Another book that says war is no tea party

For those who were caught on the Biafra side during the 30-month Nigerian Civil War, which was fought between 1967 and 1970, the brutal tale of the endgame would linger in their memories until they enter into their graves. Perhaps, this explains why Afam Belolisa, a journalist, decided to write a personal account of the […]

For those who were caught on the Biafra side during the 30-month Nigerian Civil War, which was fought between 1967 and 1970, the brutal tale of the endgame would linger in their memories until they enter into their graves. Perhaps, this explains why Afam Belolisa, a journalist, decided to write a personal account of the war, more than  40 years after it ended. Though he was not a fighter, the incidents in his own rural community in today’s Idemili North Local Government Area of Anambra State touched his life in such an indelible manner that he had to use his writing skill to recount them.

Belolisa’s Torn Asunder may be considered as a story totally different from many other accounts written by soldiers on the Nigerian and Biafran sides. It is also different from what now famous author Chimamanda Adichie has written in Half of a Yellow Sun, another fictional account on the devastation done on the Biafran side and the untold hardship the people lived through. In his own account, Belolisa tells the story of his loves ones, who though knew nothing about the causes of the war eventually, became victims.  He delved into the heart of the theme right from the first chapter, which he entitled ‘The Opening Volleys’. Belolisa tells the story of young Osita Igiligi, whose ambition to become a medical doctor was punctuated as the war entered into his sleepy village. Innocent and unassuming, Osita was riding his father’s Raleigh bicycle stylishly when what was the flash of lightening, which he considered as a fascinating spectacle, metamorphosed into heavy and destructive explosions. His life’s ambition was terminated from that moment.

One word that can describe the content of this work is “tension”. After this opening chapter, the reader is ushered into anxiety, uncertainty, deaths, fighting and hard survival strategies. In a forward to the book written by Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, the lawmaker remarked that Torn Asunder is a “human reaction to the rumblings of shells and the sound of bullets (which are) as vivid as was sometimes the fatal extent of curiosity even in a war situation… The book is a tale of ordinary people who are victims of a what they know very little about,  (violence) inflicted on them by a crassly inadequate and intolerant political class.”

Senator Ndoma-Egba claimed that “being a young victim of the fratricidal war myself, reading the manuscript was like telling my own story of the war, and this is largely due to the fact that the author and I, being of the same generation, see the war from the same prism.”

Writing his preface to the book, the author gives what may be considered as his reason for venturing into the literary task. He says: “It would appear that the post-war generation is largely ill-informed about the realities of the civil war… The event has not been adequately given a pride of place in the nation’s formal education or its folk-lore, partly because of an unfortunate tendency to downplay the role of history in national development… Four decades after the conflict ended, I believe that the curtain should not be drawn just yet on literary works based on it. After all, novels are still being inspired by epic conflicts such as the Vietnam War and World War II, which took place much earlier.”

Though petit in size, Torn Asunder is profound in the artistry that went into the narrative. Lucid prose, the apt choice of word, controlled syntax and down-to-earth dialogue. These are some of this work’s strength.  Furthermore, considering the sectarian violence in the country today, the kind of violence that tends to drag the country back to the days of the Civil War, this book is relevant. War mongers would have a rethink when they are told that war is no tea party.  This is what Torn Asunder tends to say.