Juma’s house was small, with two sofas covered in brown fabric and a low table crowded with three chargers, a mug of tea, and two phones.
Amina placed her notebook in the center of the table.
Juma opened his laptop.
“We’re not building a story,” he said. “We’re building a timeline.”
Amina nodded. “Anything without a source goes under claim.”
“And if we remember the same moment differently?”
“We keep the disagreement.”
Juma gave a faint smile. “That’s the part people hate.”
Rehema could not come. Her mother had forbidden her from going anywhere until the school announced a reopening date, so she joined by video call, her phone propped against a mug at the far end of the table.
“Before we start,” she said, “I just want to make sure we’re not creating a document that clears management.”
“And I want to make sure we don’t create one that clears us,” Amina replied.
Rehema let out a breath. “Fine.”
Juma opened the first file.
It was a voice note three minutes and fourteen seconds long, recorded roughly forty minutes before the blackout. He had started it almost by accident while preparing an update for the head prefect about the growing noise on the boys’ side.
He pressed play.
At first there were only distant sounds: boys whistling, somebody shouting, “Back to the block.” Then Juma’s own voice came through.
“Situation is still controllable.”
Amina wrote down the timestamp.
At one minute twelve seconds, another voice became clear.
“Do not go through the gate. Staff are coming.”
Juma paused the recording.
“That’s another prefect.”
“You know who?” Amina asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t write the name unless identity changes the fact.”
Juma deleted the name he had started typing.
Rehema frowned from the screen. “Why are we protecting them?”
“We’re not protecting anybody,” Amina said. “We’re removing details that don’t change what happened.”
Juma started the recording again.
A few seconds later several voices overlapped. One student said, “They’ve closed all the routes.” Another answered, “Then force them to hear us.”
Rehema spoke immediately.
“That wasn’t me.”
Amina looked at her through the phone screen. “Nobody said it was.”
“I know. I just want that clear.”
“Then we write: unidentified student voice.”
Rehema went silent.
When the voice note ended, they had fewer dramatic facts than they expected.
There was no evidence of a donor.
No order to break the gate.
No management official saying student voices should be silenced.
There was noise, instruction, anger, and confusion.
Juma leaned back.
“This file is boring.”
“Boring can be good,” Amina said.
“Not on social media.”
“For a review, yes.”
Rehema shook her head. “But people were angry for real reasons.”
“Anger can be real even when a specific rumor is false.”
They moved to screenshots.
Amina opened a folder from that night and showed them the approved timetable, the dorm-restriction notice, the school closure message, and a screenshot claiming a donor had ordered the cancellation.
“Source?” Juma asked.
“None.”
“Claim.”
Rehema looked away.
“I forwarded that donor message.”
Amina raised her eyes.
“Where did you get it?”
“Another group.”
“Did you ask who the original source was?”
Rehema was silent for several seconds.
“No. I was angry.”
“And you believed it?”
“I wanted it to be true.”
The sentence landed differently from everything else they had heard that afternoon.
Juma stopped typing.
“Why?”
“Because a donor would have been a simple villain. One rich person comes in, the activity gets cancelled, students get angry. Easy.”
Amina wrote something in her notebook.
“Are you writing down my confession?” Rehema asked.
“I’m writing that the donor claim was unverified and came through a forwarded message.”
“Good.”
Amina had watched Rehema change since the blackout. Her anger had not disappeared, but now it carried embarrassment with it.
Juma opened another file.
This one was only a minute and a half long, recorded by a student in the girls’ block about an hour before the disturbance escalated.
The girl’s voice said, “The patron says if we have a complaint, we should submit it again through student affairs.”
Amina held up one hand.
“Again?”
Juma nodded. “That matters.”
“We had already submitted the art request,” Rehema said.
Amina opened the chronology from the radio log. The art-courtyard request had been forwarded to the activities office two weeks earlier. Yet on the night of the cancellation, students were being told to write again through student affairs.
“That’s a backlog loop,” Juma said.
“Don’t call it a loop yet,” Amina replied. “What we know is that they were told to resubmit. We don’t know why.”
Juma nodded. “Fact first.”
They listened to more recordings.
One student claimed staff had threatened to expel club leaders. No staff member was named. Nobody else confirmed it.
Claim.
Another voice note captured a prefect ordering all students back to their blocks.
Verified by the written notice.
Another captured Rehema saying, “They can write a rule quickly, but they can’t write an answer.”
Verified as a quote, but still opinion.
Amina introduced three marks on the timeline.
**F** — fact supported by a record or two independent sources.
**C** — claim with a source but not independently verified.
**U** — unknown.
Juma stared at the page.
“This is starting to look more like an audit than a student complaint.”
“Exactly.”
Rehema made a face. “You two are enjoying the word audit far too much.”
“Because an audit doesn’t need anyone to like the conclusion,” Amina said.
By midafternoon, they had filled only two pages.
Rehema looked disappointed.
“I thought we’d find some huge proof.”
“We have a lot of small proof,” Amina said.
“Small proof doesn’t go viral.”
“We’re not making something to go viral.”
Juma laughed. “That’s the difference between you and everybody else.”
Amina did not answer.
She worried the same difference could make students call her a coward while management called her a troublemaker.
Juma went to the kitchen for tea. Amina and Rehema stayed on the call.
“I need to tell you something,” Rehema said.
“Go ahead.”
“That night, before the lights went out, I told people management was afraid of my poem.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know that. I was angry because the event was mine.”
Amina nodded.
“Do you want us to include it?”
Rehema hesitated. “Does it matter?”
“It shows rumors also came from students.”
“And that helps management.”
“Maybe.”
Rehema stayed quiet for a long time.
Then she said, “Put it in.”
Amina wrote:
**Student-originated speculation circulated before a verified reason was provided.**
“Don’t put my name,” Rehema said.
“I don’t need it.”
Juma returned carrying tea.
“Okay. Last file.”
He opened a voice note that another student had sent him. Its timestamp was seven days before the cancellation.
The first voice belonged to a student.
“Madam, we submitted the dining-queue request again. They told us to speak to the patron.”
Then came a woman’s voice.
Amina recognized it immediately.
Ms. Naserian.
“I took it to the office last week,” the recording said. “I haven’t received a response. If they tell you to resubmit, attach a copy of the previous receipt.”
Juma stopped the file.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Amina looked at the date on the recording.
Then at the stamp on the request chronology.
They matched.
Rehema’s voice dropped.
“So a teacher knew it had reached the office.”
“She knew she had forwarded it,” Amina corrected. “We don’t know what she knew after that.”
Juma leaned over the laptop.
“But this changes one thing.”
“What?”
“A student was being told to resubmit a request that a staff member had already said she delivered.”
Amina placed an **F** beside the line.
Their timeline had become less dramatic.
But it had become heavier.
The final voice in the file was not a student’s.
It was a teacher saying, “I took it to the office last week.”
---