Author's Note:
This is a work of fiction. While inspired by real histories and philosophies, all characters and events are imagined.
CHAPTER 4 – Dreamers Get Detained
You always know when they're coming for you. You don't need anyone to tell you. You feel it first. Somewhere behind the ribs. Somewhere in the quiet that stretches just a little too long after your name is mentioned. Somewhere in the way a friend avoids your eyes, or the way the radio suddenly begins to repeat a speech you've already heard five times this week. The silence of the air changes. Even the wind feels like it's been instructed to report your movements.
K.B knew.
He didn't need his friend Sarpong to tell him. He didn't need his mother's sudden silence or the fact that the boy who usually borrowed his biro during break now walked the long way around the classroom. He knew from the way the school's headmaster stared at him during assembly like he was a blade pretending to be a leaf.
And still—he showed up.
That morning, the New Lineage youth were gathered under the old mango tree behind the classroom block. A broken bench. A single exercise book passed around like it contained the secret to breathing. Six students. One idea.
"I think we have to be louder," K.B said.
"No," Ama whispered. "We have to be smarter."
"Both," said Yao, the final year boy who had once been arrested for stealing textbooks from a store that refused to sell them on credit to poor students.
"But if we stay too silent, we become invisible," K.B continued. "And if we become invisible, we die standing."
They all fell silent for a moment. Even the leaves listened.
"You wrote the letter?" Ama asked.
K.B nodded.
"To who?"
"To the Ministry of Education. To the press. To the AU youth desk in Addis Ababa. And one copy to Joy FM."
Ama's eyes widened. "Why?"
"Because if we don't say it, they'll say it for us. And twist it."
"What did you say in the letter?"
K.B looked at her. His lips moved slowly. "I said we are tired of pretending that division is strength."
Later that day, during third period, a boy from SS2 came to the door and knocked once. The kind of knock that doesn't wait for permission.
"Kwabena Adusei," he said. "Come. You are wanted."
Everyone in the classroom turned to him. The teacher paused mid-equation. K.B stood slowly, tucked his notebook into his bag.
He didn't need to ask where they wanted him. He already knew.
Two men were waiting under the almond tree outside the admin block. Not in uniform. That was the trick. If they wore uniform, it meant arrest. But when they come in plainclothes, it means fear. Because you don't know if they are police, intelligence, soldiers, or ghosts.
"Follow us," the shorter one said.
"Where?" K.B asked.
They didn't answer. One of them touched his shoulder. Gently. But not softly.
He walked between them. Not resisting. Not afraid. Just… empty.
The school bell rang somewhere behind them, distant, like a memory fading.
They didn't blindfold him. But they didn't talk to him either. They just drove. Past the market. Past the police barracks. Past the places where boys like him usually do not return from.
The car smelled of air freshener and sweat. The windows were tinted. The silence was not comfortable. It was loud. It asked questions no one would answer.
What would happen to the other New Lineage members?
Would his mother know where they took him?
Would he disappear into the same void where his brother vanished two years ago?
The building they took him to was painted beige, but the paint was old. Peeled. Like a lie that no longer cared to hide itself. The signboard in front read: Department of National Order and Stability.
He was led inside. Down a corridor that smelled of wet cement and tired secrets. Into a room with one chair, one table, and one man.
The man had a thin mustache. He was reading something. He didn't look up when K.B entered.
"Sit," he said.
K.B sat.
The man kept reading. A file. K.B's name was on the front.
"Your handwriting is strong," the man said after a long pause. "Confident. Almost too confident."
"I was taught to write clearly," K.B said.
"You were taught too many things."
The man closed the file. Looked up. His eyes were not angry. They were bored. Like someone forced to repeat the same dance every week.
"Why are you disturbing the peace of this country?" he asked.
"I didn't know asking questions was disturbing peace."
"You wrote an essay that has now been shared on WhatsApp groups across three countries."
"Because it matters."
"You stood in class and said Africa should erase its borders."
"Because the borders were never ours."
"You called our leaders cowards."
"I said many of them fear unity more than poverty."
The man leaned back. Smiled. It wasn't a kind smile.
"You think you're Nkrumah."
"No. I think I'm myself."
"Hmm." He tapped the file. "You are seventeen."
"Yes."
"Do you know that seventeen-year-olds die too?"
K.B looked straight at him.
"Yes. Some die hungry. Some die crossing oceans. Some die forgotten. And some die remembered."
The man stared. Then laughed. A cold laugh. The kind that doesn't touch the heart.
"You are poetic. That's dangerous."
Then he stood. Walked around the table. Bent down close.
"Let me explain something to you. We don't kill dreams here. We just move them out of the way."
K.B didn't answer.
They didn't beat him.
But they left him in a room with no light.
They gave him no water for the first twelve hours.
The walls whispered things in the dark. Old confessions. Forgotten screams. Faded prayers.
He sat with his back against the wall, eyes open, mouth closed.
He didn't sleep.
He listened.
Somewhere in the building, a man coughed. Somewhere else, a woman cried. Somewhere, someone was being reminded that hope is not bulletproof.
After two nights, they let him go.
No explanation.
No paper to sign.
Just told him to get out.
The same car dropped him back in front of the school gate at dawn. The driver didn't say a word.
When K.B walked into his mother's yard, she was already waiting. Her hands were clenched in her lap. Her face was swollen, not from crying, but from holding everything in.
She stood. Walked to him. Touched his face. Not gently. Not softly. Just to make sure he was real.
Then she slapped him.
Hard.
Once.
Then she hugged him.
Harder.
That evening, as the sun drowned itself in the red dust of Kumasi, K.B sat behind the house and looked at the sky.
He did not feel brave.
He did not feel strong.
He just felt... necessary.
And that, somehow, was worse.