Arewa Girls

We were girls once.

The girls you once saw hawking on the streets of Arewa—selling awara, wainan rogo, dan wake and kosai by the junctions, beside bridges, under sheds near mechanic workshops where the ground was stained black with grease. We sold alale, tuwon madara, shinkafa da mai da yaji and dambu, near the Jummat mosques on Fridays.

But we are women now.

We became women when men old enough to be our fathers came knocking with shiny gifts and promises, even before our breasts became the size of palm nuts or we knew what it meant to see blood.

We are everywhere.

You’ll find our footprints in the veiny fissures on the mud walls of Korau’s Timbuktu-inspired Gobarau Minaret in Katsina, in the jagged hills of Mambilla Plateau. Our footprints stretch from the scorched sands of Sokoto to the sprawling forests of Gusau, from the slumbering streets of Bauchi to the bustling heart of Kano. In Arewa, a girl’s worth is her bride price, the strength of her womb, her ability to bring forth sons who will press play where their fathers paused.

Arewa girls are the same. So, think of us as one. Except for Aminatu, who took a detour. The girl who held on to her dream with a tight fist.

*

We had dreams.

Our dreams were sprouting buds, erased as days went by with the swiftness of hawks. The change came quietly, the way cobwebs appear in rooms.

Laraba dropped out in JSS3, three days before her sudden wedding to Alhaji Addo, her father’s best friend. Laraba, her skin the colour of a night without moonlight, who wanted to be a doctor.

Ummusalma never even started secondary school. Halidu, the rogue, forced himself on her. To settle the matter, she was compelled to marry him. Ummusalma, who had the most perfect teeth you’d ever see, wanted to be a dentist.

Sabikha was about to write her WAEC when a suitor came for her. Lamp-post-tall Sabikha, who wanted to be a nurse.

There was Mariam, too, who could solve math problems in her sleep. She wanted to study accounting and work in a bank. That same Mariam now wakes before dawn to tuka tuwo for her three children and seven others belonging to her uwar gida.

Hauwa, who could outlast a radio with fresh batteries, wanted to be a lawyer.

Naja’atu, with her beady eyes and owlish glasses, dreamed of writing soyayya novels and travelling the world.

Abida wanted to be an actress, but they told her, ‘So you want to lead a wayward life like Rahama Sadau?’

Rayhanna couldn’t even finish her sentence: ‘I want to be a fashion mo—’

‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un! So, you want to parade in pants and bras in public, before non-mahram men?’

And so our stories go.

*

At our madrasas, we gathered in small classrooms devoid of chairs, clad in street-sweeping hijabs, braving the heat. We fanned ourselves with folded notebooks. The harmattan wind howled outside as we listened to our mallams harp on about Nana Khadijah’s submission to the beloved Prophet. But they never dwelt on the fact that she was a rich and influential merchant, a woman who stood above men, who went out of her way to propose marriage to him. But we didn’t think like this at the time. We couldn’t think for ourselves.

No one told us how Nusaybah bint Ka’ab shielded the Prophet at Uhud. We didn’t know about the ancient queens who ruled Daura and Zazzau. Perhaps, those are strange stories about strange women we cannot become.

In those small classrooms, we listened. We nodded. We shifted. We bit our lips. We listened as they reminded us of Surah An-Nur, Ayah 31, and every other verse that lauds female modesty and submission. They told us that our men are entitled to four wives, leaving out the caveat about fairness.

The other day, when the Emir graced a maulid celebration organised by one of our madrasas, he pointed at us and said we had a hand in Arewa’s rot. That we gave birth to hoodlums, almajiris and rapists patrolling the streets.

We laughed quietly at first. Then, after thinking, we sneered.

What does this man know about us? What does he know about being an Arewa girl?

*

We attended our friends’ weddings, saw their lavish kayan lefe and began to dream of getting married. We also imagined that perhaps marriage would be freedom. Freedom from our parents, from everything we knew. There was dignity in finally leaving one’s father’s house. Marriage suddenly became the melody inside our heads, the measure by which we judged our worth. If you were married, your status was elevated; if you weren’t, you needed to do better. And so, we forgot our dreams. We made marriage our new dream.

So, we wore fine atamfas to look our best. We drank sha ka fashe to gain weight because no man wants a skinny girl. We searched for creams to make our skin lighter because no man wants a dark-skinned girl. We used maganin matsi to look younger. There was always something to change, always something about us that didn’t feel right enough. Everyone’s prayer was: Allah ya kawo miji nagari—may Allah bring a good husband—because getting a man was the only soundtrack of our lives.

And amid all these, there was Aminatu who kept going to school, braving the odds, enduring our snide remarks. We jeered, telling her a woman’s place is in the house of a man, not in the classroom.

We said these things because our mothers said them.

Because our fathers and our men said them.

And one day, our daughters will likely say them too.

*

If you go about Arewa today, you’ll see younger versions of us. Girls who’ve taken the batons from us, following in our footprints, footprints laid by others who came before.

What do you mean you haven’t seen us?

Tabdijam! Wake from your afternoon nap. Step out of your offices. Pause your scrolling, your reading, your gossiping, your typing. Pause your conferences and your football matches.

Pause. Pause. Pause.

Leave your glass-walled rooms, your air-conditioned houses with their unclogged gutters, in GRAs.

Step into the streets.

Spill into the motor parks, belching from too many bodies and too much noise. Smell the exhaust and dust. Go down that street. Take a left turn, then a right—onward to the markets, the big masjids, the mechanic sheds’ blackened floors.

Spill, spill, spill.

Spill into the streets of Arewa. Find our younger sisters, our daughters, our nieces, our cousins. See their eyes red from the unceasing abuse of firewood smoke. See their blackened pans sizzling with slices of doya da kwai, dankali, and awara. See their weary smiles—the ones they wear despite everything. Their purple lipstick worn, their careful makeup ruined by the heat, exposing the underwear of their faces.

Let their smiles arrest you in uncomfortable ways. Yes, in the litanies of many unsaid things they carry.

See the light in their voices.

We are one—unchanging, transcending time—a cycle that never ends. We are Arewa girls, beating hearts, lamps in our communities.

See how we cater to hunger. See how we strive with the little we have, so the path may endure for those waiting in line. We are the wicks, burning silently to keep the darkness away. We are Arewa girls. We are miraculous.

*

We are gathered around trays of hot pate and bowls of coleslaw at Sabikha’s fourth child’s naming ceremony when someone drops the news about Aminatu.

‘An samu sabuwar likita a asibiti.’

We can hardly believe it—Aminatu, the new doctor at Sha Ka Tafi, the maternal care centre we all go to? The food loses its taste in our mouths.

At Laraba’s sixth child’s naming ceremony, we sit in groups, mindless of the day’s heat, the joyful chatter of children around us. The news makes its rounds again, this time with a twist—Aminatu, the doctor, is still single. The noise around us dies as we imagine her pride, the arrogance she will exude when attending to us, asserting her superiority.

But we are shocked when we finally meet her, our bellies swollen with our fifth, sixth or seventh child. Aminatu smiles at us with teeth white like the inside of a freshly smashed coconut. We close our mouths lest she see the rust on our teeth. Her white doctor’s gown is as clean as her teeth. We look down at the oil stains on our tired wrappers, the loose hems of our veils, the patches on our hijabs. We admire her still firm breasts. Her eyes are rimmed with red—the kind sleep leaves behind when it has been borrowed too often. Her voice falters for a breath, then finds its footing. We wonder how long she has been on her feet, when she last closed her eyes without considering the time. The question presses at our mouths, but we swallow it.

We sit, quiet.

And though we do not hate Aminatu, we cannot stand the reminder of what we are not. Of what we might have been. Deep down, we wish for a taste of her life. For what it means to be free, to be without certain obligations.

Why must our children run to us at all times? Why must our men always seek us out, even on nights when we aren’t up for it? Why can’t we tell them no, not this time, not tonight?

Sometimes, we are sad. But we pray. We hug our children. We fill the emptiness with chatter and laughter and do not let the marauding darkness overrun the roads of our minds. We tell ourselves that this sadness is the devil’s work, trying to pull us down.

We say: Look at what we’ve created, by Allah’s will. Look at the work of our hands and wombs. See how we hold our families together. See the satisfaction on the faces of our men when they collapse on top of us, sweaty and spent. See the glee in their eyes as they devour our meals, inviting friends to taste what their women have cooked.

Aren’t we miraculous in the way we hold things together with so little? Aren’t we miraculous? We are not doctors saving lives in hospitals. But that’s fine. We save lives in our own way. We are miraculous.

*

We see girls from other places. Girls unlike us. Their heads uncovered. Girls whose garments leave little to the imagination. Girls whose voices rise louder than muezzins. Girls who elbow their way into fields dominated by men.

We say, Subhanallah!

We say, A’udhu billahi min ash-shaytaan-ir-rajeem!

We say these girls have gone astray, led by Shaitan himself.

We rebuke them.

We say a woman should not be loud.

A woman should be seen, not heard.

We never want to be like them.

Yet, despite all the sermons we obey, despite all the kayan mata we stuff into our bodies, the whitening creams, the perfumes, the weight-gain pills, despite all our efforts to become the shape of the women we are told to be, our men still look elsewhere.

Soon, there is a co-wife.

Then another.

Sometimes they are our cousins, our nieces, even our best friends. Their plight becomes ours, but what does it matter?

We wet our pillows with tears and call ourselves failures.

We must not have bowed low enough, smiled softly enough.

We must have spoken louder than was needed.

We must not have mixed the herbs correctly.

We must have used too much perfume.

Maybe our soups tasted bland, and our tuwo had too many seeds.

We must have disobeyed some unspoken rule.

Maybe we took two spoons of the coconut water mixed with the soft bone of a day-old chick, instead of one.

Why did we do that?

Why didn’t we listen?

Why didn’t we get it right?

Why?
Why?
Why?

*

We go to the hospital again, stomachs swollen again. We have aged, but Aminatu looks the same. She smiles, her teeth perfect, her gloved hands tender on our skin. She leaves us, but her perfume doesn’t. What kind of oud smells so nice and everlasting? We smell our hijabs and hold our breaths.

We want to tell her that we envy her, that we wish we were in her place. But we don’t. We leave instead.

Curious about the fate of women like her, we ask our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers if someone like Aminatu had ever existed in their time.

They tell us about Habibatu whose hips turned water when she danced, whose voice was honey when she sang. Habibatu, whose face shone like the sun during the day and like a full moon during the night. Habibatu, whose name was the measure of unattainable beauty.

Habibatu, whom all men desired—men whose names were synonymous with gold, silver, camels and salt. Habibatu, who chose to run away with a flutist, a pauper who had no gold, no silver, no camels, no salt, not even a kwandala to his name.

We ask what became of Habibatu.

They say Habibatu’s decision killed her mother and brought shame upon her father.

They say Habibatu died a wretched death because she absconded with her lover, the flutist who had no kwandala to his name.

She absconded and caused her family great sorrow.

We believed.

We didn’t want to end up like Habibatu. We, who were not even half as beautiful as she.

If our parents said this is where they wanted us to stand, by Allah, we would stand there.

If they said this is where they wanted us to go, by Allah, we would go, without hesitation, without questioning their decisions.

They said rebellion is a burning house. The end is ash.

We believed.

So, we fold our arms.

We wait for the tragedy to befall Aminatu.

*

We are gathered at a friend’s kamu, fawning and debating whose henna looks best, while the DJ threatens to blast our eardrums with wedding songs by Ali Jita, Namenj and Hamisu Breaker, when someone shouts, ‘Kun ji kuwa? Aminatu is getting married!’ Another voice adds, ‘Ai bature ne mijin.’

We are doubly shocked—Aminatu getting married to a foreigner? At first, we think it’s a joke, but we hear it from credible mouths. Emtee’s lyrics from the booming speakers—Na lura kece ruhina /  Burina akawoki dakina—fade away as we turn this sudden discovery over in our minds.

Our men are furious. Our men, who had secretly courted her, admired her because she was many things we weren’t. Our men are furious. Who does she think she is? They believe Aminatu thinks she is too good for them.

Arrogant fool.

Stupid bitch.

Yar iska.

Karuwa.

Shashasha.

They call her numerous vile names.

We scrub hard and stab soapy plates into water and lash our children with hellish tongues, while hissing and cursing Aminatu inside our minds.

We call her vile names.

Who is she to enjoy freedom and still end up with a man? A foreigner for that matter? Didn’t all our mothers say the price of rebellion was self-destruction? Didn’t they say Aminatu would suffer the same fate as Habibatu? Did they lie to us? Did they cook up some story to keep us in line?

We don’t want to believe.

Deep down, we want evil to visit Aminatu—for her defiance, for choosing her dream. How can she eat her cake and still have it? No, that’s not how the world works. That’s not how the world should work.

But Aminatu gets married before our very eyes. Her wedding is lavish. Her kayan lefe is the stuff of envy. Her wedding-day glow is the stuff of dreams.

Aminatu keeps her job. Aminatu is both wife and doctor.

No, no, no—this is not what we envisaged for Aminatu.

Our men say the shegiya’s marriage won’t last.

We say the shegiya’s marriage won’t last.

We say no man would tolerate a woman whose marital home isn’t her sole focus.

We say no woman can juggle marriage with such a demanding job.

We say cracks will soon appear on Aminatu’s matrimonial walls, and lizards will make merry.

We say many things until our voices become hoarse.

A year passes. We wait.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

We are still waiting.

Aminatu is still a wife and doctor. Aminatu’s teeth still glow like a lamp with everlasting oil. Her Coca-Cola shape remains. Her face glows even more. She holds her head high.

We are becoming miserable, so we try not to think of Aminatu. Because in life, sometimes we win. Sometimes we fail.

When we go to the hospital, stomachs swollen again, she is still very welcoming. We have aged, but Aminatu looks the same. She smiles and gives us advice. She has always been kind, always approachable.

We wonder if Aminatu is human at all.

We never see her angry.

Does she ever cry, get sad, become tired or hate her life?

Why is she always smiling at us as if we’re asking for her pity or kindness?

We know how haughty we’d be if we were in her shoes.

How can someone be this perfect, Ya Illahi?

Or maybe we have not seen the other side of her. Or maybe we’re only seeing what we want to see, what she wants us to see?

We want to ask her if the rumour we heard at Mariam’s cousin’s kamu was true.

Did she quarrel with her white husband?

Is it true that he packed his things and left the country?

They said she cheated with a colleague.

But why should we believe when Aminatu is smiling, her face bright like a lantern?

Someone said they saw the white husband leave. But don’t our men, too, leave—on holidays, on business trips?

We ask Aminatu nothing.

Instead, we remember other gossip to distract ourselves, pinching the inside of our noses to diminish the strong hospital smell and, of course, forget Aminatu’s soft hands on us.

We remember Mariam’s cousin, whose kamu we attended. We were surprised when the silly girl left her husband after a month, saying he couldn’t satisfy her in bed.

We laughed when we first heard the news.

We laughed.

Aminatu is saying something to us now, her gloved hands in the air, her warm eyes on us.

Is that a tired smile on her face?

We look away, at the high ceiling, at a small spider crawling on the white wall, at a potted plant with scanty leaves browning, Aminatu’s words fading.

We think of another girl who left her husband, too. Where are these girls of today getting their boldness from? They know nothing about life.

But in truth, we never really wished Aminatu bad. Instead, these events open a hidden vista in our minds. We realise we were wrong to forfeit our dreams—that a woman can eat her cake and still have it. Arewa girls can eat their cake and still have it.

It was not rebellion or defiance, but choice—the courage to make decisions that may seem irrational to others and to stand by them. But now, we don’t know what to do with this newfound clarity. We don’t know how to navigate any path other than the one we know. Is it too late?

*

We wake up one day to the news that one Hajiya Fatima has been appointed Minister of Education. The news is strange. We don’t know what to make of it. We don’t know what to do with the rare news of another successful Arewa woman. Maybe this is hope. Maybe not. Maybe it’s a trick. Our voices differ. Perhaps we should be happy. But then—what use is a ray of light in a dark room?

Inside our dimly lit rooms, we open our troubled hearts to our men. We fixate on their shadows as their faces contort, their hands flail in the air and their voices rise, telling us to be wary of the type of friends we keep. How can we say we are unhappy when they slave daily to cater to all our needs? How can we say we are in chains?

We wrap our hearts up again, but we know better now.

Now we look at our younger sisters, daughters, nieces and cousins and wonder if we can tell them a different story about Habibatu—the one whose hips turned water when she danced, whose voice was honey when she sang, whose face shone like the sun by day and the full moon by night. Habibatu, who ran away with a flutist pauper who had no kwandala to his name.

And when they ask us—as they help us tuka the tuwo in the kitchen or sit before us while we trim and apply henna on their nails—what became of Habibatu? We will say: Habibatu’s decision didn’t kill her mother, for her mother believed her daughter would return. We will say Habibatu never disgraced her father. We will say Habibatu didn’t die a wretched death. We will say Habibatu returned with two daughters and her flutist lover, who once had no kwandala to his name but now had all the gold in the world.

And we will tell them about Aminatu. Look at her. Look at how she is thriving, saving lives and how she dared to take a path other than the one we were told to. Look at how miraculous she is.

If they listen, we hope they see opportunity where we saw restriction. We hope they find freedom instead of chains, strength instead of fear. We will tell them. We will tell them. We will tell them everything we are only getting to know now—now that we are women.

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2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist

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