I am writing about a woman who, until recently—until I discovered her diary—was essentially a stranger to me. Her life had always seemed like a riddle, a mystery, like a dream. My mother. I saw her when I was eight years old and came to Austria from Nigeria. Her life took a dramatic turn in Nigeria—events of such profound and, to me, incredibly overwhelming nature that I would never have been able to imagine them had I not read about them—in her diary, which I found after her death. Through it, I learned more and more about my mother bit by bit; her name took on more and more facets and colors, and her face took on more features.