A war kind of story

Travel Scars

Hard times are how my town is remembered. We have been hit so hard on every side that scars have become our identity without which we may be forced to exit this city.

You sit beside the road exhausted from running. Running is a sport; the faster you run, the more likely you’re to get shot or escape. If you escape, you might have bought yourself a few more minutes before as a game, you’re found and killed. The slower you run, the longer the fun and the slower it is for you to die.

Klenam speaks on the phone with her mother about their neighbour, Botwe, who it seems has more scars than anyone in our city. His mother, Anna, was killed when he was born. The rebels had tried to strangle Botwe with the umbilical cord when his father slit the throat of the rebel with his machete and made away with his child. The next hour, Mawuli, his father was beheaded at the entrance of the rebel camp. Botwe had been picked by a nurse who hid him with some other children in an abandoned building that was turned into a temporary clinic.

By the time Botwe was 20, the war had left and it went with the other children in the clinic. The nurse, Akuba had said that Botwe had stopped breathing when the other kids were found. She had a gunshot to the head and no record of how she and Botwe are still alive.

The war ended 20 years ago and many of us survived as did our scars. Somehow, looking at one another now, we can tell how we all would have died. From trauma to the head, a knife to the throat, and another in the back. Some of us no longer speak about the war. Not because we hate it that much, but because our tongues were among the body parts we lost to the war.

/liː.ɒnl ɛtʃə/