II. The Market Choir
by Ibrahim Abdulhakeem
[this is the second in a four part series.
read We Build the Sunlight from the beginning.]
II. The Market Choir
On Fridays, the market sang.
Not like a choir with robes and rhythm, but with hundreds of untrained voices—price calls, gossip, goats complaining.
Mama Bisi always started it. She’d shout, “Tomato sweet pass last week o!” and someone else would respond with, “Na lie! Last week one dey red like sin!” The rest of us joined the chorus.
A stranger came one day—earphones, sunglasses, silence. He flinched at every shout, every laughter-crack. I sold him oranges, and he whispered “Too loud here.” I said, “That’s how we speak joy.”
He left before noon.
But that evening, he came back with a small recorder. “Can I—listen again?”
He spent three days with us, gathering sound. Two weeks later, a radio played our market’s voice across the state. We heard ourselves laughing, bargaining, living. It was ugly and glorious.
When the program ended, we stood still, letting our own echoes fade. The stranger had captured something fragile and returned it to us—our noise, our proof of being.
Back to the 2026 Flash Suite Contest
What’s New at Defenestrationism.net
home/ Bonafides
by 
by
Our sphere