‘Yar Arewa’ A thread in the fabric of tradition that stretches back generations.

Img of my grandmother & mother as a baby & my aunt beside them. ❤️

To be an Arewa woman is to be a keeper of stories, a bearer of silent battles, a thread in the fabric of tradition that stretches back generations. It is to walk through life adorned in culture yet cloaked in expectations. To smile politely while balancing a thousand unspoken rules. It is to learn early that patience is not just a virtue, but a requirement. A demand. A lifelong performance.

There is a rhythm to an Arewa woman’s life, and that rhythm is rarely her own. It’s a borrowed tune played by elders, aunties, neighbors, imams, and mothers long before she understands the lyrics.

“You must learn to cook.”

“A woman’s pride is her husband’s name.”

“You cannot sit like that.”

“Don’t speak too loudly.”

“Don’t laugh too hard.”

“Don’t be too much.”

But some things never change. Whispers of “When will you marry?” start stalking us the moment we cross into our twenties. Like a ghost in the room, it haunts family gatherings, weddings, even funerals.

It’s almost comical how persistent it is. Almost.

Because behind the question is a deeply rooted belief that a woman’s worth is tethered to the presence of a man. The presence of a ring. The presence of endurance, even when it’s choking the life out of her.

And when a woman loses her husband by death or divorce, freedom becomes a mirage. “You must marry again,” they say, as though a woman alone is some kind of societal hazard. “It is not our way,” they whisper.

They tell her, “We see what you cannot see.”

They say, “Even if you climb the highest ladder, you will not understand.”

So, she obeys. Marries again. Not for love. Not for joy. But for compliance.

And resentment brews quietly. I’ve seen it in the furrowed brows of women who do everything right and still feel wrong. Some endure. Others unravel. And when they snap, the headlines scream, “Woman poisons husband.” “Wife stabs spouse in domestic dispute.” And we act surprised, as though this wasn’t a long time coming.

A system that reduces women to brides, to wives, to grieving widows, and then turns away when they break? That’s the real violence.

I watched a mother hear those whispers. Her daughter hears them now.

But there is a difference.

One obeyed without question.

The other wrestles with obedience like it’s a bad habit she can’t quite shake. She watched silence devour her mother, watched her fold into herself until only a ghost remained. And now, they want her to do the same.

“We endured it, why can’t you?” the older women ask.

“Because we shouldn’t have to,” the younger women reply.

But how do you explain to your mother that her suffering should not be your inheritance?

I’ve listened to grandmothers speak with pride about marriages that began at fourteen. I’ve seen daughters quietly weep into throw pillows after being told their education is secondary to their betrothal.

“A woman is not complete until she has her own home,” they’d say.

But was it really hers? Or just a cage painted in mint green and gold upholstery?

Still, there’s love in these intergenerational silences. Love dressed in pride, guilt, and unspoken regrets.

The Things We Don’t Say

Postpartum depression in the North is treated the way most things are: with prayer, denial, and herbal tea.

One woman gave birth at twenty-five. A healthy baby boy. Everyone expected her to be glowing. Radiant. Grateful.

But she wasn’t. She cried in the dark. In the shower. In the moments she could steal for herself. She told her mother, softly, “Something feels off.”

“You’re just weak,” “What kind of woman complains about being a mother?” her mother said.

So, she learned silence again. Until silence nearly killed her. Until she collapsed and a doctor, God bless him, said the words: postpartum depression.

But what’s a diagnosis in a world where healing isn’t even acknowledged?

Asabe’s Story

It began in a salon in Wuse 2. The kind with pink plastic chairs that wobbled slightly when you sat, mirrors smudged with fingerprints, and gossip magazines so outdated even the celebrities on the covers had aged out of fame. The hum of three hairdryers filled the room like background music, competing with the low chatter of women trading stories, recipes, and silent glances of shared exhaustion.

Asabe was glowing then. Newlywed. Second marriage. Still hopeful, still willing to believe in beginnings. She had that fresh, almost naive softness that comes when a woman chooses to forget her scars, even if only for a little while.

That was where she met Maryam.

Maryam had come in for a simple blowout and left with a friend. They bonded over the heat, how Abuja’s sun had no shame, bad tailors who never got the bust right, and the rising cost of onions that made everyone consider going vegan, even if only in protest. Their laughter filled the small space between hairdryers and steaming towels. Soon, they were neighbors. Then inseparable. The kind of friendship that was easy, like slipping into your mother’s old wrapper, worn, warm, familiar.

Asabe’s husband once attentive, doting grew cold. Slower to respond. Quick to anger. Absent more than present. At first, she blamed stress. Work. Inflation. Everything but the obvious. Until the truth arrived, not in whispers, but in the loud silence of betrayal.

The new woman wasn’t just a stranger. She was Maryam.

A friend. A sister-turned-stranger. A soft voice turned dagger.

Asabe’s heartbreak came in layers. It wasn’t just about the man who left. It was the woman who stayed by his side. Who smiled while holding hands with a man who once called Asabe “queen.” A betrayal so sharp it left no blood, only ache.

When her husband stopped providing, she did what women like her always do. She adapted. She started cooking. Jollof rice, moi moi, fried plantain, sold in plastic containers at the office compound. She didn’t ask for permission. Hunger rarely gives you time to beg.

But before this marriage, Asabe had been someone. A businesswoman in Lagos. A woman fluent in the hustle. She once closed deals in boardrooms, wore heels that made noise in tiled corridors, and signed checks with her own name. Survival wasn’t new to her, but this kind of survival where you barter dignity for peace, was foreign.

Then came pregnancy.

No care. No kindness. No check-ups. Just cramps that began as dull discomfort, then turned to sharp, unbearable pain. Each wave felt like her body was betraying her, yet she tried to carry on, ignoring the growing signs, convincing herself that it was nothing. But the bleeding didn’t stop. It came like a flood, unrelenting, staining her body, her bed, and her spirit with its cruel reminder. Fear gnawed at her insides, but she swallowed it, pushing through the numbness.

The pain became all-consuming. It was no longer just physical; it was emotional, too. She began to feel a terrifying emptiness deep inside, a hollowness that made her question if something had already gone terribly wrong. But she didn’t have the energy to hope, let alone fight for clarity.

She finally went to the hospital, too late. The doctor barely looked up from his clipboard as he told her the news. “The baby’s gone,” he said, as though he were commenting on the weather. “Evacuation,” they called it. As if her loss was a procedure, something to be flushed out like an infection, an inconvenience to be dealt with quickly. No space for grief. No pause for the devastation that coursed through her veins.

Her tears didn’t matter to them. The hospital staff moved in a blur, indifferent. The world she had once dreamed of, the baby she had wanted so badly, had evaporated into thin air, and there she was empty, broken, and alone in a sterile room that smelled faintly of antiseptic and regret.

She healed, physically, at least. Her body was no longer crumpled with pain, no longer soaked in the blood that had signaled the end of a life she never had the chance to know. But her heart? Her spirit? Those remained fractured, bruised in ways that couldn’t be seen, ways no one knew how to tend to. There were no doctors to prescribe the kind of healing she needed. No therapy or guidance, just the days dragging by in a blur of exhaustion, chores, and the hum of life moving forward around her, as if nothing had changed. No one knew what was happening inside her. In a place like Arewa, depression wasn’t a word people used, let alone acknowledged. Women were meant to endure, to keep going, no matter the weight in their chest. And Asabe? She had learned to survive on less than the bare minimum, living with a husband who didn’t see her, not really.

A second pregnancy followed. This child was sickly. Fragile. She poured every ounce of herself into that baby. Sleepless nights. Cold baths. Warm prayers. But when there’s nothing left to give, what remains?

Her husband took what remained, her energy, her trust, and vanished. No goodbye. No apology. Just gone. Later, she heard rumors. That he’d remarried. That he went to Hajj. Perhaps to cleanse himself of the very sins he left with her.

The silence that followed wasn’t rage. It was emptiness. The kind that fills a room and dares you to breathe in it. The kind that whispers, “You should have seen this coming.”

So she packed what she had left, some clothes, a few utensils, and whatever remained of her pride, and left. Moved to Kubwa. Then to Jos. Jos, with its cool breeze and quiet hills. The kind of place where pain could hide beneath the chirping birds and blooming hibiscus. But even fresh air can’t undo trauma.

Some days, she couldn’t get out of bed. Her body refused to move. Her mind felt waterlogged. The neighbors gossiped. “She’s lazy,” they said. Others whispered, “She’s bewitched.” So they dragged her to a herbalist. Tied charms to her wrists. Bathed her in river water. Made her drink bitter herbs that burned her throat and did nothing for the ache in her chest.

Then came her brother.

No fanfare. No lectures. Just love.

He walked into her room, saw the woman who used to light up rooms reduced to flickers, and didn’t ask a single question. He took her to a hospital. A real one. Where the doctor looked her in the eyes and named the pain: depression. Grief. Post-traumatic stress. Words that sounded foreign, but fitting.

She began again.

Started small. Selling Ankara and lace fabrics from a little shop near the junction. Day by day, she stitched herself back together. She began to remember the woman she once was. And for the first time in a long time, she smiled without pretending.

Then came another man.

Persistent. Sweet-talking. Charismatic in that annoying way some men are when they smell vulnerability and mistake it for need.

But Asabe had learned.

She looked him dead in the eye and said, “marriage is not what i am looking for.”

He laughed, as though her pain were a joke, as though it made her more interesting.

…..

This is as far as we go. Just a little more than a plain old synopsis of one of my unpublished works, based on a true life story. Thank-you for reading❤️