IR Short Stories

Amu’s mornings had grown quiet, slow, and heavy with thought. Since she was fired from her waitressing position for speaking boldly against racism, she had been reeling , trying to figure out what came next. Amu was a trained journalist in a country where a degree didn’t guarantee work, and lately, the only path that made sense was politics, somewhere her voice might carry further than a blog post. So far, she knew one thing: she needed to stand for something important, something that could shift the trajectory of the country in a meaningful way. Her overworked mind had yet to figure out what that looked like, but she was determined to find it, even if it took everything. Sleepless, she rose at dawn and jogged toward the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Arcadia. She hadn’t anticipated that the most tragic thing she would see that morning would become the driving force of her political life. As she ran in silence, lost in thought, she noticed a woman sitting cross-legged on the ...