“Jamila presses the power button on her phone to silence the vibration from her mother’s call as she wheels her suitcase to the boarding queue. After a thirty-minute delay, they are finally boarding the plane to Berlin. She stops in the middle of the aisle, nearly bumping into the man with grey sweats ahead of her, to confirm that all she’s done is muted Mama’s call, not end it. There would be no end to her mother’s speech if that happened. She slips her phone into the front pocket of her backpack, and continues forward with a huge smile on her face. She’d practised this walk – her walk of freedom – in front of her bedroom mirror so many times in the past few days. It didn’t matter that her heart wasn’t entirely where she wanted it to be.”

From ‘Freedom, here I come’– included in the showcase