Kaatiba | كاتبة : writer, author (f. declension)

First there was the pen...

...and then there was a woman who daydreamed her way through life, read like a dragon hoarding gold, and won't stop trying to capture the worlds in her head - no matter how elusive they prove to be.

Hello! I'm Sumayyah! I'm a Muslim writer of fiction who occasionally dabbles in poetry. I'm based in Canada and I'm the co-founder of Sakina Literary Society. 

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art by chickpeamcb.tumblr.com

Death Wavers | A Drabble

You meet Death, as everyone does, on the last day of your life. It greets you at a crossroads, and that isn't a metaphor; you're at the junction of Mot Road and Suchart Street when it appears before you, looking exactly as you might imagine Death personified would look—hooded, faceless, bearing a scythe of smoke and endings, ominous and yet not threatening. Death is simply there. More there than anything else, in fact, making everything else feel ephemeral and unreal. Yourself included.

TIME TO GO, it says, or whatever the equivalent is for a meaning impressed on reality and filtered in such a way so that your mortal mind can comprehend.
​
You grit your teeth and ground yourself against the summons already hooking into you, peeling your Self from your body with the delicacy of a web painstakingly unravelled, and you look Death right in its non-face. "No," you tell it, with such firmness that, for a moment, your "No" is more like NO — not words, but immutable fact.

Books

currently in progress

The Storyteller, The Djinn, and The Prince

A Muslim-themed fantasy inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, featuring a kidnapped prince, djinn, and a revenge plot decades in the making. 

Oracle

A very loose retelling of Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, featuring an oracle who isn't, an assassin who decides against killing her mark, a usurper queen who was once a hero, and much betrayal.  

Rivener

A post-apocalyptic fantasy featuring a woman with a destructive power, an enslaved wolf shifter, and their run for freedom from the hunters who hound them. ​

Short Stories

completed

The Queen, the Lion, & the Rings

Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. 
​Or, Susan Pevensie's story, continued.​

A Net of Stars, Woven

A flash fiction collection featuring various figures of Greek and Roman mythology, both mortals and immortals alike.​

The Peacock, The Crown, & The River

A fable about how the peacock earned his beautiful colours.

October Odds

A flash fiction collection built on prompts provided the Fictober 2019 writer's event, all featuring a dash of oddness.