Behind the curtains Ayyiri was a sound of the drum of joy, but it is not same as the sound of mosquitoes wings moving around in the dark? Was it not same as the wails of the sirens from a far?

Was it not……. Was it not?. I regret the very first day i heard it, you’re his they said. I was overjoyed not knowing i was tied Not with those three strong ropes but with pain, They said ” marriage is form of worship” but didn’t told me i was going to the sanctuary, I didn’t know i was going back in time to the time of my forefathers that lived in slavery. Resistance in that place is seen as rebellion not as a form of bravery. ”You are now not only bonded by love, but patience and perseverance.

Love was for courtship ” my mother whispered to my ears, It made me wonder how love will end before it even starts? But it was the very last i shine this my 32 to the rising sun and the falling moon. The hands that i think would hold and caresses now grasp my neck and confines me The voice that was one my favourite now screams and defines, send shivers of fear to my spine He was the apple of these eyes that once shone with light, now dim with tears like he was a third layer of an onion. A heart that once beat with love now is suffering from tachycardia. I complained and they said ”a woman pride is in her husband’s house”

But where’s the pride when it was no longer her husband’s house but a dungeon in the early European empire As if living with a monster was better than a homeless shelter. As if the bruises he left on me didn’t go deeper than skin. How could you tell me ” the patient dog eat the fattest bone” when the water has dried and the stone either burst or burn and emit heat rays that send water raining down my cheeks? I was taught in geography class about earthquakes and erosion, but not heartquake and bloody eruption in the lumen of my Aorta?

Tell me my people how could you tell me ” stay for your children if you leave where do you want them to go” when i was dying every single day, that you are seeing me not seeing me. You said i should endure it but won’t want to walk with me even for a second when i embark on endurance trek? You said i can change him to be the man i want but this is a pendulum bulb A cycle that repeats like TCA cycle, a vicious spin like a wheel of fate yana gararamba a kan titi. It is a dance of dominance, that he enjoyed as if he’s at Davido’s show in O2 arena, it is like an athletic game–an olympic that has a medal to win I thought love should uplift, not tear apart.

I said I’m not staying you started calling me names, yes you belong to the same specie of monster. I left you said i wasn’t religious as if it wasn’t the religion that says ” a finger shouldn’t be lift on a woman to beat her”. It is not the religion that gave me freedom? Haaa? Abi i no read it well ne? Then you said i should remember culture, the one that said i wasn’t entitled to leave even when i was going through hell? The one that said man should carry his wrong doings like grace? Or the one that says woman was born to be caged? Who made the culture then?

You see these words ehn? They were not just arranged in lines But it carries the weight of a thousand cuts The silence screaming in my chest, i swallow my heart in my guts It carries the story of every woman shut down behind the curtains of GBV. A story of hearts that lives but still yearns for life…………. Deejasmah

Khadija Ismail is a student of Medical lab science, a Hausa novelist, writer, poet, essayist and content writer. Her works centres on society and romance, she uses words to address issues like GBV, Mental and public health. She is the writer of Nisfu Deeniy and Wani rabo. Her work will be published in Yanar gizo anthology.You can connect with her on Facebook as Khadija Bint Ismail and Deejasmah writer on Instagram and Tiktok.