Borno Bound Friendship, Freedom, And Fate
365 Words
The bus ride from Abuja to Borno was long, rough, and filled with silence. Mirha sat in the back seat, clutching a small bag of clothes and the money she had saved from her secret online jobs.
The landscape changed as they moved north the city lights faded into dry grasslands, and the air became cooler, quieter. Every kilometer put more distance between her and the pain she had escaped.
She was running not just from the past, but toward something new even if she didn’t yet know what that was.
A Familiar Face
When she arrived in Maiduguri, Borno’s bustling capital, she made one call — to Falmata, a quiet, brilliant girl who once sat beside her in secondary school.
Falmata opened her small rented apartment to Mirha without question.
“You’ve been through fire,” she said, hugging her. “But you’re still standing.”
Living with Falmata brought peace back into Mirha’s life. They shared meals, prayed together, and laughed late into the night. Falmata encouraged Mirha to take on more freelance front-end projects and helped her build a simple portfolio website.
The dream of becoming her own person was no longer far away it was happening.
The Man with the Calm Eyes
One afternoon, while Falmata was out, her older brother Ahmad Muhammad returned from his trip abroad.
He worked as a software engineer in London sharp, calm, polite, with a gentle smile that hid years of wisdom.
When he met Mirha, something shifted in both of them.
She greeted him with a quiet “As-salamu alaikum,” and he responded with warm respect. Over the next few days, they shared short conversations, sometimes about coding, sometimes about life.
He noticed her humility, intelligence, and quiet strength.
And she noticed something rare in him a kind of trust that needed no explanation.
Love Wrapped in Halal
Ahmad saw what others didn’t not just a girl who had suffered, but a woman who had built herself from ashes.
But love was never simple.
When Ahmad expressed his interest in marrying Mirha, resistance came fast not from him, not from her but from Mirha’s past.
Her stepmother and relatives tried to interfere.
- Writer
