Dark Clay: Exclusion from the Beginning
In the beginning, there were no words; there was clay. A clay of profound darkness, hastily kneaded by fate, which forgot to pass it through the inherited molds of beauty in my tribe. I was born into a world where a woman’s value is measured by an ounce of whiteness, a span of hair, and a pound of flesh that fills the eye before the heart. As for me, I came into this world like a Sumerian text — its words unreadable, its letters jagged, a script no one desires to decipher.
Exclusion was my destiny from the very first moment — not because I was different, but because I was black. In a society that sanctifies “light brownness” as the first degree of beauty, I stood at degree zero. It was not merely a difference in taste; it was a color-based class system. I watched lighter-skinned girls receive praise for their “sweet features” and “soft hair,” while my beauty — the beauty of dark clay — was classified as “spiritual beauty” or “beauty of character,” polite phrases for ignoring the body.
I was the child of shadow in a house crowded with girls like full moons. Beings of woven light, swaying as if they walked on water, their hair curtains of deep night, their laughter heavenly melodies. They were the poem, and I was the forgotten footnote at the bottom of the page. My slender body was a dry branch in a lush garden, and my protruding teeth bore witness to a rebellion born with me, refusing to submit to a neat row of artificial pearls. “You took none of their beauty,” was the refrain played in every gathering — a funeral melody for my birth.
The standards of beauty were a sieve that allowed only certain shades and textures to pass. It was not enough to be brown; you had to be light brown, with soft or wavy hair. With my dark skin and tightly coiled African hair, I stood entirely outside the system. I did not even have the chance to play the game, because its rules were written in a color I did not possess. This rejection was not personal; it was a rejection of my history, my roots, the color of my land.
Yet the spirit that dwelled in this clay was of another kind — a spirit of fire and embers, one that does not know how to bow. When mockery became poisoned arrows, I did not weep in secret; I gathered those arrows and forged from them a shield. They called me “Buck Teeth,” and I would smile deliberately in their faces — a wide smile like an open wound — daring them to look straight into my eyes, where a flame that never goes out had taken up residence.
On a moonlit night, I stood before the mirror. I did not see a victim; I saw a warrior in a body she did not choose. Those protruding teeth were not a flaw — they were small spears I brandished in the face of a world that sought to tame me. In a moment of sacred madness, I chose my own rite of passage. The fire water that touched my mouth was not a desperate attempt at beautification; it was a baptism by fire that carved into my flesh an eternal promise: I will not be a pale copy of anyone. Pain was a small price for my true birth.
I grew up carrying my scars like medals of honor. In women’s gatherings, where mothers hunted brides the way a falcon hunts its prey, I sat in the corner — not as a forgotten ghost, but as one seated on a hidden throne. At first, I saw other women as guards of the prison I had been born outside of. I saw in their beauty a privilege, and in their submission a weakness.
My friends boarded the train of destiny and left. They waved to me from the windows, in their eyes a mixture of joy and pity. They did not understand that I had not missed the train — I was rejecting its prepackaged destination. I was not waiting for a groom; I was waiting to grow large enough to contain myself, to become my own unknown continent, my own boundless sky.
Scene: My Cousin’s Daughter’s Wedding
It was the wedding night of Nawal, who resembled a statue carved from ivory. The air was thick with henna and incense, and ululations pierced the ears. I stood in a dress the color of the midnight sky, watching from a distance. A relative approached me — a woman whose wrinkles were maps of gossip — and said loudly: “May it be your turn next, my daughter… even if the train has passed you by, God’s mercy is vast.”
The moment froze. Eyes waited for my collapse. Instead, the fire inside me rose. I turned slowly, lifted my head, and smiled — a smile that does not hide my teeth, but celebrates them. I met her gaze and said calmly: “Thank you, Aunt. But I no longer wait for trains. I have learned to fly.”
Silence fell, heavier than the noise before it. She had expected a victim, not a voice. I walked toward the bridal stage, not only to congratulate the bride, but to announce my presence. I was no longer the ghost in the corner. I had become presence itself.
Behind the gold and makeup, I saw fear in Nawal’s eyes — fear of the unknown future, of pleasing a husband and an entire family, of preserving a beauty that was her ticket of passage. I understood that she, too, was a prisoner — but in a gilded cage. Her beauty was not protection; it was responsibility, duty, restraint. I held her hennaed hand and whispered, “Be strong.” Her soft sigh carried a shared understanding beyond words.
The New Ending: The Dance of the Soul and Liberation
That night, I returned not to contemplate rejection, but to celebrate life. I opened my windows and let the night air fill the room. The world was no longer a battlefield, but a vast stage. Some of us play the beautiful woman, some the rebel, some the tender mother — and backstage, we all remove our masks in search of our true selves.
True liberation is not in condemning the prisons of others, but in transforming your own cell into a palace. Not in rejecting heritage, but in stealing fire from it to bake your own bread.
I took out my colors and painted a woman dancing — a woman of all colors, her hair a cloud, her eyes two stars, her mouth a smiling crescent. Barefoot on the earth, her head touching the sky. She was not beautiful by their standards. She was not ugly. She was alive — the embodiment of a spirit that clay cannot defeat.
This body of mine, with its dark clay and protruding teeth, is no longer my battlefield. It is a tool, like a brush, with which I play the melody of my existence. I care for it not to please others, but because a great soul deserves a strong temple. I move, I eat, I breathe — not for approval, but to nourish the fire within.
I no longer seek meaning in people’s eyes. I find it in sunrise, in the smell of coffee, in work I love, in laughter with a friend, in an old melody that returns me to a childhood that was not all ashes.
Life is not a train, and not a battle. Life is a dance — sometimes slow and sad, sometimes fast and joyful. What matters is not how your body looks while you dance, but that you keep dancing. That you find your rhythm, and let your soul lead.
I am dancing now — to the rhythm of my own soul, in a world I have created. A world that does not need mirrors, because everything in it reflects the joy of being alive. My body is clay, yes. But my soul is made of fire and stars. This is my story — not a testimony of pain, but a song of dancing in the heart of the storm.
Nesreen Mohamed Adam — Sudan
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