there was work stitched into endless hours. 

Sweep. Mop. Wash plates. Wash clothes. 

Fetch water. Wash bathroom. Pound pepper. 

Serve children who called me yar aiki like it was my real name. 

Five hours of sleep if Allah smiled, four if He blinked. 

Sometimes, I heard the richer children ask Alhaja about me. 

“Who is she?” 

“A girl from the village.” 

“Why does she work?” 

“Because her parents are poor.” 

And they shrugged — that careless, rich-children shrug — as if poverty is a family tradition, not a wound stitched into your life without asking you first. 

But do you know what hurt most? It wasn’t the work. Not even the shouts. It was the silence inside me. The quiet death of imagining. 

In the streets, at least I could dream when I rested my tray on my hip. I could hum. I could pretend the girls in uniform were just waiting for me to join them. I could dance small dances when the wind touched me right. 

Here, even my imagination had duties. 

There is a pain worse than hunger — the pain of forgetting how to hope. 

Sometimes at night I whispered, “Allah, if You wrote this fate for me, did You use a broken pen?” 

And then immediately, “Astaghfirullah.”

Because I feared getting punished for questioning destiny. But Allah knows what’s inside bones. He knows when a child is pleading, not rebelling. Allahu Akbar. Allah is the greatest. 

Some nights, I heard whispers. Soft, almost like the wind remembering my name. The dust that used to swirl around me in Karaye seemed to have followed me; sometimes, when moonlight touched the compound floor, I swore I saw specks gather and dance. Not scary. Familiar. Like ancestors trying to brush comfort onto my skin. 

Once, when I was too tired to move and my fingers hurt from wringing cloth until my knuckles ached, I felt a warm brush on my cheek — like a hand made of harmattan breeze. 

I closed my eyes and whispered, “Is that You, Allah?” And something inside answered — not voice, not sound — just a knowing: 

“Keep breathing.” 

That became my prayer. 

Not success. 

Not escape. 

Just breath. 

Sometimes that is all a girl is able to beg for. 

Years blurred. 7 became 8. 8 became 10. I learned silence. Learned how to shrink my footsteps. How to read moods quicker than Qur’anic verses. How to disappear without dying. 

At 11, I started bleeding, and I cried — not from pain, but because I knew womanhood in a poor girl’s life is not a blessing; it is a countdown.

At 12, one of the madam’s daughters slapped me for breaking a cup. I tasted iron again. I didn’t cry. Tears had become expensive; I saved them for Allah only. 

At 13, I woke up one morning and noticed a strange calm. Like a storm that had swallowed itself. That same day, Alhaja called me. 

“Pack your things. A good man has asked for your hand.” 

Good man. Stone words. Heavy and meaningless. 

“He is not old,” she added. “Forty-six only.” 

Only. 

I remembered the day Baba sold me. The begging. The crawling. The way my mother’s silence felt like betrayal wearing a hijab. I thought maybe this time I should scream again, throw myself on the ground, grab Alhaja’s wrapper and cry blood like before. 

Instead, I just tied my scarf tighter, packed my clothes, whispered, 

“Allah, ka sani. You see me.” 

And followed the man who said he wanted to marry me but did not even ask if I wanted to breathe first. 

Sometimes surrender is not weakness — it is exhaustion. 

And I… I was tired long before I turned thirteen. 

When they took me to his house, the gate closed behind me like it had been waiting its whole life to shut on a girl like me. A small house, ordinary walls, ordinary compound — yet I felt more lost stepping inside than I ever did selling awara between cars in Kano traffic. 

He was there. Mallam Musa. They said he was gentle. I didn’t understand that kind of gentleness. He greeted me quietly, eyes not meeting mine, voice soft the way rain sounds in dreams. But there was no warmth. No curiosity. Just… duty looking at burden. 

He showed me where to keep my bag — a tiny corner, a mattress that looked tired before I even lay on it. I sat there feeling like the world had packed me inside a box and forgotten the label. I whispered, “Allah, na dawo? Or have I only moved from one cage to another?” I didn’t know if I was praying or complaining. Sometimes those two are the same. 

Days slipped. I cooked, swept, washed plates, fetched water, rinsed his clothes, folded them so neat you would think peace could be ironed into fabric. He didn’t shout. Did not call me names. But silence can beat someone too. Silence can bruise ribs from the inside. 

The house was never loud. It was the kind of quiet that makes your head ring, the kind that eats thoughts and leaves only breathing. He left every morning for his shop, came back at maghrib, prayed, ate, slept. I could walk around the whole house and feel nothing touch me — no presence, no love, not even annoyance. Just existing next to someone, not with them. 

There are men who break spirits with fists. There are men who break spirits by simply never looking long enough to see one. 

Sometimes I would stand in the small corridor at night and listen to nothing. Not crickets, not wind. Just my heartbeat asking, “Where am I?” There is a kind of homelessness that is not about sleeping outside. It is when your body has a roof but your soul has nowhere to sit. When you live in a place, but the place does not hold you. When you speak in your own chest and even your heart pretends it didn’t hear. 

People think children only cry when they are beaten. They don’t know some girls stop crying not because pain left, but because tears refused to answer anymore. 

One evening after isha, he finally looked at me and said, “They said you are obedient.” I nodded. My tongue felt heavy, like even it was tired of me. 

That night I laid on the thin mattress and stared at the ceiling until it blurred. I whispered, “Allah, am I still here? Do You remember the girl You created in Karaye, or did You leave her under the sun with her tray of awara?” 

I waited. Not for an answer — I was not foolish — but for a feeling. A tiny flicker. Even if only sorrow, at least it is something alive. But nothing came. My chest felt like a house where all the furniture had been taken out. Empty. Clean. Dead. 

Sometimes I dreamed of hawking. The sun burning my neck, dust sticking to my legs, traffic noise loud like a market fight — but in those dreams I was alive. I could dance when no one was watching. I could laugh small laughs at nothing. I could imagine wearing a uniform like those girls who passed with notebooks and destinies. Then I would wake up and find myself here, married, quiet, forgotten like a misplaced item in a storeroom of fate. 

He wasn’t wicked. That was the painful part. Wickedness, you can fight. Indifference… who can you fight when the enemy is absence? 

I think the worst hunger is not for food; it is for a place to belong in your own life. And I had none. I was not a child anymore, not a woman yet, not a wife truly, not a servant officially. Just a shadow somebody married. A breathing furniture. A body that moved and obeyed. 

Some nights, when the moonlight slipped through the window, the dust in the room shimmered and turned in slow circles, like it knew my name even if no human did. I watched it and whispered, “If You have not forgotten me, Allah, please… whisper my name again.” Nothing answered, but sometimes the air felt thicker, like maybe — just maybe — someone was listening from far away but wasn’t allowed to speak back. 

And I would close my eyes and hold my breath, because sometimes breathing is the only rebellion you have left. 

I did not bleed the way they warned girls to bleed. 

I bled somewhere else — quietly — inside. 

Where no cloth could soak it, no elderly woman could whisper herbs over it. 

Pain did not scream in that room. 

It settled. 

Like dust in the lungs, fine and patient, choking slowly. 

By dawn, my throat tasted like iron and surrender. 

My body ached in places I didn’t know existed —not loud pain, but the kind that sits heavy, like someone pressing a palm into your soul and refusing to lift it. 

Still, it was not pain that woke me. 

It was silence. 

A silence so thick it felt alive — like walls breathing, watching, swallowing sound. 

And in that silence, I suddenly remembered I used to hum. 

I sat up slowly. Every muscle argued — not from force, but from the memory of being taken instead of chosen. 

A quiet ache, a bruising from the inside out. 

A girl-shaped wound pretending to be a wife. 

But the air touched my bare face before the hijab 

and for one fragile heartbeat, I felt… recognized. 

Like the world suddenly remembered I had skin. 

The muezzin’s call floated in, trembling like a fragile bowl of light.

I used to hum to that call in the streets, barefoot on hot tar, 

balancing awara and hope on the same fragile wrist. 

I used to dream alphabet dreams, chasing letters like birds. 

Now? 

Only distance lived in me. 

Distance and a quiet trembling. 

Allah, You know I tried. 

Wallahi, You know. 

I folded my wrapper slowly. 

Not sneaking — I refused to treat my leaving like theft.

What can a girl steal when her life was never handed to her? 

I took nothing but breath and the small Qur’an from my mother — 

its pages yellow as millet, edges soft as forgotten prayers. 

She never looked me in the eye when she gave me away. 

Maybe she, too, knew the taste of being discarded gently. 

I pressed the Qur’an to my chest — as protection, as witness, because sometimes scripture is the only one who remembers your childhood. 

The compound slept. 

Walls breathing. 

Dreams somewhere else. 

Only the early-market women murmured outside — slippers whispering through dust like timid prayers. 

I opened the door. 

Harmattan met me like an old truth. 

Sharp. Powdery. Honest. 

It stung, but gently — the way truth kisses scars. 

I stepped out. 

My feet hesitated — 

not from fear, 

but disbelief that I could move without permission. 

For years I lived under roofs that never belonged to me. 

Under voices that turned me to furniture. 

Under chores that chewed childhood like sugarcane fiber — spit out the sweet, swallow the waste. 

Home was never walls. 

Home was the right to take a full breath without apology. 

I had never known such a place. 

But my feet… 

they remembered something my body forgot — 

freedom mapped in bone memory. 

The wind curled around my ears, playful, mischievous — 

the same way it danced with me between traffic and hunger 

when I thought Allah saw me brighter than the sun that burned my neck. 

And then — soft as a mother learning tenderness late — 

a whisper brushed my heart: 

“My earth is wide, Ya Zainab.” 

I froze. 

Not a voice. 

Not a thought. 

Something between breath and mercy.

Between heartbreak and permission. 

Were You always this close, ya Allah, 

and I simply had no space inside me to feel You? 

I did not cry. 

Tears are loud grief. 

Mine had become quiet — hollow, steady, ancient. 

Some pains don’t weep — they wait. 

I walked. 

Not toward destiny. 

Destiny is a luxury word for people whose childhood wasn’t currency. 

I walked toward air. 

Even if no one saved me, I would not remain obedient to a life that mistook my silence for faith. 

Behind me, a house slept believing it owned me. 

Ahead, the unknown waited — not promising, not threatening — 

simply there, wide as Allah’s patience. 

I walked barefoot through dust — 

each step apology, each breath rebellion, 

each heartbeat a child remembering she once danced. 

I was homeless again. 

But this time the homelessness was not punishment — 

it was possibility wearing hardship. 

Maybe one day I would read beyond Arabic. 

Maybe one day a book would know my fingerprints. 

Maybe one day a girl selling awara would see me 

and instead of fear, feel wonder. 

But today — 

dust, breath, Allah in my marrow. 

I did not look back. 

The morning opened like scripture, 

and I entered it — 

unclaimed, unfinished, trembling — 

but finally, painfully, beautifully: 

mine.

*Photo by Haziq Farooqi on Unsplash