Letters from readers about stories that moved them.

It’s more like a tragic bonding with this horrible event. Falmata was just a girl with a promising life that was taken from her because a man happened to her. Now, a mother must bear the horrific anguish of losing a daughter and watching the cruel family member who killed her be set free.

It humbled me in a way. It also touched me to do something special for a girl this year, and as I am writing this, I have enough funds to supply sanitary pads for over 80 girls, and I hope the money keeps rising. Thank you to the reporter of this piece.

This story answers a pressing question I've always had. What happens when children raised in such extreme conditions with little or no care, formal education, and skill grow old? How do they navigate the society? What kind of life do they live?

Aside from the fact that Hauwa has her way with words, I feel the story was perfectly captured that it pierced through the reader's heart. I was reading it with so many emotions running through me. I want Falmata to get justice.

I find many of your stories groundbreaking and heartbreaking. They are well-researched and written in the proper context. I will choose “Displaced 13 Times Over.” The victim (Binta Bukar) is 54, and as a 59-year-old man, I felt a special empathy for her.

“Awana, having completed his mission, went back to his room calmly. He performed ablution and said his prayers, then lay down to sleep as though he had not just taken a human life.” With a mind full of questions as to what faith we practice, norms we uphold, and system of thinking we use, I find this part of the story very disturbing.

It is so overwhelming how prolonged isolation, especially due to injustice, could alienate one from one’s own reality, making the familiar feel strange and distant. Hafsatu’s confusion over everyday things like buses or currency mirrors the disorientation of returning to a world that has moved on without you, leaving one stranded in a version of life that no longer exists.

We always hear about terrorism from victims, forcibly converted followers, but really, what goes on in the mind of a self-radicalised person?