"The One She Chose Against the World"
"Before I became a mother, Haneefa… I was a girl who wanted to be seen."
That's how it started. Not with a man. Not with love. Not even with you girls.
It started with a microphone made from a broomstick, my little sister as my fake camera operator, and me, standing in front of the cracked mirror in my mother's bedroom, saying,
"Good evening, this is Adunni Adewale, reporting live from Ibadan."
I wanted to be a newscaster, Haneefa.
Not just one of those women who read news without blinking—but the kind whose voice stopped people in traffic. The kind that wore blazers with shoulder pads and had their own segment. The kind that didn't just report the world. She commanded it.
Your grandmother, my mother—God rest her soul—used to shake her head and say,
"Adunni, if you like, keep reporting news to the wall. Just don't forget to sweep that floor when you're done."
She didn't understand. None of them did. My world was bigger than Mokola, bigger than the single-storey house with flaking paint and clanging pots and gospel music in the background.
I got into the University of Lagos at seventeen. Mass Communication. First girl in my entire compound to do so. I carried my dream like a crown on my head. Not heavy. Just precious.
And then… I met kabeer Ali.
Haneefa, let me tell you something dangerous:
It is one thing to be a girl with a dream.
It is another to be a girl with a dream… and then meet a boy who tells you, "I believe in you."
Kabeer was tall, with that kind of presence that made silence gather around him. He didn't speak much, but when he did, it felt like the truth. I met him in our campus common room. He was quoting James Baldwin to a group of students after class. I was passing by, and I stopped.
He looked at me and said,
"Some people want to be newscasters because they love stories. Others want to be heard. Which one are you?"
I didn't know. But I wanted him to keep talking.
We started talking after lectures. Then after midnight. Then all the time. He made me feel like I wasn't just Adunni from Ibadan, but a woman worthy of the world. He'd touch my notebook where I scribbled scripts and say,
"One day, this will be your legacy."
And I believed him.
So when he said,
"I want to marry you. But my parents won't accept you. You're Yoruba. You're Christian. They want a proper hausa girl."
And when he said,
"If we run away, if we leave Lagos together, will you come with me?"
I said yes.
I said yes.
I left school, Haneefa. I left school in my third year.
I left the only dream I'd carried since I was ten.
I left my mother, who said if I went, I should never return.
I left my name, my pride, my future… because I thought love was enough.
We moved to Kano. He promised he'd find work. That I could go back to school there. That we'd build a life.
Do you know what it feels like to wake up every morning, hungry and in love?
At first, it feels poetic. Like a sacrifice. Like you're part of some great romance.
Until the days pile up.
Until the stomach growls louder than the heart.
Until you start to wonder if he really loves you—or if you were just a rebellion he couldn't maintain.
Three months after I got pregnant with Aisha, kabeer changed.
He stopped holding me like I was made of gold.
He started staying out late.
He started coming home smelling like gin and perfume.
He said I was too emotional.
He said I made everything about me.
He said he was trapped.
And then one night, he said nothing at all.
Because he didn't come back.
I waited for three days.
I sat in front of that one-bedroom apartment, my belly just beginning to show, wondering if he'd gone to clear his head.
On the fourth day, a neighbor told me he saw kabeer boarding a bus to Lagos.
He left me. Just like that.
No note. No word.
Just air, where love used to be.
I walked into labour alone.
I gave birth to Aisha with no one holding my hand.
No mother beside me. No sisters. No father of my child.
Just pain. And tears. And the voice of a nurse saying,
"You're strong, madam. You're very strong."
But I wasn't strong, Haneefa.
I was broken.
I was twenty-two. And I was already a single mother.
"You want to know how it feels to be left, Haneefa? Like the whole world kept walking… and forgot to carry you along."
That's the thing they never tell you about abandonment.
It's not loud. It's not dramatic.
It's just quiet. Unbearably quiet.
Like the moment after a bomb goes off—but the only thing left ringing is your heart.
When kabeer left, he didn't just take his clothes or his promises.
He took my name. My dignity. My sense of worth.
I kept thinking he'd come back.
Maybe he just needed space. Maybe something happened. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But the truth was uglier.
He left me because I was no longer shiny.
Pregnancy ruined the fantasy.
Suddenly, I wasn't the fire-eyed girl with dreams.
I was just a woman whose body was changing.
A woman who needed food.
A woman who cried too easily.
A woman who wasn't fun anymore.
And when he left, the shame was a second skin.
I couldn't go back home. My mother had already warned me—
"Adunni, don't let love make you a fool."
And I had laughed and told her, "Mama, this one is different."
Different.
He blocked my number.
I called his friends. They said, "Forget am. Kabeer don move on."
Move on? How?
I was still there.
Still standing in the ruins of what we called love.
Still bleeding quietly from promises that never made it to the altar.
There were nights—God forgive me—
Nights I looked at my belly and resented the life growing inside me.
Not because I didn't want her.
But because I knew she would bind me to this man forever.
I sold my phone.
I washed clothes for neighbors.
I stood in the sun for hours just to earn 200 naira.
I ate once a day.
And even then, I made sure Aisha ate first—
Even though she was still in my womb.
She came in the middle of a power outage.
No light. No pain relief. No husband.
Just me. Screaming. Biting my own arm so I wouldn't wake the whole compound.
And when I finally held her…
She was quiet. Too quiet.
I thought she was gone.
But then she opened her eyes.
And those eyes—God, Haneefa—those eyes looked just like kabeer.
And I broke.
I broke so quietly, so completely, that I didn't even notice when the nurse took her from my arms.
I was there… but I wasn't there anymore.
For months after, I mothered her in fragments.
Some days, I loved her so hard, it scared me.
Other days, I cried while breastfeeding her, whispering apologies she could never understand.
"I'm sorry your father left us."
"I'm sorry I gave you this life."
"I'm sorry I wasn't enough to make him stay."
I wrote letters to kabeer that I never sent.
I burned them on the stove.
And as they turned to ash, I told myself:
This is the last tear I'll cry for him.
But I lied.
Even now, Haneefa, after all these years, I still dream of that moment—
The moment I watched him walk away in my mind for the thousandth time.
No goodbye. No explanation.
Just footsteps fading.
And me, too tired to chase.
Haneefa didn't say anything for a long time.
Her eyes were wide, still wet, staring not at her mother, but through her—as if she were seeing something beyond the room, beyond time itself.
"He left you?" she finally whispered. Her voice cracked mid-sentence, like a twig crushed underfoot. "You left your family, your church, everything… and he just left?"
Adunni didn't answer immediately. Her hands folded in her lap, old fingers trembling slightly with the weight of memory.
"I thought he was the one," she said, quietly. "My first love. My great gamble."
That was the part that broke her.
Haneefa turned her face away sharply, as if the truth stung. And it did.
The tears came slowly at first—hot, quiet drops that fell onto her palm. She tried to blink them back, biting her lip to stay composed. But how do you stay composed when you realize the woman who raised you was once a girl who lost everything for love, and was rewarded with loneliness?
"How do people do that?" Haneefa choked out. "How do they… take everything from someone and walk away like it was nothing?"
Adunni reached for her hand, but Haneefa pulled away—not in anger, but in despair. Her whole body was shaking now.
"You were just twenty-two," she whispered. "That's my age now, Mama. You were my age."
And that made it real. Too real.
It wasn't just a story anymore. It was a mirror.
And in it, Haneefa saw herself—full of dreams, wide-eyed and hopeful—standing at the edge of her own heartbreak.
Her breath came in heaves. And then she broke.
The kind of cry that doesn't look pretty.
That curls your back and shakes your ribs.
The kind that sounds like grief you didn't know was inside you.
Adunni leaned forward, her voice soft. "Cry, my daughter. Don't hold it. I cried too, that night. The night I waited for him under the mango tree, thinking he was just late. But he wasn't late. He was gone. And the girl I used to be… she left with him."
Haneefa leaned into her mother's arms.
And in that quiet, tear-stained moment, two generations of pain met each other.
Adunni held her tightly.
And Haneefa sobbed like she was mourning something that was never hers to lose.