As a child, all I ever really thought I had was time. Time to grow. Time to do the things I wanted. Time with those I loved. Time as vast as a fertile field, where I could plant all my dreams and watch them grow, like mounds of cassava during the planting seasons. I was as sure of this as I was certain that the sun would always rise. That was until the world began to teach me its many hard lessons. Its first lesson, that nothing was ever guaranteed.
I hadn’t been born to the wealthiest family, but we’d had enough. More than enough. We might not have always been content, but we had been happy. We’d had each other. We’d had peace.
I remember languid evenings spent in the kitchen as mama told us elaborate stories of the wrath of the old deities, and the unchanging cunning of the clever tortoise. Always eager, we would brandish steaming slices of yam, dripping with salted red oil, as we greedily devoured these delicacies, even as our minds gobbled up mama’s every word.
Then there was papa. Papa with his melancholy and his perpetual brooding. Always adorned with that faraway look in his eyes, as though he were always somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Into his memories, maybe, for it was only in the fading beaches of the past that the dead could still linger. The ones we had once loved, reduced to nothing more than spectral shadows cast by the blinding conflagration of our grief.
It was in these quiet moments, usually in the twilight hours of dusk, that he would sit upon his stool and watch with keen interest, the dying of the light. His eyes darting to the horizon, to his watch, and back at the fleeting sunset, as though he awaited a belated guest.
As a child, I had always wondered why papa had done this. Who was this much anticipated guest that was always late but never arrived? It was only later on that I realized that the guest had been his sister, and that she had been late in flesh and not in time. A nugget of truth, pried from the secret whispers of the grownups, whenever I lingered in the places that I knew I should not.
They would always say that papa behaved this way because he had suffered a great tragedy as a child. The loss of his twin sister, Ifeyinwa, who in life had been his other half—the constellation to his cosmos, the moon to his star-lit world. It was this loss that had haunted papa all his life, and whenever he went away in his head, it was to be with her, in the only way he knew how. In his mind, and in the eroded recesses of his wounded heart.
However, on the rare occasion when he hadn’t gone on his usual internal sojourns, he would let us sit on his lap as he regaled us with his fanciful dreams of a promising tomorrow. A future that he had been so certain Nigeria had. He would often say, “children were the leaders of tomorrow,” and my heart would tremble with excitement at the warmth that emanated from his eyes.
Then there were the trips.
My father had been a courier before the war. While Nigeria was still nothing but a subjugated, inconsequential backwater, he had willingly served the colonial masters, transporting parcels and dispatches to wherever they needed it to go. For my father, the supposedly glorious liberation of 1963 had changed very little. He’d still delivered missives and correspondences on a regular basis, with the only difference being that the new faces he now answered to paid less. But there was more to papa than the mere fact that he’d been a courier.
Papa filled spaces the way an electric bulb lit up a room. When he was around, we would all be so utterly subsumed in the euphoria of his warming glow, that we’d forget the possibility of even a single moment without him. Until he’d leave and our entire world would again be plunged into darkness. Which tended to happen quite regularly, for the nature of papa’s work meant that he was almost always away. So, armed with the precocious ingenuity of youth, we had devised ways to keep ourselves occupied whenever he’d embark on one of his many trips.
For one, we would often take to roaming the bustling neighborhoods and beaten paths, delighting in our rhythmic chants and the harmless bouts of mischief that we’d cause. Then there were the lazy evenings spent plucking succulent fruits as we lay beneath the cool shade of the udala tree, talking about the latest gossip or daring escapade. And sometimes, when we felt like it, we’d even visit the nearby stream. Our excited giggles reverberating through the bushes and rustling trees as our glistening, onyx bodies splashed about the flowing water. The trees always swaying softly as though they could decipher in the winds some intoxicating symphony that lay tittering upon the threshold that separated people from the unseen world.
All these enticing distractions, all these colorful moments, still none of them had prepared me for that day. The day my father had left and never returned.
I recall the memory as intimately as the earth remembered the seasons. Mama had been telling us a tortoise story, as she usually did in the evenings. Suddenly, the front door had swung open, and papa had come barreling into the living room, with that frenzied look in his eyes, as though he were a hunted creature, fleeing from a pack of wolves. He’d then proceeded to look at every single one of us, as though he were secretly counting us in his head. As he did this, I’d seen the panic bloom in his eyes like bright, colorful flowers. I’d sensed the acrid stench of his fear.
Shortly afterwards, both mama and papa had retreated into their bedroom, closing the door behind them. Before that night, I had never known mama and papa to quarrel. Which is why I’d been so startled when they’d both gone on to have an argument so loud and vicious that it felt as though the entire house was trembling. So many things had been said. So many hurtful things. Most of these things, I hadn’t even understood. But amidst all the shouting and the hard words, I’d managed to piece together some semblance of an understanding.
That the entirety of the Igbo people had broken out in open rebellion, with the charismatic, and much beloved leader, Odumegwu Ojukwu at the helm. In retaliation, the Nigerian Army was already mobilizing for an offensive, to hastily return the wayward flock back to the fold. There first target, to lead an assault on the strategically important city of Port-Harcourt. Papa’s aging parents lived in Port-Harcourt. His plan, to get there and rescue them before the fighting began.
Mama had been completely against this plan. Pointing out that so many things could go wrong. What if, on his way, he was apprehended by Nigerian troops? What if the Biafrans caught him and forcefully drafted him into this needless war? Her words echoing through the house as she bemoaned his folly, “…and what if something happened to you, ehn? What then? Would you leave me to raise all these children by myself? Ehn, Ifeanyi! Say something, Ifeanyi! Papa Osondu, Kuo okwu!” Papa’s unnerving silence, his only response. Mama desperately trying her best to reason with him, but no matter what she’d said, papa had remained adamant. For he’d already decided within himself, long before the conversation had even started. All that was left, for him to choose the day of his departure.
On the day papa left, he’d given me his precious silver watch. That very watch that had always been his companion, on those evenings when he’d gazed with longing into the fading dusk. Smiling, he’d said, “keep it safe for me, my son. Don’t lose it, no matter what! For this war will take almost everything from us. But of all the things it will take, the most precious will be time. That is why I am giving you this watch, my son. So that whenever you look at that watch, no matter where I am, what is happening or how long it’s been, I will be there with you, even if I am late. I will be with you in the places that count. In your thoughts and in your heart. Look after your mother, Osondu. If all goes well, I’ll be back soon.”
With that, he’d drawn me into a tender embrace. His familiar musky smell, and the feel of his warmth on my face finally shattering my feeble, childish resolve, no longer able to hold back the cascading tears that flowed freely from my eyes. My entire body shuddering violently as I cried. Then, with a hardened, stony expression, papa had simply stood up and briskly walked away without ceremony. As he walked away, I couldn’t help but call after him, but he never looked back, no matter how many times I screamed his name. Not even once. It hadn’t been long after his departure, that the bombs began to fall.
We were Christians. We have always been Christians. As Christians, we grew up believing that only blessings came from the sky. But with the coming of this war, Yakubu Gowon had also revealed to us that bombs and bullets could come from the sky as well. Torrents of it, endless showers of it, raining down on us faster than any blessing ever could. Our eyes turning upwards as we pleaded to God for his mercy. Instead, all we received from the sky was fire and death. Bombs and bullets, shrapnel and gunpowder, always falling like torrential rain.
This made me think of the old primary school rhythm, “Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day. Little children want to play!” but even then, I’d known with a grim certainty, that there would be no playing any longer. At least not anytime soon. I also learned to mourn the fading of innocence, for I had also known that whenever this war eventually died, my childhood would die with it. There would be no little children left after the war.
Before the war began, everyone believed that the bullets and the bombs would be the real enemies. They were wrong. The real beast of war had been hunger, and it had devoured way more lives than any explosion, shrapnel or rifle discharge ever would. Hunger, that ravenous beast of war, that pale horse, that always galloped eagerly to wherever there was war and fighting. And in its wake followed more death. You could hide from the bullets and the explosions, but you couldn’t hide from hunger. For hunger was that little, pestering child that always tugged at the hem of your robes. Demanding that you become the abyss, to feed the abyss.
It is estimated that throughout the war, only 100,000 combatants had either died or were MIA. While the civilian casualties had numbered in the millions. It was as the elders said, “when the elephants struggled, it was always the grass that suffered.” Hunger, the main culprit. It was this unrelenting hunger that we had battled with then. Hide and seek, the only game the children still played. Hiding, always, from the sky’s many lethal gifts. But no matter how good you were at hiding, you could never hide from the hunger. For in war, hunger was always your closest friend.
It was this all-consuming hunger that I had been trying to vanquish then, as I’d lumbered wearily into the market’s waiting arms. The hunger in me like a pale fire, that fed on me to stay alive. Mama had long since ran out of money, so I’d taken to pick pocketing to help with food. Her trembling palms always accepting my contributions, even though she never failed to object to the deed.
It was as I was wandering through that forlorn market that I’d heard the deafening sirens go off. The sirens that always heralded the falling of the bombs. Immediately, without a moment’s hesitation, I’d turned tail and ran. I’d ran for the safety of the hut. The safety of home. It was while engrossed in this crazed, head long flight that I had vaguely noticed, the absence of a weight that usually dragged on my wrist. Papa’s watch! I didn’t have it anymore. Gasping for breath, with my heart trashing about my ribcage like a trapped animal, I’d stopped running at once.
I had looked behind my shoulder, and as I did, I could already see it—the grim silhouettes of the birds of steel, coming ever closer. Soon the market would devolve into yet another harrowing rendition of hell. For a second, I considered abandoning that watch and just running back home. After all, was a rusty, old watch really worth dying for? Then I remembered what my father had said, “keep it safe for me, my son. Don’t lose it, no matter what!” and immediately, my resolve hardened. For me that had decided things. That most sacred of pacts held between father and son, and like a demented dervish, I’d pivoted and flung myself headlong, back into the waiting jaws of hell.
That evening, as I careened back into the chaos, I was greeted with a sky on fire. A rumbling cacophony rippling through the air, as foreboding clouds flashed sporadically with cascading bursts of dazzling, orange light. I had gazed at it and it had reminded me of a painting. It was as though the clouds had suddenly been transformed into this macabre canvas on which the pilots in their fighter planes, had contrived to paint, with reckless abandon, the gruesome mosaics of war.
I looked at that sky and at once I found myself envisioning a heaven that had rebelled against itself. Discord in utopia. An ascending darkness ushered in by the first usurper. The pillars of the firmament trembling as the exalted Pretender marched his infernal hosts in open rebellion against the dominion of God.
In those fleeting moments, as I sprinted back into the encroaching darkness in search of papa’s watch, I couldn’t help but wonder what it must have been then, to witness such a thing transpire. The unfolding of magnificent ruin and primal cataclysms, that heralded the birth of the first shadows that would soon be cast down upon the earth.
Then a thunderous explosion had erupted nearby, jolting me back to focus. My legs pumping like the pistons of a machine as I plunged myself deeper into the heat of the swirling conflagration. Pace quickened, breath coming in ragged gasps. My eyes scanning, always scanning, searching the ground and my surroundings furiously as I ran. Hoping, beyond hope, to see the glint of papa’s watch. Not yet! Not. Yet. Still, propelled by an inexplicable desperation, I’d continued to run. I’d ran until my legs burned with the exertion. I’d ran until my running became for me a kind of trance, a kind of living prayer, even as more explosions continued to erupt all around me.
When my running had taken me back to the spot I’d last been when I’d first heard the sirens, I’d almost failed to recognize the place. It was awful. The charred, dismembered bodies strewn about the market. The smoldering wreckage of what must have once been the vendor shops. Pillars of black smoke rising up into the sky like an accusation. Instinctively, I’d clenched my grime-stained fists.
If the watch would be anywhere, it would be here.
At once, I’d skidded to a halt and began to search. Trying not to look at the burnt faces of the dead, out of fear that I would see someone I’d known. And as I searched, that perverse moment seemed to stretch on into a miniature eternity. As though father time was reveling in my pain.
It was as I desperately scrambled amidst the flames, the dead and the groaning maimed, that I finally found it. The watch. My father’s watch. This watch that had become everything for me. This weathered, silver watch that had come to symbolize the last fleeting moments I had spent with papa. This watch that now represented in my mind all that had been taken from me. My dignity. The time I should have had with my father. My time as a child. My innocence. All the time I had lost.
So, I crouched low and held on to that watch, even as the carpeting explosions seemed to intensify, drawing closer with each fractured breath. I’d held on tight to that watch, cradling it to my body, to my chest and to my heart. Waiting, as each falling bomb felt nearer than the last. The earth shuddering violently with each detonation, as if it were in the deep throes of an epileptic fit. Waiting as I suddenly realized within myself that I was not afraid. For how could I possibly know fear, when my father was with me again. So, I waited in the smoke and mist, amidst the explosions, debris and falling bombs. I waited for the beginning. I waited for the end.
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Image: A remix