Member-only story
LIFE
Predators Who Hide In The Shadows
An episode on campus where darkness becomes an armor
I was in my final year at university when I was bewitched by the idea to dress only in black. For some odd reason, dark turtlenecks became a source of comfort. Perhaps it had to do with the syntopical reading I couldn’t avoid. The reading requirement included Jacques Derrida, Frantz Fanon, and Edward Said. Complex men with intricate minds. They brought me to the freezer section of my impressionable consciousness.
At every turning point, I was faced head-on with a critical concept to describe the Western world’s commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of the Eastern world — that is, the Orient. I was thickening as a postcolonialist — and I was proud of it.
It was also the year I started writing poetry. Poetry that, to me, was unromantic. It wasn’t about bucolic verse, rustic and arcadian. Instead, I was drawn to the veil of uncertainty: confusion, contempt, deception, and mystery. Sectors that felt beguiling and intriguing. They formed a friendship around the mystic. It was as if my third eye had opened. The fruit of my creative curiosity had ripened in those last two taxing semesters. I wasn’t intrigued by love that was easy and on the surface. I wanted liquid that spilled and curled in between the crevices.
