Dear Infantry man,

When my father sits to talk of the Nigerian civil war, the bravery that left him the year he suffered a stroke returns to fill out his face. The first time he saw my mother he told her she would be his wife and the same spark which she thought of as arrogance, which she later came to love, returns to his eyes, run down his arms, inflates his chest as if his body chose to forget it once broke down. The light flickering on his face is from something called a laptop computer, which is like a wireless with pictures - can you imagine that? It is connected to the internet which is a vast library of everything we have ever known. From the laptop, a man called John is singing.

When my father says a bullet interrupted his classes, he means he was in secondary school when the conflict spread across the midwest of Nigeria. The headmaster called an assembly and explained though he championed their education above everything else, death had come knocking on their door in the shape of shells, artillery and gunfire and he could no longer protect them. As if a nightmare had risen from their history books, war erupted, unreal, exciting, frightening and my father mounted trucks reserved for cattle to travel the rocky road home.

When my father says his street was shelled, he means the whole town was levelled, he means houses exploded or were burnt out, farms were turned to craters, the hills and highs of child-hood were made low and the crevices and hidden places he’d known were reduced to dust. When he says the town across the River Niger on the other side was where the combatants were based, he means they had taken up arms against his family and friends.

When my father says he used to row across that river to play with those townsfolk, he means they were his neighbours, which means they were his family, which means the battle was brother against brother, which means the line drawn in the sand of the civil war was a river, which means the line was water, which means the line was blurred. When my father says “It is the same old story”, he means it happens in all wars.

The man called John is still singing from the laptop. His voice comes over my father’s as he speaks of war. Years ago, when John heard the British Government armed the brothers fighting in that civil war, he sent his royal MBE medal back to the Queen of England. Though everyone talked about this, the palace said nothing, which is to say the throne shrugged, which is to say when families die in the blurred brotherly lines that is war, that is all wars, the generals and kings in corridors of power calculate, quantify and choose to risk the lives of infantry soldiers, which is to say you were an acceptable casualty of war, which is unacceptable.

When my father says his uncle fought on the other side, he means his family was in mutiny, which means his blood fought blood, which is what happens when you have a stroke, which was when the light dimmed in his eyes, which is happening now as his memories turn dark and John’s beautiful song draws to a close. When father writes “World War 1” into the laptop, we find out how many of your brothers died. We see how many wars are happening and the ones about to start. John’s song is about peace and as it finishes, my father reads about past conflicts, about how we never learn from those mistakes even though we know how they happened. As he reads, John’s song starts again singing over these accounts of violence, over brothers who have fought and died. My father lifts his voice to sing with John. Imagine.

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