Fiction | October 07, 2026

Di Nwanne’m 

Your brother’s name is Mezie.  

When your older brothers, Idi and Abuchi, fight over who ate the last piece of cocoyam or whose turn it is to draw water from the well, Mezie will sit cross-legged in the sand; he will sit and watch them. And later, when he talks about them, he will say, ụmụ nwanne’m dị ka ọka echibeghi echi—my brothers are like raw cobs of maize.  

Mezie likes to sit with the market women and listen: 

“When I started putting snails in my egusi, my husband started coming home early.” 

“Hot pepper soup goes best with very soft yam, not agidi.” 

“​​​​Don’t sprinkle the crayfish, pour it in!” 

And your brother will bring these stories home and throw them in a pot. Mezie can taste anything and make it. He does not need to know how many bulbs of onions were used. He does not need to know how hot the fire was kept. All he has to do is taste. And Mezie cooks many things. Sometimes he lets you help. With the vegetable soup, he lets you chop up the waterleaf. He lets you pour in the palm oil, his hands a riverbed, your hands a river. Mezie does not let you help with the ukwa. He does not even let you watch.  

“Nwanne’m, many eyes will spoil it.” This is what he always says, then laughs, then starts to dance.  

Your brother never calls you by your name. Not even when speaking to you. Just nwanne’m, my sister . . . my mother’s child. It is a strange thing; everyone says so. But it is your strange thing, yours and his. 

And the civil war begins, and Mezie stops laughing, he stops dancing, and the market women start speaking in strange, borrowed words: 

“Whatever the goats eat, we can eat too.” 

“You have to go before sunrise, that is when they throw the dry fish from the planes.” 

“You have to soak the onugbu overnight to drain the bitterness.” 

“We have eaten all our goats.” 

The war goes on for months. You feel it in your dress, how it no longer hugs your body. You hear it in the warplanes screaming past the roof. But you do not see the war. Your father says it has yet to reach the village. But it comes for your family. It comes when your mother does not return from Zaria with stories and groundnuts. It comes when your brothers are drafted into the army and sent to the barracks up in Umuahia. But they leave Mezie behind. The army always leaves one man behind.  

Your father is the only medicine man for five towns. With the war, he must go beyond five towns, and sometimes onto war fronts. Sometimes you want to go with him to see the war.  

“Young children do not belong on war fronts.” This is what your father would say before strapping on his medicine bag and wandering off.  

But your brothers were young when the army took them. You have not seen them in nearly a year, but you imagine they still are. That their legs are still long and lanky. That they still put ixoras in their hair. That they still fight over the last piece of cocoyam. With all of them gone, your brothers, your father, your mother, Mezie becomes your only brother; he becomes your father; he becomes your mother. He will go into the forest and return with palm nuts and udara. Soursops and pears. Sometimes, he returns with big rats. The war is hard, and many have abandoned the Igbos. But the forest has not.  

“Our body is the land, and the land is our body. A body cannot leave itself behind.” This is what your mother often said. 

“Does that mean we are walking all over ourselves?”  

Your mother had laughed. “It means the Uzi stream, the cave bats, the forest and all its trees are just as alive as you. Like you, they echo, they want, and they remember.” 

In your father’s stories, spirits live in the forest. In your mother’s stories, the forest has a spirit. A spirit forever walking, growing, forever gazing. You will sometimes stand at its edge and look, and listen, at the endlessness of its trees, its ​​yarns and whisperings. You imagine its spirit is endless and mighty too. You imagine it has many eyes. This terrifies you. Knowing that a thing this vast, this endless, ​​is alive, and breathing, and ​​can see you​​. It fills you with fright. You never go into the forest.  

When your father returns from his many wanderings, Mezie will grumble and talk about some palm nuts that have gone missing.  

“Maybe the rats ate them, because if our body is the land, does that not make the rat’s body also the land, which also makes our body the rat’s body, so maybe we ate the nuts all along.” This is the nonsense you will say in one breath, and your brother will look you up and down in mild irritation. 

 Night comes and finds you hiding the palm nuts in your scarf and scurrying off to the barn. Inside the barn, you say his name. 

“Bako. It’s me.” 

You wait. You wait. And Bako crawls out from under a stack of palm fronds. He stands, and Bako is tall like bamboo. His hair wools and crowns his face. You have wanted to cut it, but you have never seen hair like this before. Bako is wearing the enemy’s military uniform. In its green are streaks of red. In its gray, blood blackens. You open your hands to reveal the palm nuts, and Bako limps over, takes the nuts, and stuffs them into his mouth. He chews and swallows the last nut and searches your hands for more, but your hands are empty. Still, Bako gives you a smile in gratitude, and it is something tired, but a smile nonetheless. And he will give you other things. He will sit, legs crossed, and give you stories: about the dunes in the Sahara, Queen Idia who held back the sun, his village, Adyongo, and all its giant stones. He will tell you of his mother, how her clan had been herding cattle past Adyongo, how she had seen his father planting cashews, and how she had stayed with him. The way Bako speaks of his parents, of Adyongo, you know he wants to go home—but his home is at war, just like yours.