Feelings Felt
Last Christmas, my mum told a story her mother had told her—about a man who was discharged from the army during the Biafran War due to shell shock. Whenever enemy planes came and people rushed to take cover, he would just stand there and scream. We were just about to say our night prayers when she told the story. Everyone just heaved, the way we always did when we heard stories from the war. But this one broke my heart, and I blurted out, "Oh my God, that's PTSD." My father looked at me, then looked away. He walked toward the couch and knelt for prayers. Everyone followed. That night, I stayed up thinking about the man. Thinking of him made me want to cry. It still does. I imagined how people around him must have secretly wished for his death. How even those who loved him might have wished it too—because, in the end, more than they loved him they loved their own lives more. I thought about what the war had taken from him, how he would never be the same. S...