Member-only story
The Road to Potkobelo
Short story. Fiction.
In the month of May, butterflies take to the skies with their wings in bloom; and flowers, tethered to earth envy them green. Naked children in their droves chase pigeons that leap and fly just a little farther off from their hopeful grasps. The landscape streams past the dirt-stained windows of the bus taking us to Potkobelo and the gray mountainous relief in the background brings back a lot of memories about this place. Good and bad memories but the bad memories linger ….
It is the same time of the year when the earthy smell of freshly cut grass bring back the ghosts of running soldiers and falling bombs, of billowing smoke and long silent nights as we hid out in the tall grass many years ago for the fear of being caught by the Free State soldiers. I shut my eyes briefly and draw a long breath. They are memories of a distant past, alive even in my daytime dreaming. Our bus veers off the expressway into the underpass that leads to the Anjaaba straits. The stark concrete retaining walls on either side of the underpass is still splattered with decaying posters. Except now, the posters are of politicians contesting elective positions in the February elections. Inbetween election years, which was every four years, the posters were mostly obituaries — now, each freshly pasted face is striving to be seen in the congealed layers of other faces…
