Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2024 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction, Isele Magazine publishes the winner, the runner-up, and the notable essays selected by the curators of the award. Fatima Abdullahi’s “Roots” is a notable entry. 

Award Founder’s Note: “Roots” carries us to Ghana and Northern Nigeria, moving across the landscapes that shaped the writer’s childhood. In this essay, our eyes are opened to the power of place, the impact of class boundaries, and the cost of belonging, knowing what it means to remember who you are and where you come from, no matter where life takes you. 

I was three years old when my family moved from Kaduna, Nigeria, to the heart of the Ghanaian capital. I do not remember this. My knowledge of this life-changing event comes strictly from several photo albums shoved into the dark, cobwebbed corners of my father’s wardrobe. This is where my mother keeps the things she wants to preserve, memories to be taken out and reminisced over fondly or quite often, sadly.

The albums are nestled among other random paraphernalia from our life before. My father’s work suits that he cannot let go of, weighed down by grime and dust and bearing the marks of the company that had no issues letting go of him, the bags of baby clothes and used boxes my mother refuses to throw away while staunchly denying my accusations of hoarding, the half dozen video tapes holding birthdays and weddings and anniversaries within their depths… all things that have stood the test of time and weathered our random and infrequent cleaning sprees. Even as somebody who hates clutter—and who has no qualms about shedding the burden of unnecessary things—there is a part of me that has always known to stay away from these relics of our past. To tread carefully around the edges lest I leech away the comfort they still hold. Home may be a person, but most often it is also a place. And some roots, I have learned, are not easily unearthed.

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The first house my father rented for our use when we arrived in Accra was made of a drab grey stone that rendered it quite boring, even with the way two-storey buildings somehow always appeared more majestic than they were. It was quiet and unassuming, like my father himself. It was not a house that made ripples, that made you want to stop and look. It was a house meant to assimilate, and so, it fits us perfectly.

The second house we moved to after my father was promoted at work was situated on the same street as the private residence of the president, John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor, 2nd Head of State of the Fourth Republic, and the 13th sovereign of Ghana since it wrenched it’s freedom from its British overlords. His house was another two-storey building that bore very few dissimilarities to ours. We would see him sometimes, visiting, or whatever else he came to do when he wasn’t busy frowning at his citizens. He’d have an escort of two cars maybe, and that was it. Even back then, it was mind boggling to me, living on the same street as the sitting president, and that that was all the pomp and ceremony afforded to him. In contrast, the lives of Nigeria’s political elite were so far removed from the realities of it’s citizens: they might as well have been on another planet. It was one of the many things that would make it clear to me—geography aside—that I was far from home.

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As an introvert, I have always needed my feet to stand firm, to have somewhere I could always return to, somewhere that felt safe, and not be shifted around like a sailor on the deck of an ever restless ship. I was not consulted if I wanted to leave my home behind when we packed up our things to start life afresh. At three years old I probably thought it a grand adventure. And a new, well paying job in a leading oil company that elevated us from middle class to high class was not an opportunity my father could pass up for the whims of a fickle toddler anyway. Still, I wish I’d been old enough to have a say. Perhaps I would have warned us not to leave. I would have warned us about all the things we would miss out on if we did, like how several decades later, I am still not as close to my cousins as I should be, because I never got to form good relationships with them. Those familial ties that begin as children playing in the sand, the ones that last you a lifetime and hold you close when you can’t find your feet. Perhaps I would have have warned my parents about the cultural and religious shift, and how hard it would be to live in a country that did not even dole out a public holiday for Eid.

I was one of two muslims in my primary three class. The rest were scattered around the school like tomato seeds on a farm, and I was always surprised to hear that another had sprouted up. The other muslim in my class was called Hassan. Perhaps we should have become best friends because of this single thread that ran between us, but we were only ever friendly. Sometimes though, our eyes would catch when we joined the other students in the school church for morning service because the school only had an empty classroom to lend us in place of a mosque. While we were being taught the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm—both of which I can recite from memory even now—our eyes would catch, and hold.

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While we were in Ghana, there was never a birthday my mother did not celebrate. We had the money for it after all, and my mother had always liked nice things. My father showered her with his wealth, and she spent it accordingly, on herself, her husband, and on her children. We got everything we asked for, and things we did not; an entire room full of toys at our disposal, touristy journeys to every corner of the country, the best seats on the plane. Everything.

So when my brother’s twelfth birthday rolled around, it was a guarantee my mother would go all out. The star of the show: a massive bouncy castle that took up space in the front yard. I had no idea who half the children who showed up were, though I was still expected to make friends with them. Later, I would learn that a lot of them had been sons and daughters of governors, ministers, and ambassadors. The silver spoons in attendance were overflowing.

My outfit was all laid out and ready. All the kids were wearing jeans and shorts, t-shirts and brightly coloured blouses with flowery embroidery at the edges. I wanted to look like them. I wanted to be like them. For once, there were many muslim children among the party goers, courtesy of their ambassador parents. I wanted to make friends, of which I had so few. I did not want to be made fun of. I did not want to stand out. My mother had other ideas.

I’d picked out a white shirt and jeans shorts—the best combination of the clothes on display—when my mother barged in and sent me into the biggest tantrum of my life. She took away my carefully selected clothes and forced me into a traditional Hausa zani da riga, patterned in red and yellow lace. It wasn’t even new but had once belonged to her until she couldn’t fit into it anymore. Then she’d had the tailor alter it to fit me instead. The blouse was past my knees and the underside of the wrapper kept sliding out because I didn’t know how to tie it properly. The scratchy material of the lace meant I had to wear a slip underneath, but since it was also translucent, the whole world could see the little white vest hugging my prepubescent form. In that moment, I’d never hated anything more.

The pictures in my mother’s album shows me among the other kids, yelling and laughing in the bouncy castle even as I tripped over my uncomfortable clothes.

But before my child brain kicked in, I remember crying in a corner, seething with resentment and shrouded in clothes that my mother made me wear.

It would take years for me to understand what she’d done that day, and why. That amidst all the trappings of wealth and pride and ego that shadowed our every step, in the midst of a culture that was not truly ours, she had simply wanted me to be different. To never forget who I was, or where I came from.

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Whenever we returned to Nigeria for our yearly visits, the dogs we had no choice but to leave behind greeted us with a chorus of howls like an orchestra in motion, one picking up where the other left off until the whole neighborhood became aware of an awaited homecoming fulfilled. It was like they thought we’d died and they had to reinstate us into the land of the living. Overwhelmed with bags and suitcases and endless gifts, they would yap at our legs until they remembered to go yap instead at the curious neighbours and well wishers that inevitably followed our heels with the greedy desperation of neighbourhood strays.

While my father was hailed like a Minister and my mother was greeted like a queen, I would step into the cool shade of the entrance passage and feel something settle in my bones. Home at last. But for how long?

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We returned to Nigeria permanently a few months before my ninth birthday, when my father was transferred back. No more being plucked from one soil and planted in another. This is where we would set our roots.

As education’s greatest champion, my father enrolled me in school almost immediately, one run by a white woman who had married a Nigerian. I showed up at the enrollment interview wearing a tiny scarf my mother had found to serve as my hijab. I’d rarely had to wear one before then. My father made me take it off at the school gate. “They do things differently here,” he’d said. Like we were the guests. Like this was not our home. Like he had forgotten that here at least, I did not need to conform.

When I entered the primary four classroom, I was dismayed to find out that I was bigger than every single one of my classmates. Bigger, taller, and fatter. I’d never had to worry about that in my school in Ghana; we were almost all the same size. Here my long limbs gave me the appearance of a lighthouse amidst a sea of boats. Every eye was on me, and several giggles were sent in my direction. I was seated at the back of the class where at least, I could keep my tears to myself. I stood up to answer every question posed to me and the teacher had to remind me several times that I didn’t have to. That I could keep my seat and she would hear me just fine. I wondered if the reminders were as embarrassing for her as they were for me.

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My father lost his job a year after we came back. To this day, I do not know the reason why. Part of me has been too afraid to ask. With the loss of my father’s job came the loss of every privilege I’d been afforded in the past.

Nigeria was different now. Our house looked different and our lives off balance. The food we had to eat was different, our clothes were different. Our circle of friends diminished until only a few stragglers were left, then they too vanished. No more upscale fashion and expensive toys. No more Valentino and Carolina Herrera. Now, we had to learn how to be poor.

Over the course of several months, I would look at this place that by all rights I should have belonged to and instead see discrepancies. I felt adrift yet also stuck in limbo. Our house didn’t feel like our own. It didn’t smell like the key soap that we’d used for all our laundry in Ghana, nor the pungent smell of Kenkey and Wachia the gatemen used to save for me whenever they decided to make use of their salaries. The sand beneath my feet wasn’t soft like that on Akosumbo beach, where my father used to take my brothers and I on weekends, his strong arms around my tiny body while I wondered how anything could be so vast and overwhelming. Miyan kuka wasn’t marigold orange like the “Light soup” that my mother consumed by the bucketful while pregnant with my sister. And nothing was as vibrant as the honey coloured eyes of Afia the nanny, which came alive when she smiled, always happy to see her “little madam”. Here, in our single story house, there was no Tony the cook, his obeisant grin set against the backdrop of his sun darkened skin; no Muhammad the driver, carting us off on a whim to wherever we wanted to go; no teeming mass of people showing up on our doorstep to “greet” my father with all the subtlety of a town crier with access to a bull horn. No flock of women surrounding my mother with thinly veiled jealousy staining their eyes.

Instead, we were left with a paltry string of people showing up to offer their “sympathies” over my father’s misfortune, wearing practiced sorrow like their best clothes.

I felt faded, sand-papered coarse into uneven edges and salt water, and missing a home I’d spent so long not wanting to classify as such. Missing a life that was no longer mine to live.

#

On a sweltering Saturday, while the Nigerian sun wrought vengeance upon us through the half broken windows of my father’s bedroom, my mother dug into the corners of his wardrobe and brought out the past. NEPA had taken light, putting a momentary pause to our random cleaning spree. I was sweeping, while my mother wiped the dust off her hoarding victims with a rag that had no hope of ever regaining it’s original colour. She stopped and reached into the wardrobe door, pulling out the photo albums. I watched her face as it took on a familiar bittersweet hue, her henna–dyed fingers sifting through the folds of the past like a restless butterfly, settling on one page, then another, before taking flight once more. She stroked the pictures carefully, reminiscing out loud about where each was taken, who was in it, how much she bought the dress and jewels she wore, why my father was smiling, who my brother was teasing, if the juice had been worth it.I considered ignoring her. I contemplated putting down my broom, and leaving her to it. In the end, I sat down and listened.

About the Author:

Fatima Abdullahi is a muslim writer who sometimes writes poetry. She was the second place winner in the 2023 Dreamfoundry writing contest, and the 2nd runner up in the 2023 Valiant Scribe Poetry Competition, among other awards. Her poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in several literary magazines and journals, including Dark Matter Magazine, Augur Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Isele Magazine, Lolwe, Lunaris Review, The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and others. You can find her huddled in quiet corners, writing about tender topics like love and loss, hope and faith, the importance of fellowship, and the conceit of memory. More of her works can be found at: thesolitaryy.wordpress.com and on twitter at @Fatii_tii

*Feature image by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash