Chapter 22 – Words in the Dark

The workshop started small six people on Zoom every other Wednesday at 9 p.m., when Lagos had finally quieted enough for real listening. Adeyemi called it “Reading After Dark.” No syllabus. No grades. Just books, questions, and whatever came up when people felt safe enough to speak.

By the third month the group had grown to twelve. Leke was always there first camera on, mic unmuted, ready with a question before anyone else logged in. The others trickled in: a lawyer who read poetry to unwind, a nurse who quoted Baldwin between shifts, a graphic designer who sketched while they talked, a retired civil servant who’d never studied literature but wanted to now.

Tonight they were on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. Adeyemi had asked them to come ready with one line that stayed with them.

She started the way she always did soft voice, no rush.

“Let’s begin with what lingered. One line. No explanations yet. Just read it.”

Leke went first.

“‘Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle life can be.’”

A murmur of agreement rippled through the chat.

The lawyer read next: “‘You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?’”

The nurse: “‘Some people are born to be loved, and some people are born to be admired.’”

They went around, slow and careful, like passing something fragile.

When it came back to Adeyemi she paused.

“‘The real tragedy of our time is not the violence done to us, but the violence we do to ourselves by not speaking the truth.’”

Silence followed comfortable, heavy.

Leke typed in the chat first: That one hurts the most.

Someone else replied: Because it’s true.

They talked for two hours about silence, about survival, about what it costs to tell the truth when the world punishes it. Adeyemi listened more than she spoke, guiding only when the conversation drifted too far or someone needed to be heard.

At 11:15 most people logged off with quiet goodnights.

Leke stayed.

He turned his camera back on after the others left.

“You okay?” he asked.

She smiled small, tired, real.

“Better than okay. That was a good group tonight.”

He leaned closer to his screen.

“You sounded… different when you read that line. Like it wasn’t just a quote.”

She looked straight into the camera.

“It wasn’t.”

A long pause.

“You ever think about telling your own story?” he asked quietly. “Not the headlines. The real one. The one only you know.”

She exhaled slowly.

“Sometimes. But some stories aren’t meant to be public. They’re meant to be carried. Quietly. By the people who lived them.”

He nodded.

“And the ones who lived them with you?”

She thought of four faces younger then, hungrier then scattered now across cities and countries.

“They carry their versions too,” she said. “That’s enough.”

Leke smiled small, crooked, young.

“Mine’s still being written,” he said. “With you in it.”

She laughed soft, warm.

“Then keep writing carefully. I’m not done reading yet.”

He reached toward his camera like he could touch her through the screen.

“Green?”

She leaned closer too.

“Green.”

They stayed like that a little longer two faces on screens, miles apart but close enough to feel.

Outside, Lagos kept its rhythm late-night generators, distant music, the low hum of a city that never quite rests.

Inside, a woman who once taught in locked classrooms now taught in open ones.

And a young man who once read her words on a page now heard them in the dark.

No rush.

No rules left to break.

Just two people learning how to speak the truth slowly, honestly, one line at a time.