2 Welcome To Hell (1/2)

Dead silence lay in the streets and hung in the remains of houses eaten by bombs; that uneasy quiet that reigns after the cacophony of fighting has died away. I could see the ghosts of the war in every pair of eyes I looked into – lifeless eyes, empty of hope.

I noticed that the taxi driver's eyes were on me throughout, in the rear-view mirror – hard, fiery eyes, scorching my conscience; eyes that had confronted death too many times, eyes that had known too many deaths and held too much grief in them. I averted my own clean eyes, shamefacedly, looking outside. The pa.s.sing scenes were too grim.

Amidst all this desolation, I felt shamefully well-groomed – a neat haircut with precisely carved hairlines, a clean shave, a t-s.h.i.+rt whose orangeness was so unabashedly orange it seemed like a shout in the midst of such muted misery.

The people we pa.s.sed – dressed in a variety of rags, the children wrapped around their fathers' calves or hanging limply from their mothers' waists were naked, their stomachs convex and stretched taut, or concave and stretched thin – stared into the cab as though I was inside a foreign magazine. I felt like a glossy picture, a portrait of well-being, of healthy living.

The driver wore an ugly scowl that matched his worn flat cap. 'You just dey come?' he asked, in a low accusing voice.

I felt as if I had missed something, a party, an appointment. I nodded, 'Yes.'

'Wetin you come do?'

'I came to take film shots for my doc.u.mentary.'

'Film,' he said, the word bitter in his mouth, like a curse. He looked offended.

'Yes, a doc.u.men –'

He stopped the cab in the middle of the road, 'Come down.'

Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

'What?'

'I say get down!' he hissed.

'Have I offended you?'

'Come down first.'

'But I haven't reached where I asked you to take me –'