Dear Reem,

You’ve always hated the word ‘family’. The idea of late night meals with Uncle T and Grandma didn’t sit well with you. You’d wear that same green t-shirt when everyone else wore matching Ankara. You hated that everyday when we walked back home from school, people could trace my face to yours and yours to mine. You hated that they called us identical twins, with names that rhymed, which led to songs, and mockery, and recognition—the worst of it all. You called all this a weak attempt to fix something that’s bound to always break and long as it took me to admit, you were right.

I hope this letter won’t get to you, because at the end of my rambling there might be no message to hold on to. I’m still always finding it hard to say simple things. It’s like stumbling into the mud, and then rolling over and over, without ever getting up.

Writing this now takes me back to one incident in SS2. When you stole Mrs Okoro’s purse and blamed it on me. And although Mrs Okoro wouldn’t believe her star student would do such. I remember I was still called in front of the classroom. Mocked by laughs and songs, while you stared from a corner, your laughter, the loudest of all. On our way home that day I asked why you did that and you simply responded “Why didn’t you say anything?”.

It’s this same question I ask myself as I remember everything about us. “Why didn’t I say anything?”, to your sly moves and lies and deceits that cost grandmother’s life? Why didn’t I say anything every time you lashed at me with unkind words? Why didn’t I say anything every time you returned from Uncle T’s shop, with bruises lining every part of your body. Which left blood stains on the bed sheet and scars that were reopened in no time? Why didn’t I say anything those nights your muffled screams deprived me of sleep?

I did not recognize your sacrifice back then, as I was the smart one with the good manners—the ideal pride of the family. I brought home good results to compensate Uncle T’s sponsorships. While you were condemned to work after schooling hours in his carpentry shop, because “your brain couldn’t hold book”.

As the pain of the past surges, I realise I don’t exactly know how to begin this conversation with you. My words are frozen by the pains you had to endure for years. There is no sentence, comfort enough, to tell you how sorry I am, for everything you had to endure. It’s been 5 years since we last saw each other. And the compass of life had led to two separate places. You, behind bars. And me, in Dev.

You’d deny it if anyone told you. And it might be one of the few bravest things I’ve ever done in my life. It was the year after your arrest. I had gone back to our childhood home and our once heavily furnished family house was covered with dust and cobwebs. Every picture on the wall carried a recognizable scent from childhood. The silence that filled the room gave me a reminder that things will never be the same no matter how much I denied the apocalypse. No voices rang through the halls, no songs to soften the silence. It was like all the colors on the canvas were washed away and everything had become white again.

I don’t deny the uncertainty as I entered the MaDe. And even though Dev is everything we’ve been promised, there’s always a looming loneliness most people like to deny. We never really speak of things before. It’s almost like a shameful thing not worthy of public discussion. We don’t talk of the shock of deletions, that our total annihilation was just one click away. We are numbed by the promises of eternity, stacks to satiate endless desires.

However, the blessing here is you’d always find someone to talk to. Our dehumanisation is something that unifies us and loss is a common language everyone understands. Sometimes when talks are good, I’m almost at peace with my decision of coming to Dev. I praise the works of Tariku Negasi, that’s rendered me into this digital form devoid of the foils of humanity.

However there are days like this one, when loneliness draws me back into the past. And I
think of you.

Reef.

Written by Zaynab Abodunrin