🏃🏿♀️ Four Minutes Minus Heartbreak
Plus, The World’s Longest-Jailed Writers
Good morning from… can you guess where? (Answer at the bottom!)
The World’s Longest-Jailed Writers
From 2019 to 2023, Eritrea ranked the worst jailer of journalists and writers in sub-Saharan Africa, forcing many to flee the country. Here’s how writer and poet, Awet Fissehaye, begins his recounting of his escape, and you can read the rest of his poignant essay right here.
“I am sitting in the Art Room at the London Library, facing a big, oblique, off-white glass window. It is the same colour as this Word document, currently blank beyond this sentence, which I plan to fill with words that say something about why and how I ended up in the UK. I am 5,700 kilometres away from my country, Eritrea – or, rather, it is 5,700 kilometres, with no countries you must enter in between, if you fly. It is 8,100 kilometres if you drive, in which case you pass through twelve nations. Or, if you walk, and then get a boat, and then travel by whatever means you can, it is some other distance, some other number of countries.
“I must start like this – oblique, like the window in front of me – because arriving in a foreign land comes at the expense of leaving one’s homeland, and telling the story of that journey means revisiting and reliving its experiences, and, sometimes, these experiences are miserable. So it is hard to for me to go straight into my story of leaving home, of escaping the restrictions of Eritrea, not once, but twice.”
Four Minutes Minus Heartbreak: Faith Kipyegon’s 4:06 Mile Edges the Barrier Ever Closer
Faith Kipyegon’s shot at becoming the first woman to break the four-minute mile came tantalisingly close: 4:06.42 on a still Paris evening, 1.22 seconds under her own ratified world record yet still agonisingly shy of that magical “3:59.99.”
With a phalanx of 13 pacemakers, flashing Wavelight technology and a body-hugging aerodynamic skinsuit dotted with 3-D “aeronodes,” the three-time Olympic 1,500 m champion ticked off 60-second laps until fatigue began nibbling away over the final circuit.
She surged through the tape held by good friend Eliud Kipchoge, then promptly collapsed, having logged the fastest mile ever run by a woman under any conditions, even if the assisted setting means the mark won’t count in the record books.
Kipyegon is undeterred: Bannister’s four-minute men’s barrier once looked Everest-high until somebody proved it scalable and the Kenyan believes her own frontier will fall the same way.
“It is possible; if not me, someone else,” she insisted, sending a message to every girl who has ever been told to temper her ambitions. The clock didn’t start with a “3” this time, but the idea no longer feels outlandish… just inevitable.
A Front-Row Seat to Sudan’s 2019 Uprising
Paris-based, Franco-Tunisian-Moroccan director Hind Meddeb brings us straight into the sweaty, song-fuelled heart of Khartoum’s 2019 uprising in her new doc. Imagine the energy of a block party, the stakes of a revolution, and the soundtrack of rap cyphers echoing off tear-gas canisters.
Who’s on the mic? Mostly Gen Z, especially the women, spitting poetry, chanting slogans, and spray-painting hope onto barricades.
The buzzkill: A “Transitional Military Council” that turned “transition” into a punchline, capping the spring with a June massacre (127 dead, 70 rapes).
Street art highlight: A traffic sign hacked to read “Sorry for the Delay—Uprooting a Regime.” Banksy would approve.
Meddeb’s camera stitches together grief, grit, and guerrilla beat-making into a 78-minute reminder that revolutions can be sung, danced, and rapped into existence.
Can’t wait to see it!
Food for Thought
“Eyes have no boundaries.”
— Mozambique Proverb
And the Answer is…
The photo is from Kinshasa, DRC. You can also send in your own photos, alongside the location, and we’ll do our best to feature them.
Outstanding effort, Faith Kipyegon! She was on her desired pace the entire time, until the last 200 meters. This means she only needs a bit more endurance. You are right there, Faith. Keep at it!