Chapter 32: A FEATHER IN KIGALI
Where the Wind Smelled of Ash and Hope
The plane touched down with a soft shudder, wheels dragging across the tarmac of Kigali International Airport. The skies outside were pale, cloudless, but heavy as if the land beneath held stories too old to be spoken.
Nishanth didn’t look out the window. He had already memorized the country’s history, but it wasn’t facts he had come here for. It was feeling.
He walked through the glass terminal quietly, unnoticed. No fans. No journalists. No system chirp. Just a man with no luggage, a brown canvas sling bag, and eyes that had seen too much to be impressed by immigration lines.
A security officer waved him through with a simple glance and a stamp. Rwanda didn’t demand explanations. It welcomed those who walked with stillness. The country had seen war, grief, genocide — the kind that rips a soul apart and leaves silence where music once lived. But somehow, it had rebuilt. From ash. From mass graves. From forgiveness.
And maybe that was why Nishanth came.
Not to fix.But to feel what survival without power looked like.
The first breath he took outside the airport was sweet — unusually clean. The streets of Kigali were quiet, polished, almost over-disciplined. No horns. No chaos. No vendors yelling over each other.
Rwanda was one of Africa’s safest, cleanest countries, despite its tragic past. The capital reflected it. Buses ran on time. People queued patiently. No plastic bags were allowed in the country at all.
But the discipline hid something deeper — a silence that wasn’t peace. A silence that waited to be met.
Nishanth walked past a taxi stand and entered a small alley instead, choosing his path the way only he did intuitively. A rusted motorbike stood parked under a yellow tarp. A boy sat beside it, fixing the chain on a bicycle without tools. His fingers were bloody, his hands shaking, but he worked without complaint.