Our Unspoken Country

Fiction by Glory Duruem. "We ate in silence, our eyes on the red earth, not on each other. The flesh was dark, stringy. It tasted of nothing and everything. It tasted of shame."

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

—T. S. Eliot

I

It was a quiet, mundane Tuesday when we left our home for the last time. We departed so suddenly we never had time to say a proper goodbye, and we never–not once–looked back.

That morning, I had buttoned Victor’s school shirt, my fingers fumbling with the stiff new cotton, and smoothed down the stubborn collar of Emeka’s uniform until it lay flat and proper. The smell of garri and salt filled the kitchen. As we ate, Papa’s voice, a booming instrument he reserved for his English pronouncements, filled the small house. He was talking about Biafra. A country for the people of the East, he said, separate from Nigeria. He muttered about a meeting in Aburi, about promises that had soured into nothing. “They shook hands on a promise of our own country,” he’d say, the hope in his voice already curdling. “A signature on a page. What is a signature in the face of hate?”

Mama nodded along, her eyes fixed on her bowl, though we all knew the only English word she truly understood was come. She was illiterate, yet she performed this ritual of comprehension. I used to wonder if it was a kind of loyalty, a way to belong to a part of his world that existed beyond the kitchen and the bedroom.

We left for school that day under a strange, silent pall. The air felt thin, brittle. It was as if the entire town was holding its breath.

Then, halfway through the day, the tension snapped. Teachers burst into classrooms, their faces stripped of all authority, replaced by a raw, animal fear. An announcement had crackled over the radio, they said. Ojukwu had declared the Republic of Biafra. There would be opposition, certainly. Gowon would not stand for it. No—not just Gowon. The British, too. Hadn’t they stitched Nigeria together like a poorly tailored suit for their own selfish gains? The threads were now pulling apart.