Ghostwritten Memoir Sample 1

In Form Three, I learned that boys didn’t care about girls. They cared about each other—about the approval of other boys, about performing cruelty as a badge of strength.

In 2003, I was seated next to a boy everyone called “problematic.” My teacher offloaded him onto me, telling me it was now my job to “reform” him. I was fourteen—barely surviving a rough home myself—yet I had been assigned the role of rehabilitation centre for someone else’s badly raised son.

He resented me immediately. On the first day of school, he sneered and called me “Aminah,” dragging out the MINAH—a street slur for a girl without dignity. The second day, he pried into my family, and I admitted my parents were divorced, my father long absent. The third day, he struck me for fun. “What can you do?” he taunted. “You don’t even have a father.”

I had become his punching bag—a role I never consented to. For weeks, I endured his blows and his mockery, until one afternoon, rage sharpened into prophecy. I cursed him through my tears: “One day you won’t have a father either. And when you have children, they will suffer what you’ve done to me.” He only laughed—a godless, evil laugh, as if the world belonged to him alone.

Six months passed. Then, without warning, he stopped. My days became quieter. No more fists, no more taunts. I later learned from a senior that he had been “taken care of.” It wasn’t the first time older boys had intervened to shield me, and I nodded in silent gratitude.

In 2005, news came that his father had died. He sought me out, perhaps for comfort, perhaps for absolution. But when he approached, I turned my face and body away. His cruelty had been conscious, deliberate. That kind of wound does not earn forgiveness. It only lingers as a reminder: some torments leave scars that silence cannot heal.