The Loophole of Happiness Project

It is the quiet that matters. The way one is heard. For the last two years of my life, I have been heard by Glory and Khadijah. When I was able to squeeze time from the rumbling of living, all the thousand and one things one has to do, things I was told to do to stay upright, Khadijah and Glory met with me.

Glory is the main character of the story Glory be Mercy. And we meet her for the first time on an afternoon when she is feeling like a failure. She’s feeling like a failure because of the world around her, a life in which one’s personal ambition cannot survive the aspirations of one’s ancestors. What truly hurts Glory, however, is that she does not have good answers to the questions life poses to her by the time she’s seventeen, because after all, she’s still just a teenager. Armed with a handful of observations, we follow her through loss toward resolution.

Khadijah is on the other end of things in the story Right Hands. She knows what she wants, but she is angry that it does not come easily. A man in her life, and perhaps a good man, raises the stakes for their common happiness. Khadijah must make a decision, but is there any decision that is independent from one’s constraints? From one’s identity as a daughter and a woman? From those things that we cannot see or know, but no doubt affect us?

Glory and Khadijah arrive into the world fully formed, but that does not create relief. One must struggle, and reading them on the page is struggling with them. The Loophole of Happiness is a project to create a fleeting moment of collective struggle, collective literary struggle. For a short time, we shall gather and hang out with Glory and Khadijah and the worlds they inhabit. We shall read them out loud, their words, their thoughts, and we shall ask questions. We shall wonder what we would do in their shoes, confess what we cannot relate to in their choices, and, ultimately, admit what remains unsaid.

This project is about meeting strangers. Fictional strangers, perhaps, but that is all the better. Because in the generosity of enclosing ourselves around what is imagined, maybe we can touch something real, something real within ourselves, while being with others. I will be sharing project updates on this page, where you can also read both stories as collected in their fragments. Please join me, Glory, and Khadijah, if you can, in any of these cities. 

Complete event details will be shared after indicating interest here. 

Lagos – December 20

Accra – December 27 

Kaduna I – December 29 

Kaduna II – January 2

Abuja – January 3