The Grace of the Unclaimed – Jude Dibia

I. Espresso House, Triangeln

It always begins here. At a corner table in Espresso House – the one tucked inside Triangeln mall by the train station, where people come and go like the weather. I order my usual: a black coffee, no sugar. The taste is never quite perfect, but it does not need to be. What I seek isn’t the brew – it’s the view.

This place, with its warm lighting and soft industrial murmur, has become a kind of stage for me. A place where I can slip into observation mode – watching, listening, inventing. I study the curve of someone’s hand around a mug, the hesitation in a couple’s silence, the lone commuter scrolling endlessly through their phone. In my mind, they all become characters – vessels for stories I have not yet written. It’s a strange intimacy, to love people you don’t know, and to imagine lives for them that might be kinder than the ones they live.

There’s comfort in that. And distance. Perhaps, even something like control. In a world where my own story has felt shaped by migration, queerness, and a silence I did not always choose, this small ritual – coffee, window, imagination – becomes a soft kind of rebellion. Here, I do not need to belong. I only need to watch.

Once, I came here with my dog – a small white Maltese, curious and full of joy. We were just about to leave when a man stopped me. He was beautiful – light-skinned, with long, flowing black hair. There was something ethereal about him, as if he didn’t belong to the city but had drifted into it from a poem. He asked to pet my dog, and I said yes. He crouched. I crouched too. We laughed over something small – I can’t remember what now. And then, just before walking away, he leaned closer and said softly: “I like the way you look.”

I must have blinked – startled by being seen. I managed a thank-you. Told him he was beautiful, too. But no name was exchanged. No number. No thread to follow later. He vanished back into the mall’s noise like a dropped note.

I remember walking home that evening with a strange ache – not just because I didn’t ask for his number, but because I realised I hadn’t seen myself the way he had seen me. I had, without knowing it, become invisible to myself. And that’s the loneliest kind of vanishing – the one that happens inside your own skin.

Still, I return to that café. Often. Silly, maybe. But some part of me hopes he might walk in again. The truth is, I probably would not recognise him now. It is not his face I remember, but the moment he made me feel briefly beautiful – and real.

*

II. The Nod and the Distance

In cities like London, New York, Paris, Edinburgh – even small towns like Natick – you learn the quiet codes of Black presence. You can feel it before you see it: a pulse in the air, an awareness that moves between bodies like static. Sometimes, eyes meet. There is the nod – brief but loaded. A gesture with lineage. I see you. You are of me. We’ve crossed oceans to arrive here. It is an act of cultural recognition, as practised as it is involuntary.

And then there is the other reaction – the one where eyes slide away, as if contact might unravel something. Avoidance. Averting. Disassociation. As if by seeing each other, we become too visible to everyone else.

I have been on both ends of that spectrum – seen and unseen, recognising and refusing. I have given the nod. I have turned my head. Sometimes out of fatigue. Sometimes out of fear. Sometimes, because I simply did not want to be read – not as Black, not as African, not as queer. Just let me be another man on the train. A shape, not a signal.

I do not navigate toward Black spaces. It is not intentional. It just is. I have built a life shaped more by proximity than community. It was not until a phone call with my mother some years ago that I even realised what I was doing.

“Have you met any other Nigerians over there?” she asked. “Made any friends?”

I hadn’t. And I told her so. Her question made me uncomfortably aware of something I’d never examined: I didn’t really have Black friends. At least not here, not in Sweden. My closest friend, who is Black, is Jamaican, younger, and our dynamic leans more toward mentorship – a kind of chosen brotherhood.

Sometimes, I think about another man – someone I was introduced to by a Swedish friend during a small soiree. I do not remember his name, so I’ll call him Kwame. There was something about him, even in that first interaction, that felt brittle. Defensive. Like he had something to prove. Each time our paths crossed afterwards – at gallery openings, barbecues, awkwardly assembled expat gatherings – he wore the same expression: a smirk that said, I’ve been here longer. I know more. I’m more Swede than you’ll ever be. The energy was unmistakable: I am the only one of us allowed in this room. Don’t challenge that.

It struck me then – and still does – how even in the smallness of diaspora, a strange sense of competition clings to us. Especially among Black men. You begin to wonder if this tension is a byproduct of scarcity – if we have internalised the idea that only one of us can rise without dragging the other down.

I never engaged with Kwame. But I have asked myself, in quieter moments: Do I give off that same energy? Do others feel unseen by me?

The truth is, I am reclusive by nature. Not aloof, not arrogant – just inward. But in diaspora, that interiority can be misread as coldness. Or worse, disdain.

*

III. The Woman on the Bus

It was an ordinary day. I boarded the bus with a cluttered mind – not in the mood for conversation, let alone flirtation. The woman bumped into me, smiled, said something casual, warm. I returned the smile. She laughed. Complimented my shirt. Said I had “a nice energy.”

Then she asked for my number.

I hesitated. The moment was small, but the weight of it felt enormous. I did not want to embarrass her. I did not want to lie. So, I said, softly, “I’m not interested.”

She blinked – stunned. Her face hardened. “I was just being friendly,” she snapped. “You didn’t have to be so dismissive.”

But it wasn’t her attention that bothered me. It was what it meant – the assumption that I was available. That I was straight. That I fit some shape of masculinity that invited her interest.

For a long time, I feared being seen. Not my body, not my looks – but the real me. The unconventional one. The one whose desires would have been labelled deviant. Living in Europe stripped some of that fear away. I let myself believe I had become legible – to everyone. So why couldn’t she see me?

It made me think about the many ways queer people come out. Not once, but over and over. Sometimes in whispers. Sometimes in protest. Sometimes not at all.

I knew a Nigerian man in the U.S. who once worked in corporate Lagos. After migrating, he changed completely – began dressing in flamboyant silks, dyed his hair neon, wore makeup. Not a reinvention, but an emergence. He had removed the mask and replaced it with light.

And I admired that. I still do.

But that woman’s attention left me wondering: Have I not done enough to be seen? Is that why I’m still alone?

Audre Lorde once wrote, “If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” That day, on that bus, I chose silence over self-definition. And it left a bruise.

*

IV. The Solitude I Chose

I grew up surrounded by people. Four brothers. Cousins. Relatives who came to stay and never quite left. I love my family. But even as a boy, I longed for silence. The house always felt too full. So, I learned to retreat.

When I moved to Sweden, a friend asked if I was not afraid of being lonely. I was not. I welcomed it.

Sweden, with its cool silences and emotional restraint, offered a kind of blankness I craved. A country where no one knocks uninvited. Where strangers on the train give you the gift of not existing to them.

In the 10 years I’ve lived here, I’ve learned this: my solitude does not frighten me. It steadies me. I crave it.

There is a particular solitude that queerness teaches you – a solitude sharpened by Blackness and magnified by diaspora. I am not lonely. I am alone. And that distinction is my shield. My blessing. My quiet rebellion.

Here in Sweden, solitude is almost a social contract. Swedes keep to themselves – politely, reverently. They do not do small talk, do not force conversation. It should feel liberating. And sometimes it does. But sometimes, it makes my silences louder. I begin to feel less like I have chosen aloneness, and more like I have inherited it.

*

V. The Fear That Returns with Time

Ageing does not scare me. What unsettles me is how time begins to narrow your options. How the world begins to ask less of you. Or nothing at all.

In queer life, youth is fetishised. Once you’re past your mid-thirties, you’re made to feel like you have wandered too far from the party. Even if you look young, there will come a moment when someone asks your age. And when you answer, you’ll see it in their eyes: a slight retreat. A flicker of disappointment.

Will they still want me now that they know?

You start to take stock: the books left unwritten. The love never returned. The life you thought you had more time to live. Sometimes, I fear that I have made peace with solitude so completely that I have forgotten how to be chosen. Or wanted.

Audre Lorde reminds us: “Your silence will not protect you.” And yet, silence has been my armour for so long, I do not always know how to take it off.

But I have lived honestly. I have written truthfully. I have not betrayed my reflection.

And that matters.

*

VI. The Quiet That Remains

After almost 15 years, I have a new novel coming out. The Quiet That Remains. It is a book born not from noise or acclaim, but from stillness. From solitude. From the hours spent sitting at the edge of myself, listening inward.

James Baldwin once said: “The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.” I have done exactly that. Not always by choice, not always joyfully – but faithfully.

People often ask if I miss home. Nigeria, they mean. My answer shifts: sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Sometimes I say, Home is not a location, but a memory. A scent. A voice. As long as we carry it, we are always home.

I choose to remain unclaimed by place. Not rootless, but resistant to being defined solely by origin.

And in the end, when the lights dim, what remains is not applause, not the gaze of a lover, not a passport. What remains is the quiet.

And in that quiet, I have found myself.

Jude Dibia is a Nigerian novelist and editor whose work explores identity, queerness, masculinity, and belonging. He is the author of Walking with Shadows, Unbridled, Blackbird, and the forthcoming novel The Quiet That Remains. His fiction and nonfiction reflect a commitment to emotional honesty and narrative depth, often engaging themes of diaspora, desire, and the interior lives of outsiders. His writing has been widely anthologised, translated, and taught in academic institutions.

*Image by Lucas Santos on Unsplash