In "Ink and Scars", debut author Jasmeen Ahmed doesn’t just write—she bleeds onto the page.

Her hybrid collection of prose poems, fragmented narrative, and raw diary-like entries takes readers deep into the haunted corridors of memory, faith, heartbreak, and healing.

But for Ahmed, the book is more than a literary offering. It’s an act of survival.

“I didn’t write this book because I wanted to,” Jasmeen tells me in a quiet, measured voice. “I wrote it because I had to. The words were eating me alive.”

A Story Told in Echoes

Published in early 2025, Ink and Scars is unlike anything you’ve read. Told in fragments—some barely a paragraph, others sprawling with poetic fury—it reads like a journal found in the rubble of a war-torn heart.

Characters flicker in and out like dreams. Leila, who whispers to imaginary lovers. Ahmed, whose love is both salvation and illness.

Cities like Garissa, Stockholm, Nairobi, and Mogadishu become both backdrops and metaphors.

Ahmed’s writing does not seek pity. It demands presence.

In poems like “The Apartment with Thin Walls” or “Buried My Trust,” she writes of mental illness, sexual violence, exile, and identity with brutal honesty.

“I was tired of people saying, ‘You’re so strong,’ when what they really meant was ‘Please be quiet about your pain,’” she explains.

“This book is me refusing to be quiet.”

Faith, Feminism, and the Female Mind

Spirituality runs like a fault line through the text—faith broken, mended, lost again.

One chapter laments how prayer becomes “whispers into ceilings,” while another dares to write about God through a woman’s rage.

“I love God,” she says simply. “But I also question Him. And I think there’s room in faith for both reverence and rebellion.”

Ahmed doesn’t identify as a feminist in the Western sense but describes herself as “a woman who’s tired of shrinking.”

Her work touches heavily on gender trauma, societal expectations, and silence—especially the silencing of African and Muslim women.

In “I Won’t Tell Her How to Survive”, she writes: “No, I don’t hate men. I just write about them like they’re weather systems...unpredictable, sometimes violent, but always something I must prepare for.”

From Garissa to the World

Born in Kenya and raised between Nairobi and Garissa, Jasmeen Ahmed credits her Somali heritage for shaping her voice.

“I come from a people who told stories under the stars,” she says.

“We may not have had books always, but we have rhythm. We have memories.”

In the poem “Bloodline of Poets”, she declares:

“We are the children of camel herders / who recited poems by heart under starlit skies... / our knowledge sung.”

Healing, Not Closure

Though the book is often dark, Ink and Scars is not hopeless. It ends not with answers, but with ownership. Healing, Ahmed tells me, is not a destination—it’s an act of defiance.

“There’s this line I wrote—‘Not bravely. Not beautifully. But fully.’ That’s how I survived. That’s how I wrote.”

What’s Next?

Ahmed says she’s working on a new project, but refuses to call it a sequel.

“This book was the wound. The next might be the scar tissue,” she says with a small laugh.

“Still messy. Still human. But maybe, this time, with more light.”

Ink and Scars is a brave, devastating, and ultimately liberating read. In a literary world often polished for comfort, Jasmeen Ahmed dares to be unfiltered. This is not just a book. It’s a reckoning.

A powerful guidebook I highly recommend — essential reading for anyone on the journey of healing, rediscovery, and learning to live again.