By the time the evening call to prayer was heard from the loud speakers over the roofs, Kareem was still standing at the old basketball court behind the secondary school. The sun had begun to set. He bounced the ball once, then twice, bouncing the ball patiently. He had always been good at waiting. Waiting for the right word, Waiting for confidence to come to him which never did. That habit had cost him more than he liked to admit.
The court had once been full of noise laughter, arguments over fouls and arguments over soccer matches theyd watched over the weekends, they talked about dreams and aspirations with the boys. Now it was quieter. Most of his friends had moved on, some to universities far away, some to businesses that swallowed their time whole, some into responsibilities that arrived faster than expected. Kareem stayed but it wasn’t because he lacked ambition, but because he feared choosing the wrong door.
On the far side of the court stood Aisha, camera slung around her neck, adjusting a lens she treated like an extension of herself. She was there most evenings, chasing the right angles capturing moments most people walked past without noticing. She had asked him weeks ago why he never played anymore.
“I’m just… thinking,” he had said. She smiled then, not unkindly but “Careful. Thinking too long can make moments expire ooo.” She said
That sentence followed him now, echoing louder and louder, making him think even more now. The ball felt familiar in his hands, he remembered being younger, when he shot without hesitation. Steph curry he’d always say before shooting. Somewhere along the line, the fear of failing had grown heavier than the joy of trying. Every unmade decision stacked on the next until doing nothing felt easier than risking disappointment.
Aisha lifted her camera and pointed it toward him.
“Don’t pose,” she called out. “Just be.”
Kareem laughed, nervous sound. “That’s the problem. I don’t know how anymore.”
He glanced at the sky. The colors were changing quickly now blue slipping into orange, a brief window that photographers waited all day for. He understood that kind of urgency.
He thought about the opportunities he had let pass because he wanted perfect timing. The internship he never applied for because he wasn’t “ready.” The ideas he kept hidden because they weren’t fully formed. The conversations he postponed because the words might come out wrong. He realized something then, the cost of hesitation was weightless but heavy at the same time, but it was real. It accumulated like dust, until one day you noticed how much had settled.
Aisha raised the camera again. “This is it,” she said softly. “Shoot your shot before it goes. Just shoot it.”
Kareem took a breath, a full one, the kind that reaches deep. He dribbled once, stepped forward, and released the ball.
The ball hit the rim, rattled, and dropped through the net.
He laughed, louder this time, surprised not just by the score but by how light he felt afterward. The relief didn’t come from success alone, it came from the act of trying. From choosing movement over stagnation.
Aisha snapped the photo at that exact moment his laughter, the fading light, the net still trembling.
“Got it,” she said, checking the screen. “Not the shot. The moment.”
Kareem walked toward her, sweat cooling on his skin. “You know,” he said, “I think I’ve been afraid of missing.”
She nodded. “Everyone is”
That evening, Kareem went home and finally sent the application he’d been rewriting for months. It wasn’t perfect. Neither was he. But it was sent.
Because some things in life don’t need flawless aim.
They just need you to shoot, and keep shooting, out of 100 tries some are bound to hit the rim and who knows maybe the your very first shot will be your best shot.
