Cruel City of Gold

Short Fiction ~ Birgit Solvsten D'Alpoim Guedes

Honourable Mention, Strands International Flash Fiction Competition - 20 

 A tall African man with long, lean limbs wearing nothing but a leopard skin thrown over one shoulder,
 
 and tied around his waist hung a string attached to the small piece of animals fur that barely covered
 
 his private parts. His head, a perfect ebony sculpture with fine high cheekbones looked down at me
 
 from large anxious eyes. Dressed only in pantaloons that were much too small, I reached no taller than
 
 his hipbone. We both stood there, almost naked, in the bright sunlight.
 
 It was warm and white Jasmine flowers bloomed fragrantly along the garden fence. Across the road
 
 the golden veld already had green shoots appearing among the elephant grass and the air smelt of
 
 spring in the way that only the high veld does from that first rain after a long dry winter.
 
 He spoke to me in his mother tongue as he tapped his long black stick on the pavement, his other hand
 
 indicated in a sweeping motion to the newly built houses along our side of the street, then he looked
 
 down at me with a flicker of hope in his eyes followed instantly by a fearful, haunted look as he let out
 
 a loud breath. Again he tapped his stick, harder this time and with more anger in his tone. I understood
 
 enough Zulu to know that he was looking for his daughter, who must have worked as a servant in one
 
 of the houses. She had not come home for a long time. My eyes widened with fear, not of him but a
 
 fear for him. I stood there, very young, looking up into his eyes as I remembered the recent darkness in
 
 our home when my brother disappeared. Those eyes were the eyes of my parents.
 
 It was the mid 1950's, my brother walked through wild countryside in South Africa, crossed the
 
 Crocodile River and made his way over the border to Mozambique where he was found several
 
 months later attempting to board a ship at the port in Lourenco Marques. He was barely twelve years
 
 old, unhappy and determined to go back home to Denmark.
 
  I shook my head and our eyes locked in tears. He touched me gently on my hair and that noble Zulu
 
 man who had no one to ask except a small child, turned and walked away wearing nothing but his
 
 traditional clothing to continue his search for his missing daughter in that cruel City of Gold so hostile
 
 to Africans.
 
 I never forget his eyes or what I stumbled on in the koppies four years later.
                
                                                   There was a graveyard,
 
                                                   where houses now stand.
 
                                                   There was a graveyard,
 
                                                   where no gravestones were found.
 
                                                   There was a graveyard,
 
                                                   with only a round hole in the ground.
 
                                                   There was a graveyard,
 
                                                   with blood all around.
 
                                                   There was a graveyard,
 
                                                   my dog and I found.


~

Birgit Solvsten D'Alpoim Guedes​ was born where two seas meet in Northern Denmark but have since lived on four continents in several countries. She now resides in the Val De Cher in Central France surrounded by vineyards, Chateaux and Castles.
She has had a story published in The Morning Musings on Medium 'I Am an Artist', a micro in Scribes FairField magazine; 'The Squabble'  and Longlisted for 'Mortal Sin' with The Propelling Pencil.

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