III. The Night School
by Ibrahim Abdulhakeem
[this is the third in a four part series.
read We Build the Sunlight from the beginning.]
III. The Night School
We gathered in an unfinished mosque, roofless but holy enough. Lantern light painted faces gold. Aunty Sade taught us English letters, tracing each one in the sand. Some of us were old enough to be her fathers, but she called us “my children” and we obeyed.
“C is for community,” she said one night.
“What’s that?” someone asked.
She smiled. “The reason you’re all here together instead of sleeping.”
We practiced writing community until the sand became smooth with repetition. Outside, motorbikes coughed and died; the stars leaned in to watch. When the rain came suddenly, we covered our books with our bodies. Ink bled through the pages, but we didn’t run. Rain on skin felt like an exam we could all pass together.
Afterward, she looked at our drenched notebooks and said, “You’ve already learned it—the word is not on paper, it’s here.”
She tapped her chest. We nodded, shivering, illuminated by thunder.
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