Fiction 6 5
Journey
by J D Cameron
Their compartment had shrunk over the days of their
confinement. They had stopped tidying up after
themselves and the floor space and top bunk were
strewn with books, newspapers and dirty clothes. For
the first couple of days he read to her from Things Fall
Apart. It seemed apt, given their journey, but by the
third day he had declared himself bored of reading and
had taken instead to staring out at the dispiriting
landscape. On the morning of the third day, she had
awoken to find him staring at nothing.
“What are you looking at?”
“There’s a man there. On the horizon. Where he’s
standing – that’s a dried out river bed.”
photograph. She made her way back towards the
carriage, smiling. An angry, glistening man leapt on to
the train and grabbed her camera, ripping out the film
and throwing it beyond the market stalls. She was
scared and still shaking when the train resumed its
journey south. After that, they found they had even
less to say to each other. She had been stupid and
culturally insensitive; he had not protected her. Each
stopped trying to accommodate the other.
She put on her glasses and peered at the flat beigeness
of it all. As her eyes adjusted to the light she discerned
a rough channel which she took to be the river bed.
“It’s like a collapsed vein,” he said.
“You should know.”
He introduced himself, and told them that this was
their first visit to Nigeria. Her father’s family, he
explained, were Nigerian. He didn’t know if they were
Ibo. He told them that they were taking the train down
through Kaduna as far as Lagos. She squeezed through
them all and back into the compartment. She opened
the window and leaned out into the dust.
From Abuja, they had travelled north to Kano, stopping
off at small villages on the way. At first, they had
alighted at every stop but there was never anything to
buy or to see that they hadn’t bought or seen before.
On the way to Zaria, they had stopped at a busy
market town. The colours were a surprise and a relief
to her. Stepping on to the platform, she took a
Until the evening of the third day, they were the
only travellers in First Class but then a party of soldiers
moved into the compartment next door to them.
She awoke to find him rooting through the debris on
the floor. It was dawn. It seemed always to be either
dusk or dawn on this journey. With his back to her, he
tied her scarf tightly round his arm pulling on one end
with his teeth.