I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody

Host: The rain had just stopped, leaving the streets of Lagos glistening like a mirror of broken stars. The smell of wet earth mixed with the aroma of roasted corn from a vendor’s stand nearby. Inside a dimly lit bookshop café, two figures sat across from each other — a quiet corner surrounded by piles of secondhand books, their spines cracked and their pages breathing the ghosts of other readers.

Jeeny was reading, her fingers slowly tracing the words of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Jack, seated opposite her, leaned back, his arms crossed, his eyes gray and steady, like a man who had long since stopped believing in miracles.

Host: The ceiling fan hummed, a tired creature turning in slow circles, cutting through the humid air. It was evening, and the world outside was alive with distant voices and the soft, rhythmic beat of a drum.

Jack: “You know, Jeeny, that line you just read aloud — it sounds beautiful, poetic even. But isn’t it a bit… idealistic? ‘Identify with someone far away, someone different.’ Achebe makes it sound like an act of magic.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “It is a kind of magic, Jack. The kind that breaks the walls between people. He’s right — it’s easy to see yourself in someone who looks like you, lives like you. But to feel for someone you’ve never met — that’s where literature performs its wonders.”

Host: The light from a small lamp glowed on Jeeny’s face, giving her skin a warm amber hue. Jack’s expression was unreadable, but his fingers tapped against the table, slow and rhythmic.

Jack: “Wonders, maybe. But literature doesn’t feed people. It doesn’t stop wars. You can read all the novels you want about suffering, but empathy in print doesn’t always become empathy in practice. Look around — the world is more connected than ever, yet more divided.”

Jeeny: “That’s because connection isn’t the same as understanding. You can scroll through faces all day on your phone and still feel nothing. But one story — one honest, human story — can pierce your indifference.”

Jack: “Maybe for a moment. Until you close the book.”

Host: The rain began again, tapping gently against the window, a soft percussion to their argument. Jeeny leaned forward, her eyes alive with quiet fire.

Jeeny: “Do you remember the photo of Alan Kurdi? The little Syrian boy who drowned and washed up on the Turkish shore in 2015?”

Jack: (pauses) “Yes. The world cried for a week.”

Jeeny: “Because a single image — a single life — suddenly became real. People who had never cared about refugees suddenly donated, protested, marched. Achebe’s right, Jack — when we start to identify with those far away, when we see them not as numbers but as stories, something inside us changes.”

Host: Jack’s jaw tightened. The sound of thunder rolled faintly in the distance, like a slow drumbeat of thought. He looked away, toward the rain, as if searching for an answer in its movement.

Jack: “And yet… the wars didn’t stop. Borders didn’t open. People went back to their routines. What you call identification, I call temporary sentiment. Empathy has an expiry date when reality kicks in.”

Jeeny: “You’re confusing the failure of action with the absence of feeling. Literature’s job isn’t to change the world directly — it’s to remind us of our shared humanity, so that change becomes possible at all.”

Jack: “Shared humanity,” he muttered. “Sounds nice in essays. But tell that to someone in a refugee camp. Or a child soldier in Congo. Words don’t fill stomachs.”

Jeeny: “And yet, without words, who would even know they exist?”

Host: The silence that followed was thick — the kind that fills a room when both sides have touched something painful. A motorcycle roared past outside, its engine a brief eruption in the still night.

Jack: (quietly) “I grew up in a small mining town, Jeeny. My father worked himself to the bone, and all those ‘great books’ we were told to read — they didn’t mean anything to him. He used to say, ‘Philosophy doesn’t pay the bills.’ So forgive me if I find it hard to believe that empathy through literature can change the real world.”

Jeeny: “Maybe your father didn’t need books, Jack. Maybe he lived his story. But literature isn’t about changing everyone. It’s about reminding the ones who forget. Achebe’s people had to remind the colonizers that Africans were not savages — that they loved, grieved, dreamed. Words became the only weapons against ignorance.”

Host: The fan continued its slow rotation, stirring the air heavy with old paper and rain. Jack’s eyes softened — only slightly — as he listened.

Jack: “So, you think empathy can be taught?”

Jeeny: “I think it can be awakened.”

Jack: “By reading about people who eat different food?”

Jeeny: “By realizing that their hunger feels just like yours.”

Host: Jack laughed, but the sound was tired, not cruel — a laugh of disbelief worn thin by years of cynicism.

Jack: “You’re talking about utopia, Jeeny. You want a world where everyone reads each other’s pain like poetry. But people are too busy surviving.”

Jeeny: “That’s exactly why we need stories — to remind us that survival isn’t the same as living.”

Host: A flash of lightning briefly lit the room, illuminating Jeeny’s eyes, which seemed to shine with the same electric intensity as the storm itself. Jack looked at her, and for a moment, he saw something — not pity, not argument — but faith.

Jack: “And what about the darker side? When literature becomes propaganda, when it blinds rather than opens eyes?”

Jeeny: “That’s the shadow of power, not of empathy. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart because Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness had painted Africa as a void. He wanted the world to see the people inside that darkness. Every light has its counterfeit — but it doesn’t mean we should live without light.”

Host: The storm outside intensified, rattling the windows. A book fell from the shelf, its pages fluttering open on the floor — an accidental gesture of the universe. Jeeny picked it up, her fingers brushing the words gently.

Jeeny: “Here — this line.” (She read aloud.) “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That’s what literature does — it gives the lions their voice.”

Jack: (sighs) “You make it sound so noble.”

Jeeny: “It is. Every time you read a story that isn’t about you — and still feel something — you’ve crossed the border of self.”

Host: The thunder subsided, and a strange calm settled between them. Jack leaned forward now, his earlier sarcasm replaced by something quieter — curiosity.

Jack: “So you think that’s the real test? To care about someone you’ll never meet?”

Jeeny: “Yes. To imagine their laughter, their fears, their hunger — even when the world tells you it’s none of your concern.”

Jack: “And what if that imagination hurts you?”

Jeeny: “Then it’s working.”

Host: Her words hung in the air, like smoke rising from a snuffed candle. Jack rubbed his temples, then nodded slowly.

Jack: “You know… I once read a letter from a soldier in Vietnam. He said he’d started reading The Diary of Anne Frank during the war — said it was the only thing that reminded him what innocence looked like. Maybe that’s what you mean.”

Jeeny: (softly) “Exactly that.”

Host: The rain began to fade, its rhythm now a gentle whisper against the roof. Outside, the night was cool, the city breathing again after the storm. Inside, the two sat in silence, their faces reflecting a shared, fragile understanding.

Jack: “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe words don’t feed the hungry — but they remind the fed to share.”

Jeeny: “And that, Jack, is how the world begins to change.”

Host: The lamp flickered, then dimmed, leaving their faces half in shadow, half in light — like two sides of the same truth. Outside, a child’s laughter echoed faintly from the street, a simple, human sound cutting through the night.

Host: The camera would pull back slowly now — through the window, past the books, past the rain-soaked city — leaving behind the quiet image of two people who, for a brief moment, had truly seen each other. And in that seeing, literature had indeed performed its wonders.