Breaking Shards Sandra Uche Delumozie   © Copyright 2025 by Sandra Uche Delumozie

Photo by Michael Gill at Wikimedia Commons.

Ahmed’s parting shot came soft-sounding, yet loud and raucous. “How can you break what is already broken?”—an adieu I held close to my heart. It niggled at my mind in a way that had me in my feelings, like the song Stranger by Simi, which I always played on repeat. As days crept into weeks, this adieu revealed itself to be the acme of memory. The last bastion of our star-crossed love.

It was past 7 a.m., and the pupils in the mural-walled primary school right behind my apartment were already reciting the recently readopted national anthem. I always get to windward of this noise by singing alongside them. I enjoyed singing “Twinkle Little Star” and other nursery hymns and anthems with them, especially the Anambra State Igbo anthem. They oozed this gratifying air of nostalgia and tenderness. Today, I couldn’t join in since I didn’t know the new national anthem’s lyrics. At first, it was anger, running over me like an overspeeding vehicle because of the dread of having to learn afresh. Then I imagined Ahmed as the lyrics of the old-turned-new national anthem keyed back into my life.

I headed for my closet for my normal morning routine. There, I noticed a tear in my office shirt and tried fixing it, but on remembering to work with my schedule, I dropped the shirt for my schedule. Perusing the schedule, my gaze fell on today’s date, which is just a few days away from my engagement anniversary with Ahmed. The last ceremony I had with Ahmed was his birthday celebration. It was a cosy, memorable evening that still sat with me as if it were yesterday. I bought his favourite Syrah wine and took him out on a date. I watched closely while he opened the wine, and now that I recall it, I can still hear the pop-pop sound it made as Ahmed shouted, Hurray! Then I gave him a peck and—what he called celestial—a hug.

“Baby, I...” he began, but I stopped him. He might just utter a few sentences, and I would stumble as our president did on a democracy day.

“Your birthday gift is in your car boot; check it out later,” I said, gulping as many times as possible to hide the frost in my voice.

A long silence fell. It swathed me in the fear that Ahmed might have felt the thorns of this seemingly smooth evening, and I didn’t want that yet. So, I made myself rise to my feet and veneer my tremors with light dance steps. Only to later cosy up to him by asking him for a dance. Ahmed eyed me and asked whether I was no longer coy about dancing with him in public. His voice was guttural when he added, “Why are you so over the top today?”

My cheeks furrowed into something in between a half-hearted smile and a wide-toothed smirk. And my reply was as wry as both my mood and my lips—which I had tried to moisten scores of times with some lip gloss.

“Because it’s your birthday. My baby’s birthday.”

Ahmed took his time observing the empty glass in his hand. He poured more wine into it, took a sip, and shook his head before swigging the wine in one gulp. His mouth rounded like a protuberant stomach, his Adam's apple bulging at the centre and slowly returning to normal as the wine went down. He belched. Covering his mouth with his left palm, he slammed the glass on the table as if he meant to break it. Yet he shuddered at its click and held it up to check if it cracked before putting it down again.

“Spill it, baby, I’m high. I’m in a perfect mood—the mood you love seeing me in. Spill it, baby; there is no secret between us. Never!” He waved his index finger to emphasise the no.

I smirked. Ahmed sounded drunk, and I loved it. I could empty my heart before him tonight, and tomorrow I’ll tell him I was only equivocating, or that it was just his imagination. I sat back in my seat. The DJ started playing a melancholic song, and it thawed my gloom. As I moved closer to Ahmed with glazed eyes, I called him by his name with an ecstatic accent. When he responded, I wished I had not. An ahem followed in an unserious attempt to clear my throat. As I glared at Ahmed, I two-forked the present until I could make sense of the event that occurred a week ago when I visited my parents. Like an epiphany, I could, again, see my mother’s visage writhe into a tight frown when I told her my suitor was Muslim. Something heavy entered her voice; she took a dim view of the idea of having a Muslim son-in-law.

“You want to become a Muslim, share your husband with many women, and be cached in a hijab for the rest of your life? Is that what I raised you and sent you to the best schools for?”

I tried parting my lips, but it was viscid. So my hands made a swift move to Ahmed's lap. When I caressed it, he winked at me, and I shuddered.

“You want it, baby?” He asked. My artful playfulness was heeled over by a gale of ire, and I puffed at him, “Want what?”

“The national cake,” he winked at me again, and I pushed him away.

“Which national cake?” I asked. “You have started again. Take both yourself and your national cake to your nation.”

He giggled. “But you can take your portion. Your portion is still intact; I promise you, no one went to it.” He placed my right hand on his chest so I could feel his heartbeat. I glanced through his eyes, and there was no cloudy composition. It was the same as the atmosphere his eyes usually bore whenever he spilled facts. My heart buckled, and I shrugged him off again. Ahmed would wake up in the morning to rewrite his words. But in his drunken state, there were blocs of words, so strident that I couldn’t penetrate over them.

“Please shift,” I said, furious. “Seeing that you’re Muslim, it was dumb of me to think that I was the only woman in your life.” I stamped my hand on the table. “After sobering up, you will say you were drunk and that your father married one wife.” My eyes clamped shut in anger.

“Well, I’m not concerned about that anymore. When I travelled home...

“Wow,” he interrupted me with some claps. “My birthday gift is here, baby. You went home and returned with the good news, right?”

“I told you your birthday gift was in your boot,” I retorted.

“No gift is as precious as you, my baby.”

First, it was a blush—this soft feeling that invaded my face with bushels of smiles as I felt uncannily special. But Ahmed’s voice began to echo my mother’s in a way that nipped at the euphoria.

“When are your people giving you to me? I can't wait to hide you away; no man will ever get to set his eyes on my queen again.”

I readjusted roughly on my seat, and the chair turned askew, and I landed hard on the bare floor. I got up outright and dusted my body. Ahmed helped me to adjust the chair.

“You’re so excited, baby,” he said.

“Excited about what? About being hidden forever?”

“I don’t mean it that way.” He sighed. “You will still go out, make friends, and socialise with people. But in nicely sewn hijabs. You will be pretty in it, baby. Like an angel.”

“Then why don’t you wear one?” I sank back into my chair, and Ahmed sat on his chair, too.

“Hijabs are for women,” he purred.

“That’s not what we are here for.” I pulled my seat back to readjust it. “Like I was saying, I went home, and I wasn’t able to convince my mum. Instead, she opened my eyes to reality. Ahmed, I’m done with this relationship. The marriage you’re proposing cannot work.”

Ahmed sprang to his feet. “What?” He snarled. He gazed at me until his eye issues recurred, and he squinted.

“Did you just fling our four-year relationship like that? Is this what we discussed? After all the promises we made to each other,” he paused and thought for a moment. His eyes suddenly puffy and bloodshot. Then he added, “You just shattered my heart.”

“Ahmed, I wish you luck, and I pray you will find a woman who will love you and stand by you. Who will never break your heart.” I snapped, getting up to leave.

He smirked. “My heart is already broken. Can they break tiny shards?” He asked. “How can you break what is already broken?”

How can you break what is already broken?—is the only part of Ahmed that remains with me. The thoughts of Ahmed weighed heavily on my heart, especially because of the life growing in me. A life we made together. The silver lining of our relationship. Desiring to see Ahmed again, I placed a call to my boss, took a one-week leave, hopped on the next train and felt the fresh zephyr of Kaduna fourteen hours later. I checked into a hotel and reached out to Ahmed through Facebook, and we agreed to meet the next day to contemplate our situation further. The following morning, I checked out of the hotel after attending my remote jobs and hurried down the street, hoping to reach Ahmed sooner. I had envisioned our reunion: meeting Ahmed on the streets, running to him, and giving a tight hug. As soon as I passed by a church where a group of Christians were praying for the community, some men in hefty, dull-coloured kaftans and traditional Hausa caps known as hulas, came and opened fire on the congregation.

“Run!” Someone overlooking the road shouted. And without looking to know who, I turned to take to my heels but tripped into an empty canned drink and fell. I stood up after some time and realising I was standing in a pool of blood, I screamed. The street was all of a sudden filled with hundreds of oddly dressed people, but they were not running. A woman in her late thirties, who together with her seven children were oddly dressed, walked by and smiled at me. I flinched, pondering why a Muslim would beam at me in this circumstance.

“How are you?” She asked when she caught me glaring at her.

“Are you a Christian?” I asked, shrugging off her question.

“Yes,” she smiled. “We are all Christians here.” She walked up to me, alongside her children.

“Why are you not running? What’s all this weird, ancient clothing on your bodies?” I asked. She smiled. Her eldest son tickled the baby strapped to her back, and she turned briefly to observe the child.

“What’s that blood under your feet?” She asked.

My mind went back to the Muslim extremists. I looked around and saw them burning a motorcycle.

“A massacre occurred here,” I said, observing the surroundings. “I can’t find any corpses or any injured people here.”

“There is a clinic over there.” She sniffed towards the other side of the road. “And there is a mortuary beside it. The bodies might've been taken to either of them.”

“Ah,” I said, freezing. “What a bloody day, June 21, 2024!”

The woman shuffled and reshuffled her legs, letting out this ineffable smirk that boxed my attention and kept it beside her.

“Such events aren’t new,” she said. “There have been clashes between the Muslims and the Christians for decades.”

A deep furrow appeared on my forehead as I recalled my final year thesis in university about a similar massacre between February and May 2000, which led to the loss of countless lives.

“You’re well-read,” she remarked as one of her children pointed at me and whispered something.

“He said you’re bleeding,” she said.

“I’m bleeding?” I exclaimed, checking my clothes. Just then, a tap on my back made me turn around; it was Ahmed.

“You came,” I said weakly. “They said I’m bleeding.” I turned to show him who I was referring to but found nothing of the woman and her children. Even the oddly dressed people scattered on the streets were nowhere to be found.

“Where did they go?” I asked Ahmed, who looked puzzled. As I opened my mouth to ask more, I noticed his watery eyes, and my heart wobbled. I checked my dresses again, and I saw red streaks agglomerating on the pleats and creases of my skirt.

“Our baby,” I said, collapsing into his arms.

You’ll be fine,” he said, caressing my hair as paramedics rushed toward us with a stretcher. Police sirens filled the air, and people ran helter-skelter. Tears pooled at the edges of my lips, hesitating to surge in for some time before they gathered the courage. I whimpered, “My baby,” rubbing my stomach.

“Don’t,” Ahmed said, gripping my hand. The paramedics nudged him aside, hurrying me to the ambulance. I felt immense pain but didn’t know whether it was from my heart or my abdomen. Pondering over our dream of getting back together and the silver lining that arrived bleak, I knew that death can cure this love sickness; Only death can. Even after the doctor verified my miscarriage, Ahmed still didn’t let me rub my stomach.

“I don’t believe he's dead. Don’t finish him off, okay?” He pleaded with his eyes. I whimpered manifold times before I could gather the gut to spawn the adieu, “How can you kill what is already dead?”