On their way to the refugee camp in Okigwe, Nnodim toys with the idea of eating her sickly father. It is only a slight joke, a passing thought, one that nonetheless fills her with shame. She wonders if her father has ever considered this thought: eating another person. She can never tell what it is he is thinking these days.
They walk silently and steadfast. Her father no longer sighs as he usually does when they pass by a bomb crater, and she no longer looks around when they reach fields littered with the bodies of their fallen Biafran kin. Her eyes no longer search the debris for that one distinctive Nigerian soldier’s uniform that might seem to her like a small victory.
Now, she pays no mind to the disorder around her. She only watches as her father continues to trudge onwards. He has grown taut in recent years, his neck looks unusually long. From what she can glean from his posture, his back has begun to curve into a semi-permanent hunch. I could overpower him easily, she thinks.
She tries to remember what he had looked like before the war and she can swear that she remembers him being less forlorn, more vivacious. But she wonders if that is only an image her mind has conjured up to assuage her need for some semblance of normalcy. Something to dispel the ravenous hunger which now drives her ever forward to his unassuming back.
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“In War, Daughters Bury Their Fathers.” won third place in The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest 2024.
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