Mardiyya’s POV
After my mother told me everything, after she peeled back the layers of my childhood and placed the truth gently in my hands, I could no longer pretend. The feelings I had tried so hard to discipline, to bury beneath ambition and books, suddenly had a name, a history, a beginning older than memory itself.
Ya Mustapha.
I loved him. Deeply. Quietly. Completely.
And yet, I had no idea how to tell him.
University life swept me into its rhythm almost immediately. From lecture to lecture, rushing through crowded corridors, clutching handouts, standing in long queues for course registration, adjusting to a world that moved too fast for hesitation. Medicine was demanding, relentless but my heart, traitorous as ever, kept wandering back to him.
In between anatomy notes and biochemistry diagrams, I would pause, lost in thought, wondering how fate could be so precise and so cruel at the same time. How could the man I had loved unknowingly as a child be the same man my heart recognized all over again years later?
One evening, exhausted and overwhelmed, I sat on my bed and reached for my phone.
I needed to hear his voice. Or at least see his name.
I began scrolling, searching desperately for his number. I remembered he had once sent me a message after WAEC—simple, encouraging words that had made me smile for days. I typed his name in every possible way: Mustapha, Ya Musty, Sir, Mr Bello.
Nothing.
My heart sank.
Then reality hit me, sharp and unforgiving.
My phone had been stolen during my graduation. With it went almost every contact. Every message. Even my WhatsApp account.
I felt tears sting my eyes, not because of the phone, but because of what it had taken with it, the only bridge I had to him.
I lay back slowly, staring at the ceiling, my chest tight with frustration and longing. For the first time, I understood how helpless love could feel when timing refused to cooperate. I had found my truth too late, just as he had, and now distance stretched between us like a test neither of us had prepared for.
I wondered if he ever thought of me. If he knew I remembered. If he still cared.
My mother’s words echoed in my mind, how I used to cry for him, how I claimed him with the certainty only a child could possess, how I promised to wait. I smiled through tears at the memory of that little girl, unaware that her innocent declarations would one day grow into something so heavy, so real.
I whispered a quiet prayer into the night.
Ya Allah… if he is meant for me, don’t let our paths end in silence.
Because somewhere between lecture halls and lost phone numbers, between childhood promises and grown-up fears, my heart had finally caught up with its truth.
And now, all I could do was wait
not in innocence anymore,
but in hope.
YOU ARE READING
Lessons Beyond the Syllabus
RomanceA quiet bond becomes undeniable when a simple hospital visit reveals that their story began long before the classroom ever did.
