Haliru Ali Musa’s ‘A Garden Only Seen in Dreams’ chronicles Timileyin’s turbulent journey through illness and fractured identity. Following a kidney transplant, Timi uncovers unsettling truths about his parentage that upend his understanding of family.
Retrospective glimpses reveal a splintered childhood marked by loss, abandonment, and Aunt Hanifa’s austere guardianship. As Timi spirals through academic struggles and self-destruction, his path leads to organ failure and revelations that reframe his entire life history.
The narrative concludes in an ethereal garden, a liminal space where Timi confronts unresolved relationships, symbolising his unrequited yearning for belonging.
Musa’s account critiques familial concealment and societal negligence, examining the wounds of absence and the tenuous prospect of reconciliation in disjointed lives.
The narrative explores identity crises and the erosive burden of concealed truths, underscoring resilience amidst personal collapse while questioning what constitutes family beyond biological connections.
What does being published in the maiden edition of Naira Stories mean to me? A curious void resides within me when contemplating this question, not emptiness as such, but akin to a well of indeterminate depth.
The editor who handled my work possessed rare insight. He discerned elements in my prose that occasionally elude even my grasp. This encounter mirrors those uncommon instances when a stranger’s gaze meets yours on a bustling railway platform, and for inexplicable reasons, you exchange nods of mutual understanding.
The full answer to this question may materialise only when I physically hold the magazine, when my fingers brush across the printed text, and I experience anew that distinctive feeling from when I pressed ‘send.’ For now, I shall wait.
Haliru Ali Musa is a Nigerian writer and power engineer. He believes that before problems can be solved, people must first care about them. Whether working on Nigeria’s electrical grid or crafting narratives, his goal remains the same — connecting people to causes that matter. He’s an alumnus of the Nigerian Academy of Letters’ Creative Writing Workshop and the winner of the inaugural Alexander Nderitu Prize for World Literature 2024. His work has appeared in Farafina Blog, Akpata Magazine, The African Griot Review, and elsewhere.
