Written piece
THE THREAD BETWEEN US
Fahad Ahmad
Nigeria
About this piece
This piece explores “thread” as both physical and generational connection across geography. It reflects how migration, memory, and small acts of care weave a common fabric between places like Zamfara State and Oslo, making the Commonwealth a tapestry, not a map.
my thread is
One thread, pulled taut between two distant hands.
My grandmother’s fingers tying my school ribbon in Magami, 2006.
My own fingers now, mending a tear in my jacket in Oslo, 2026.
Same knot. Same silence. Same care.
We think borders cut us apart. But loo
Thloser: they are looms.
Every border checkpoint, every ocean, every “you are from there” —
just another warp line waiting for a weft.
A thread doesn’t know the word “foreign”.
It only knows tension, and what tension can hold together.
I am Zamfara and I am also the rain on a Norwegian fjord,
because someone, somewhere, carried a thread of me here.
And I will carry a thread of here back home.
We are not separate cloths.
We are one tapestry, still being stitched.
Your breath tugs my corner. My laughter pulls yours.
This is my thread.
It remembers.
It reaches.