Microfiction 21: Doctor

For Muslims across the world, Ramadhan is a special opportunity to turn a corner and adopt desirable virtues recommended by our Prophet (p.b.u.h), among other things.

This Ramadhan am challening myself to accurately depict at least five of these virtues, through the most expressive creative way I can think of. In my case I chose microfiction.

The singular rule of the challenge being that particular virtue to be depicted should be hidden in the subtext and left to the reader to guess which one it is, meaning neither the title nor the dialogue of the characters should explicitly reveal the virtue in question.

Though I’ve started very late I do hope my fellow writers will join in with their own particular genre and flair that they prefer.

 

If there was anything that offered him distraction from the terrifying fire in her eyes it was probably the unbearable pain he experienced in his forearms from her iron grip.

There was pain in her eyes too, though he only caught glimpses of it when she would occasionally let her guard down, like a flash of lightning on a dark night sky. He knew only too well why it was there, the pain, and he was not proud of it. The guilt of it made him feel small.

She was shouting. Screaming. Not the incoherent mindless babble of a madwoman, but the damning curse of a pained mother, each word a carefully hurled scimitar delivering a wound two-fold as punishing as that of the previous one.

‘You killed her. You killed my daughter. Daktari aina gani wewe? You should not call yourself a doctor!’

On the occasion when we didn’t question his qualifications for his practice he wondered how long he would have to spend in a psychiatric ward to recover from this incident. And prosthetic arms? Those felt like an inevitable future for him, he could barely feel his fingers anymore.

Then, as if having spent all her energy and will to mourn and scorn, he felt her grip on his arms weaken, the expression on her face soften, and he worried she might drop to the floor from exhaustion. In stead she pulled him closer and embraced him.

There she cried for a minute.

‘The best doctor in the world would have made the same mistake…it was meant to be.’

Kericho

I would have asked for one thing only. That I was better introduced to a place so cursed with beauty.

Instead we arrive on the epilogue of a dark starless night frivolously rubbing blank tired eyes just to see two steps ahead, the neon sign of a supermarket offering the only connection to the city life we’ve taken an involuntary recess from. Our bus having been consumed by distance and the imperceptible horizon, we struggle to identify signs of life.

A man we immediately identify as the security guard of the supermarket reveals himself, detaching himself from the background to which he had blended so well he catches us by surprise. Upon quick inspection I notice on him an axe, a panga, a spear and a nuclear football. Sufficiently armed I would say, though you might feel inclined to disagree. He is exceptionally tall and intimidating but all the posturing and tension evaporate as soon as he offers a greeting.

We greet him back and identify ourselves as guests of the owner of the supermarket and seek his advice for the nearest guest house where we tell him we hope to complete our quota of sleep for the night. He duly offers his assistance pointing us to a building that stands a fair distance away, lights from the top floor giving it the ethereal feel of a beacon in the night. He stops halfway, the tension creeping back into his face as a dark covered pickup strolls past, turns a corner and parks a few paces away for the length of time between two hiccups before moving on.

‘You can never trust these small personal cars. Always carrying the suspicious type.’

We inquire whether they’ve given him trouble before.

‘Plenty. Heh, but we always know how to respond, without mercy.’ He swipes his panga across the air.

We thank him for his help and set off to the guest house which initially appears deserted until the security guard there also melts away from the background that had swallowed him (seems to be theme in these parts) and greets us before he and a stumbling receptionist show us to the last rooms available. This exercise, like the rest of the night thus far, is not so straightforward, seeing as the rooms were sparkling new and thus unnumbered and the receptionist also hasn’t kept track of those that were occupied already and those not. We embark on a quest to try the keys yet to be taken on every door on the top floor, cause such a ruckus as sparks a protest from sleeping guests that threatens to set the whole building on fire.

We identify empty rooms for us to occupy eventually. I jump in immediately and set down my head on a pillow that smells of cigarette smoke and itches my cheek like crazy, unaware that in the morning, none of it would matter, as this land in the middle of the greatest of rift valleys would, like a bride on a her wedding night to her groom, dramatically and unashamadely reveal her charms to me.

 

The Commute – 4

The Appetent Operator

Darling dearest,

Time is a vessel, delivering me ever closer and closer to you,

Space is a fiend, taunting me constantly with reminders of our separation.

I’ve found that the most bizarre, the most inspiring – in their own particular ways – of characters tend to reveal themselves in the dark of morning…young illustrious kids trudging along to school, their ABCs and 123s not as easy as had been advertised, werewolves heading the opposite direction to hang up their boots after a hard night’s toil and, of course, this zealous captain who piloted our carriage.

This morning, while fleeing demons only apparent to him, this man put on quite a show. There was the poor defenseless gear stick that he assaulted with such senseless violence as might put a gear stick with less mental resolve in the madhouse. There was the chassis of the bus, which on occasions when it wasn’t five feet in the air, was scraping against the road at speeds of deliver-me-to-my-Maker kilometers per hour.

This man was blind to the law, deaf to our pleas to spare our lives and…er, seemingly medically mute since he communicated with aforementioned demons through nods and shakes of his head.

The last straw came when he drove our bus at full speed through a bump, it took off on a tangent into the air, performed a half-barrel roll, bounced off the road, yes, find any reputable book of records anywhere in the world and I promise it will affirm my word, that this morning, at the hands of a madman a bus on a road I journey on flipped, so that momentarily up was down, bounced off that same road, righted itself and continued on as if all was it was meant to be.

Upon this last act of anarchy, I decided to protest, and was on the point of walking up to the driver to give him a piece of my mind when I was thrown into the roof of the bus by its unpredictable trajectory so that I ran back to my seat humbled.

Grim as it sounds that I thought I might see the end of days in this bus, maybe even that might have been mercy compared to the grimmer fate that awaited me.

The Commute – 3

The Upsetting Scramble

My dear Delilah,

I’ve always believed the two of us should never be further apart than the wheels of this bus and the road they kiss.

But it’s such a shame we can’t fit into a pea pod, if we tried with might or prayer.

Dearest darling, we stood on that bus stage for ages after the first bus had left. We waited and waited and waited.

And because humanity had outspent the auspices of the sun, which had today thus elected to rise on planets Mars and Jupiter and never on planet Earth, it wasn’t long before frost set in. I had a sudden sobering realization that I could not move my limbs. I tried to remember the last time I had blinked, and between the icicles on my lashes and the paper crisp eyelids judged it to have been so so many minutes ago.

So this is it! This is the end! So I believed it was.

I should make my peace. So I did

Maybe write a will? But I had nothing to will to anyone.

Then, even as I gradually grew comfortable with my inevitable end, a sound came to us hollow and distant. A honking noise, rabid, erratic, on any other day incredibly annoying, but today it was like the call of adhan to a Muslim lost in a foreign country.

It arrived a minute later, blue yellow paint peeling off, leaning too much on one side, some of its windows jammed in place in awkward angles. You should have seen the effect it had on the queue, how quickly the poor frozen humanity thawed and then just as quickly forgot every last lesson of civilized decorum. It was a fight for all I tell you as every man, woman and toddler scrambled after that poor carriage which strained under the new weight.

I made a run for it too before I found myself hurled to the pavement by a lady half my size who then gave me such a feral hungry look I wondered if she was considering how to prepare me for lunch. Marinate him first or, what the heck just throw him in the pan.

Then just as the madness peaked and the bus was nearly toppling over, another bus arrived and soon a whole fleet, and so we all calmed down, looked at each other overwhelmed with shame, picked up our handbags and backpacks and dismembered limbs and fell back into organized files once more and we were soon all comfortably accommodated in one or the other bus. I looked to my side to regard the passenger I shared a seat with and to offer them the blessing of a greeting but who else should it be there, next to me, than that old man from earlier, cross as ever with me.

Thus was there so much discomfort in this ride I took this morning, even as it paled in comparison to what disaster I was being delivered to.

The Commute

The Interminably Long Queue.

My Dear Delilah,

Every road I take leads to you, every morning, evening and every summer.

But today something terrble happened. Something foul and very awful that will change everything about so many things.

You see there was this matter of the long queue at the bus station i had to contend with. I tell you my dearest Delilah, this queue was hellish. It spanned three abreast,and hundreds long. Strangely enough, it sequenced a member of every culture I can imagine. There was a man and his hijabi wife, followed by another couple with their toddler, all donning matching turbans, all the way down to a mysterious looking old woman with a twisted smile and a milk white scarf whose cult I couldnt quite place. And this sequence as it was repeated itself over and over ad nauseam.

The size of this crowd intrigued me so much that thought I foolishly, given to abandoning foresight, to ask the old man in front of me, ‘Which gate of Heaven do you think this bus pulls up to?’

For that, my dearest one, for my childish kidding ways, I was reprimanded in every tongue available and my parenting brought to question. Then I was banished by the crowd to the end of the queue, which was where I stood already, only now it had the coat of shame and guilt painted over it.

And thus began my commute Delilah. Yet not even this was the worst that happened to me today.

That comes soon after.

---

photo courtesy: Africa News 24-7

Microfiction #20: Up Is Down

 

Is peanut a type of butter.
What about upside? Is it a type of down?

Stop it with the pointless questions. You won’t amount to much in life if you persist so.

But Kevin never listened. And he never ceased persisting so.

When he got his first job, he questioned why ties had to be so unyieldingly stiff.

He custom made his own ties, from soft material that flailed gleefully in the wind. It was horrible. He would spend the majority of the day pulling it off his face. He had trouble communicating with his colleagues.

But he persisted on, obviously, seeking solutions to his new formed problem.

One day, he finally got it, and like a small child learning to stand, shivering with fear of failure, fear for his life and worse his reputation, he did the unthinkable.

The next day he walked into the office, much to the horror of everyone he met, walking…on his two feet!

It was awkward at first, seeing things upside down. Reading people’s expressions was particularly hard. But over time he found his thoughts grew more lucid, he fainted less and less per day than his colleagues did on average. He soon conducted research to prove that walking upside down improved life expectancy vastly because of the new ease of ingesting food that came with it.

His new antics, originally a source of ridicule, soon earned the attention of the Council of Revered Upsiders who put out the word that he be captured immediately. He evaded capture effortlessly, because his pursuers couldn’t keep up, running on their hands as they were and passing out every few meters.

Legend has it that he outlived his rivals, spending the rest of his days in the woods, persisting in his research and silently inspiring a cadre of rebels like him, at a camp known to a few exclusive where an inscription in a cave wall of him with arms and legs outstretched in midair doubles as tribute as well as proof that he was the closest a man had ever come to flying.

Microfiction #19: Unfit

Something caught in Joanna’s throat. It might as well have been the finger of death how mightily she coughed.

She coughed and hemmed and wheezed and her eyes watered incredibly. Then she coughed some more, forcefully and without apology, until her airway cleared.

Then she cursed her ancestry on her father’s side, out loud. Having done that, she proceeded to curse her ancestry on her mother’s side in most flowery language.

Then she cried for a short minute when she remembered how close she had just come to death. That inevitably graduated to sniffing and snorting the phlegm that blocked her nose.

Then she receded once more to cursing and swearing. She swore by the Christian and Islamic God, and threw in a few deities whose names she remembered.

Then she calmed herself once more, readjusted the headphones on her head, and rasped into the microphone:

‘Asante mpenzi msikilizaji for being patient with me, you’re still listening to the one and only Radio Mwuungwana,…’ While her bewildered colleagues looked on in horror from the other side of the studio.

Joanna didn’t last long in her new job.

Limuru

I find myself where many traditionally end up the week after they graduated, in the countryside (ushago) where tall tales of villages gathering to feast and celebrate their sons and daughters achievements stand up well to scrutiny seeing as how folks here really take their time. The landscape outside is a portrait stolen from the textbooks I used to begrudgingly flip through in primary school, endless green dripping down endless rolling hills. I stare at all that green and lose the past quarter century I’ve lived. I lose my name. I am a free entity floating without purpose or history. I forget about the four hour trek it took to get here in the morning or that one hour of that time I spent stuck in a monster of a jam.

It doesn’t last.

I’m reminded quickly of my responsibilities when we pull up into Limuru town. Calling Limuru town a town is unfair to all the other towns. It’s a strange little open market, flanked by shops and the occasional residential building. Everyone here seems to be selling, you could start a drinking game for every person you spot who is actually buying, if you’re for that kind of thing. The stalls spill over from the shade put up to house them and choke the road. Our driver and, coincidentally, the first of my pair of students complains about this fact and leaves his post to raise issue with a lorry driver who’s gleefully slothing up, having gobbled up the last inch of the road. This mistake by my student is about to cost us dearly.

There’s something so gangster about having a badge flashed at you, even if it be a mere municipal officer’s badge. It stirs the resting Kisauni guy inside of me. I might as well have a rolled up joint in my hand and a rusted panga down the back of my pants. But the man behind the badge is uncharacteristically charming for someone doing this job that he spoils the script for such a setup. He’s so lean and sharply dressed might have passed off as a teacher under different circumstances.

‘Why do you park in the middle of the road, kijanaa?’

It doesnt help that I stutter my response a bit when I protest.

‘Tuende ofisini.’

To my relief my student returns imminently but the look on his face tells me he’s not confident about his chances either.

I leave the two in the car to sort things out. Their private congress lasts well over an hour but by the time its over, a ‘fine’ of 8000 is reduced to a quarter that price. I inform my student that he might have well toppled my mother as the ultimate shopping partner when you’re on a budget. The officer even left him his number to call should he ever get troubled by other county officers while in town. Good of him to secure his client as all good businessmen (public administrators)  do.

The whole fracas has taken its toll. We realize quickly that the day has run out on us. My student hits the dashboard in frustration. ‘I’ve never gone a day without making sales, man! Hiyo pesa amekula, what will he buy with it when we’ve been unable to supply the places he shops at?’

Today everyone has something to learn in that case, I muse. As for myself, I have seen both the good and the bad working Kenyans go through less than three days after graduating. I do not look forward to the ugly.

The journey back thus begins amid morale-hitting acceding to defeat, idle reflection and my dreading of the very long commute that awaits me, and my buns have turned into cold hard steel from sitting in a car for the most part of the day but man the view this place offers me!

You know I think I wouldn’t mind getting stuck in traffic here all day.

Microfiction 18: Jacob and TIM

For the heck of it let’s call this the second half of a two-part microfiction ‘series’. In that case, it would probably be better to read the first part here first before reading this one.

…wherein a scientist is drunk…

Jacob was a man obsessed with balance although, ironically, but through no fault of his, his life had been devoid of it for a while now.

When his ex-wife had strangle-armed the kids away from him that had been the tipping point. He’d regressed from the brilliant particle physicist to an ordinary man married to the bottle. On the eve of the day when his boss would lay him off after repeated attempts to return him to the man he’d once been, Jacob did the unthinkable.

He broke into the facility, commandeered a tank from the yard in the military wing and ran with it straight through the TIM (Temporal Interface Machine) even though it hadn’t been commissioned for human testing for another month.

Drunk as he was, he’d still been aware enough to set the destination timeline to the era of Ancient Greece and just toward the end of the conflict between Athens and Troy and more precisely right before that infamous event with the wooden horse which he’d always considered an imbalance of imagination. He was going to set that right! He was going to bring balance!

Having sufficiently and satisfactorily determined where he had landed in time he proceeded to lay out his afore-engineered plan before stepping out and addressing the crowd.

He had never been a man of linguistics, so he couldn’t speak Greek or whatever tongue these Trojans used. In stead he gestured wildly and with little coordination. He pointed to the tank then to himself and then tapped his finger on his temple. Creature/Machine. Man inside. Think.

One thing he had failed to predict was that once they had seen the sheer power of the machine that they would have wanted to know how the machine worked so they could use it against their enemy as evidenced by the sudden appearance of the sharp point of a spear inches away from his right eye.

Another thing, far worse, that in his state of imbibement Joshua had failed to recall, was that the TIM still only worked one-way and that he was by definition, stuck. In the past. Tipping balance from one side to the other.

Microfiction #17: The Curious Beast

…wherein confounding events threaten everything…

Edonis was understandably irritated when his junior commissioner burst into the room and with bated breath gasped the words, ‘Well, sir, I don’t know how to explain this…’

His irritation turned to consternation when his junior escorted him to the courtyard right outside the royal palace, where a gathering crowd poked uncomprehending gazes at an awkward beast that commanded attention as much as it repulsed. It was unimaginably flat and bulky looking, with no discernible limbs but for snaky coil or belt that rattled underneath it and all around its sides.

For Edonis, the creature’s appearance presented a complication. Having been charged with outthinking the filthy Greeks, who right now were busy building some infernal contraption outside the city walls, his failure to predict this event and worse, his inability to recognize the puzzling creature exposed an embarrassing weakness in his leadership.

‘Where…’ he began to ask.

‘From nowhere sir. It just appeared.’ Came the rehearsed response.

Presently, the creature’s snout swung from end to end and like puppets the crowd cleared away at least two paces from the direction it pointed with each swing. Then something remarkable happened. A most unsettling hiss emanated from the creature, and a bright light blinded everyone within the courtyard. The guard post fifteen yards away was, as if through sorcery, reduced to a pile of rubble along with the guard who had been inside it.

It took a while for relative calm to return to the courtyard after that, but with reasonable efficiency and speed the civilians had been cleared and Edonis’ charges had formed a half-hearted perimeter around the beast, and right then a hatch swung open on top of the beast’s back (or head?) and to the ire of the soldiers around, who should step out from in there but an ordinary mortal man?

 

Microfiction #16: Swift and Fair

…wherein the law is preserved…

There was quite a lot of excitement in Lady Millicent’s court that day. The 57 stone mother of three century pups swung her great hammerhead periodically as the case wore on, a far cry from the benevolent manner in which she usually carried herself and through which she had drawn the admiration and respect from her people.

‘So, set me straight on this article Mr Amida, you were performing a Mambo Jambo dance at the marketplace when Mr Japeth here, apparently affronted you and tried to ‘make a meal’ of you, is that correct?’

A lone figure graced the defendant’s row, a self-proclaimed paradise fish who’d journeyed to the town from whence no one knew, whose colors for once were not the only interesting thing about him, exceeded in eccentricity this time by his half-missing tail fin. Any traces of his characteristic pride were missing on the day, and his voice almost quivered as he responded.

‘Well, you see it’s this traditional ritual we like to perform…’

‘It involves some form of jiggling, does it not?’ The Lady interrupted.

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Well,  then,’ said the Lady shaking her head in pity, ‘You do realize exciting your person in such a manner creates what the loony science man over there calls an electric field. No matter how noble a bull shark like Mr Japeth here may be, you do realize such an excitement is enough to rouse the killer he works so hard to suppress, isn’t that so, Mr Japeth?’

In the prosecutor’s row, the bull shark was thronged by sea creatures of equal or more proportion in girth or menace, save for the two adorable pups flanking him who were the youngest of his litter.

‘I just don’t know how to explain it, my Lady,’ he reflected, ‘It’s like the devil took over me all so suddenly. I just couldn’t stop myself if I wanted to.’

‘I imagine no one could,’ empathized Lady Millicent, ‘That settles it then, Mr Amida this court finds you guilty of provocation and as punishment will have you relinquish half of your plankton farm to Mr Japeth and his sons for the next full cycle to do with it as they so please. Fair punishment for equal…’

‘But…’ came and went a weak protest.

‘As for your hesitance to comply with the law, the court bequeaths the other half of your farm to the town council for the same duration, again to do with it as they please.’

The blue seas shook with the roars that followed. Everyone was happy with Lady Millicent’s faultless justice. Yet it only worked so long as no one questioned it.

The Order Of The Forgers (A Microfiction Series)

Part 6: Children No Longer

There was no telling what Sammy would do next while we were at Sensei’s dojo all those years back.

He was the most fearless of us all. He would talk back to Sensei and was capable of enough forethought and agility to predict where Sensei’s infamous Bamboo stick would fall and jump away. During some nights he would sneak to the village down below and bring back meticulously detailed stories of his romanticizing of girls who, going by his account, swarmed him every time he showed up at the village. Better yet, he would bring us a basketful of gulab and other delightful dishes that were specifically on Sensei’s forbidden list.

Today, Sammy is shivering in a corner, his long dirty nails and falling white hair prominent like an admonishment. Life and duty has not become him at all.

‘He is…a Binder…’ his voice cracks as he whispers.

‘I know what he is.’ I interrupt him.

‘Far as…duties go, he is our exact opposite.’

‘I know what he…look, Sammy I need your help, okay buddy? I need to find this guy. I need you to help me find him, and kill him.’

Sammy shakes his head furiously, pulling at his ears and wails, ‘No! No! No! Can’t go back, can’t. Won’t. Can’t go back. Martha, Teo, Frings, dead…Nacho, Ukwe dead, dead. All dead. Can’t go back. Go away!’

‘Yes Sammy, that’s why we need to get you back in tip top shape, so we can go kill this bastard. For them!’

I pull his arm from his face but he shoves me away with such violence and power that for a moment I think I see the fire back in his eyes and am tempted to recount to him his misadventures from his teen years in the hope of fanning the spark. But I hesitate too long and the moment soon slips.

‘Death. Darkness. Can’t go back. Won’t. Go away!’

The Order Of The Forgers (A Microfiction Series)

Part 5: Villainy

If you are one to indulge in the thoughts of dramatists, connoisseurs of literature and even the intelligentsia who claim to have mastered the art of influence, to have unlocked the working of the human mind, then you are probably familiar with the narrative of a valiant hero standing up to a villainy force that is a thousandfold more powerful than he or she.

He flings me across the room with a flick of his wrist as I rush toward him, every inch of me but my mouth screaming die!

The villain would possess a peculiar set of weapons that overwhelm our hero. On occasion one of these might be an unexpected charm with which he gathers support to himself or completely disarms the hero.

‘Oh hey, hey, hey…am happy to see you too and I like bear hugs as much as the next person…but that would kill us both, remember?’

Maybe that’s the idea. I try to shout but the words choke my throat as my eyes wander to where Sofia lies. He laughs at the message my actions personify.

‘Oh, I like you. I really, really do! Do you want to know why?’

Then, as you would have it, the villain would conflict our hero with a truth that’s often a product of machinations they put in motion a long time ago…

‘You my lovesick friend are a usurper.’

‘I am not!’ I scream back.

‘Oh but you are. “Sealed from mankind, To serve its plight.” You defied the very essence of what you are, just so you could feel loved, ‘he points to Sofia, ‘Blinded by her acceptance to the point where you willingly ignored that you were subconsciously applying your influence on her, manipulating her very thoughts and slowly decaying her will…and emotions.’

‘Liar!’ I scream as I will my limbs to move again.

…or sometimes, only the bare truth, unaltered.

‘Ooh, spicy! I should consider investing in this business of romance, I muse it could amplify my powers too…but you misread me forger. I never speak in vain. In such close proximity of each other, our powers should cancel out just enough to break your influence on her. Maybe now, you would like to hear what she really feels about you?’

Sofia stirs where she lies. She struggles to sit up, the shackles and chains on her arms and legs clanking loudly.

She scans the room slowly to get her bearing. Her gaze rests on me.

‘Who…who are you?’

For one long wanting hearbeat, the answer eludes me.

---

 

So today happens to be my second anniversary of starting this blog, even though WordPress tells me it was yesterday. I tell you WordPress is beginning to let things slip through his memory, that poor chap.

Now I haven’t figured out yet what annual tradition to carry out on this day (or if there’s even a need for it). But today I’ve decided to publish two posts at once, something I’ve never managed before.

And so, without much further ado, as one famous ‘doctor’ was fond of saying: allon-sy to part six!

 

Liebster Award 2018

Greetings and salutations to you all!

Oh what great joy! To find myself nominated for a WordPress award for the first time ever, and that less than a week before my second blog anniversary (has it been that long already?).

Anyway, if I sound excited today it is because in being nominated for this award I have been presented me with quite the challenge by being forced to ask myself some really introspective questions that I have been too wary to ask myself before.

This nomination came courtesy of the talented Tia from Masked Snow, whose posts you can read through this link here: https://maskedsnow.wordpress.com/

1. What inspires you as a writer?

An insatiable need to entertain and educate others. As a young boy I found myself devouring entertainment pieces in whatever they came, books, movies and all. As a teenager, I learned the just how powerfully literature and other means of entertainment can transmit messages that proffer change in society. And now at this stage in my life where I question everything around me, I have fallen to writing as a way of expressing my dissatisfaction with issues in our society and so on, because I doubt if people would hear me otherwise, even if I carried a megaphone with me.

2. What is the most fascinating thing about being a blog writer?

Reading other people’s blogs. Oh yes, to produce a single post of my own, I’ve found myself scouring the WordPress blogosphere reading tons of other people’s pieces. You’d be amazed at how much character and creativity you can find in this community and that has really played a big part in my development as a blogger myself.

3. What’s the one thing that transformed your life?

I’ll go ahead and mention two since they were similar and am not good at following instructions anyway. J The first came during a family event when I was still a young boy. In a quiet corner of our home, an uncle I’d never met before told to one, keep my family members close (still working on that – I have a very huge family) and two, to not neglect my education (in university right now, only two semesters to go – Alhamdulillah). The second was with a different uncle whom I admire terribly and is a content manager on zeit.com, he told me two words: ‘Tunnel Vision.’ They got me through university so far and also gave me that final push to start my own blog.

The similarity between these two is that they both used very few words, which happened to be just the right words to stir something inside me.

4. What makes a good content? How do you know if a piece of writing is doing well?

In my opinion good content, in fiction at least, has to strike the right balance between educative, entertaining and provocative. Anytime I stick to this code, the engagement I get on my piece through comments seems to tick upwards, which is how I know that I have written something good.

5. Tell me some 5 random facts about yourself

I love and fear swimming in equal measure.

I spent a year in Kentucky in an exchange program. Sadly didn’t get to carry home that silky Southern drawl with me so now I can’t prove to the naysayers that I actually did live in the US (sigh).

I chose my university major (Computer Technology) on a whim, and it wasn’t even my first choice. I’ve warmed up to it better than I imagined.

I am crazy about science fiction.

I have a feeling that I am usually an inch or two taller in my dreams. As you dream so shall you live? One can hope?

6. What do you usually write about on your blog?

Initially, I used to write non-fiction essays. Nowadays I prefer fiction because of the creative freedom it affords me, but of course I draw my content from normal everyday things in the same way I used to with the non-fiction pieces.

7. What should be the ideal length of the content?

I suppose it depends on the amount of content that needs to be presented. It shouldn’t matter whether the content will take a hundred words or two thousand so long as the content is meaningful. But that’s an entirely subjective answer.

8. What is the one trait that makes you different from everyone?

My humor. I have a sense of humor very few people actually get. I can count on my fingers the number of people who cracked their ribs laughing at my jokes. It always pains me when I part ways with them. I have considered locking them all in a room so I could visit them at whatever time of day I felt an urge to tell a joke so I could feel worthy.

See, no one got that one either (sigh).

9. What are some of the things that makes you confident?

Succeeding in creating something. Whether it’s a piece of writing, or a fully-fledged (or even just half working) software.

Having such a wonderful mum. She defies the odds every single day, and that encourages me to be a better version of myself too.

10. What are your posts are based on? Are they based on your emotions or they are trying to give a social message to a reader? Also share your favorite blog posts.

Tough one. It’s a combination of inspiration from other writers, events I see around me or hear about every day and my own quirky way of thinking, all thrown into a messy blender.

Are they based on my own emotions? Quite possibly, unconsciously at least. I try to focus less on my own emotions and instead try to adopt the emotions of the characters I write about so I can meaningfully capture their plight and present it to others.

11. What do you think of me?

Haven’t known you for that long but from what I’ve read on your blog so far I think you are wildly talented. You have a way with words (rhymes always get me). I’ve personally shunned away from poetry because of its heavy requirements of having to wrap messages in layers of imagery and clever juxtaposition, but you seem to have mastered that which leads me to believe that you have a great future ahead as a poet and blogger.

 

The updated 2018 rules for the Liebster Award are as follows:

• Link to the official Liebster Award in your Liebster Award blog post. (https://theglobalaussie.com/liebster-award-2018/)
• Answer the questions given to you.
• Create more questions for your nominees to answer (I’m looking for unique and creative ones)
• Comment on the official Liebster Award post with a link DIRECTLY to your Liebster award.

 

My questions are:

1. What do you enjoy most about blogging?
2. If you had a chance to bring back one the greatest names of literature that are deceased so they could groom you, who would it be and why?
3. Have you ever lost track of time while reading a piece of literature or book? Tell us its title if the answer is yes.
4. If you had the skills of Cobb from the movie Inception and enough resources to incept everyone in the world, what ideas would you plant in their minds?
5. If you could adopt the life of any character you’ve ever read about in a book who would it be?

Here are my nominees:

https://hilalthoughts.wordpress.com/

https://asfamobin.wordpress.com/

https://jefwahhhh.wordpress.com/

https://raindried.wordpress.com/

https://ahmedshayo014.wordpress.com/

https://armoneokech.wordpress.com/

https://undulyunruly.wordpress.com/

http://theafricanswan.wordpress.com/

 

 

The Order Of The Forgers (A Microfiction Series)

Click HERE to read part three!

Part 4: Famous Last Words.

Sensei once basked in the company of kings and monarchs. Word around is he used to be so good at telling jokes, he made a living out of it. That was a long, long, really long time ago. Then something changed him completely. As he described it, something just snapped one day and like a zombie he wandered in a hazy quest of self discovery until he found himself amongst the Forgers.

Nowadays, the only joke he can tell involves a rap across my chest or back with his infernal bamboo hell-stick. But he tells it so well it cracks my ribs every single time.

‘You aren’t taking any of this seriously enough!’ He barks.

‘What’s our motto?’

Under my physical and mental strain I struggle to remember, ‘With great power, comes…’

Pain! Sharp pain sends me crashing to the wet ground.

‘If you quote Spiderman one more time…’

‘You are the real joke here.’ He scolds.

‘This is where the road ends for me kid.’ He says one day, lying on his bed, amid fits of coughing.

‘This is what you need to understand. This is it. This is your life and this is how you die. You will never know love, your abilities won’t let you experience that. You will live forever and then die surrounded by inept irksome students who hardly know you. If that future scares you, you need to choose something else right now.’

‘But sensei, my training…’

‘Your training ended years ago…but you are not ready. I fear you will never be. What’s our motto?’

Sensei is a shrewd man. He wouldn’t pass on a chance to knock some sense into his students even if that included using the dour atmosphere surrounding his deathbed to finally get through to me.

Suddenly, just as it looks like his lights are finally blinking out, he musters some strength from seemingly nowhere, eyes wide like a haunted child and drags me to him by the shoulder.

‘There’s something you need to know…abou…about the Forgers.’ He whispers.

That’s all he manages to whisper.

---

 

PS: I wish to apologize to everyone who was the following the series for taking too long to post this. As soon as I posted the previous part, I fell sick as a rat who’d spent a night in a cage in a dark room with cat sounds blasting in through speakers and cat odor being pumped into the room through vents. Between that and having to travel twice in a week, I found I’d lost the thread of this story and so it took me a while to recover that.

To make for lost time therefore, I promise to do my best to post more regularly from now one. Thank you all for reading!