A Solitary Refuge|A Conversation with Temitope Oloruntoba

When I first received the prompt, I started thinking about the night not simply as a time of day, but as a different kind of space. I wondered what it might mean to someone who actually preferred being awake and working at night, when most people had gone home and the world had become quieter. That led me to Khadija, a Muslim woman whose trauma has made the noise, unpredictability and closeness of crowds difficult for her. I wanted the night shift to feel almost like a refuge for her. A place where she could be alone, away from the noise of the day and the people who came with it.

I was drawn to the contradiction in the way we think about women and the night. Nighttime is often presented as something women should fear, a time when being alone makes us vulnerable. But I was interested in exploring the other side of that experience: what if the quiet of the night could also feel liberating? What if, for a few hours, there were no crowds, no constant attention, no one watching or approaching you? Through Khadija, I wanted to explore that quiet freedom while still acknowledging the trauma that shaped her desire for solitude.

Writing this story made me think more deeply about solitude, particularly the kind of solitude women rarely get to experience without it being framed as loneliness or danger. I began to think about how much of our lives are spent responding to other people. There is something powerful about the hours when all of that falls away. At the same time, writing Khadija reminded me that solitude can be both a refuge and a confrontation. When the noise disappears, we are sometimes left alone with the things we have been trying not to hear.

I hope my writing makes people pause and look twice at the things they have learned to overlook, to sit with uncomfortable questions, and to find a little more tenderness for the lives and experiences they cannot immediately understand.