On lines

We never used to be friends.
This was how it all started.

November, 1884: The palace of the imperial chancellor of Germany, Berlin

Lord Forester stood over the map at the centre of the table placing both palms down on the shiny surface of polished oak. His eyes traced the Nile in its path as it ran a wavy line from the top right corner of the map down south. He had heard of the Nile as a child and seeing the scrawny line on the map made him reflect on the many tales and rich history behind it. He looked closely at the map for the third time. His decisions would go a long way in furthering the interest of Britain in the division of the dark continent- Africa.

Around him were delegates from France, Belgium, Portugal and even the United states that had started off as a colony too. They had allotted lots to each of the countries and Britain had elected to go first in taking up their piece as an additional acquisition to the areas they had already laid claims to.
In order to differentiate ownership, each of the colonial nations had commissioned new maps of their colonies to be drawn and had fitted it together, partitioning the remainder of the continent that had not been laid claim to, using lines as arbitrary as spoken words ‘unthought’.

Those unclaimed divisions were given numbers or named in different ways by the representative of each of the Conquistadors that surrounded the map, like a group of lions cornering their prey and closing in.

Finally, making up his mind, Lord Forester drew two faint lines on the map – one running from the North away from the Red sea and the other coming up from the south. Their intersection he believed, he could make into a confluence city for trade and British incursion into the other cities that France and Belgium had already established. The presence of the Red Sea east of the city would also be a major advantage, he thought. Bordering it on the west was vast territories yet uninhabited. Forestia he would name it- after himself.

Enclosed within the four lines that denoted Foresters’ Forestia, far away in Africa, were two villages Bugubanshi and Ithacai. Four centuries of strife and bitterness between the two tribes, once bound by Foresters four lines became a marriage divorced before the union. Only if Forester had known before he drew those lines that not in this life or in the life to come would the Bugubanshi and the Ithacai speak as one.

... because they had never been friends.

OIO
(Characters and the cities Forestia, Bugubanshi and Ithacai are fictitious)
Story inspired by the book: The state of Africa