January 2006

there was a time

21st January 2026

Stephan Moccio’s Wistful has always carried one message for me: Merry Christmas, the war is over.

It’s strange, because that line belongs to a different song entirely, with a different weight. But the mind borrows what it needs. Maybe I’ve been fighting something for longer than I realized.

Work has resumed. Emails arrive with renewed confidence. Calendars have reset themselves. And like most Januarys I’ve been conscious of, there’s a lightness everywhere, an insistence on beginnings. I don’t mind it. I don’t hope it ends either, though that feels like childish thinking.

Two decades ago, January meant something else. I had turned nine the previous month, returning to a classroom that smelled of whiteboard markers and freshly wiped plastic surfaces. There was always something faint underneath it all; cleaning detergent, old books, maybe even dust pretending it wasn’t there. Still, what I remember most is the way my nostrils stung. The dry harmattan air felt sharp, invasive, like it wanted to leave a mark.

I sat in the third row from the front. Close enough to be noticed. Far enough to be left alone when I behaved. My notebook lay open as I copied the scheme of work, subject by subject, careful not to miss a line. I wasn’t the brightest in the class, but I was reliable. I hovered around fourth place often enough to believe consistency counted for something.

Mrs Duru stood at the front of the class, marker in hand, welcoming us back with what I would later recognize as my first exposure to sarcasm. Her enthusiasm was there, but it was ambivalent, restrained, as though she had already accepted the long months ahead. Another term, her tone seemed to say, another attempt at order. She was weary of me. Of my restlessness and my occasional need to test boundaries. But she knew my mother, and that knowledge carried weight. It followed me like a quiet threat. If I went rogue, she wouldn’t hesitate to call home. That alone kept me mostly in line.

By January, harmattan had already done its worst and yet was gunning for worse. My lips were cracked despite my mother’s best efforts in collaboration with Vaseline. The skin around my ankles felt tight and unforgiving. I barely noticed. My mother did. She always did. She would inspect me each morning with concern, as though dryness were something she could combat into submission.

The classroom buzzed softly. Chairs scraped. Markers squeaked against the board. The girls talked about their pink pencil cases and the Disney movies they had watched over the holidays. Christmas decorations from the previous year still clung stubbornly to the louvres, refusing to acknowledge time had moved on.

At some point, I would stop listening. My eyes would drift past the glass, beyond the half-peeled decorations, beyond the noise, toward the playground. The sand was pale and uneven, marked with footprints from games already played by the kindergarteners. The air shimmered faintly in the distance. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Just something beyond the classroom. Something that felt like movement. Like the start of an adventure that hadn’t yet learned my name.

Back then, the future felt wide.

It’s 21st of January, 2026. The music plays quietly. January hums with expectation. And somewhere between the harmattan that forgot to arrive and the echo of a marker on a whiteboard, it still feels like something has ended and something else is waiting to begin.

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