An Excerpt

The girls were named. One became Ayesha and the other Atika. Atika was smuggled out of the hospital in her fathers jacket while Ayesha was left behind looking at her sterile world from the the blurry walls of her plastic mould crib. At three-days old, tears ran down her cheeks unaccompanied by crying sounds and a young nurse who knew of her tragic birth sobbed into her uniform, her still blooming heart broken into a million pieces. She needn’t have cried much, Ayesha was taken to a house of her mothers relatives a few days later. “She’ll ask questions” Maymoonah said. “Hmmm” agreed Bilal. And they both knew there would be no way to hide the childs fair skin against their cinnamon-brown, her red gold hair against their jet-black. Ayesha still held little pieces of heaven in her tiny newborn fists and slept peacefully in the Cressida that took her home.

Advertisement