Firearms ceased on the streets. The howls of "Biafra win the war" became a dead cry. The streets crowded again. The problem writhing in the cores of our silence was how we would live together.

Forced conscription stripped me of the boy by the fireplace. My innocence. I survived but the hum of war songs lingered. Their echoes distilled into my dreams.

We returned to our homes. The house was a ghost of itself. I reunited with my sister, Chisa. She carried a shadow of the war, heavy with an offspring of rape.

I seethed in the cauldrons of my bitterness, but it was not against her.

" Go inside," I told her. My voice, a sickly blend of guilt and rage. She was rooted outside. Her trembling hands gave away her distress.

" I am not angry at you," I comforted. As she melted in my arms, my soul languished. 

Here was the older brother who could not protect his sister. A son who failed his mother's death wish. How could I be angry at her?

From menial jobs, I fed two, and saved to feed three. Yet, I was conflicted on how I would treat the child. After all, its the offspring of people who invaded my land and violated my sister.

Those people paraded in military uniforms, brazenly, after the crime they committed. The distrust was there. We may never be one again.

Knowing I would return to the university in few months. I weighed my options. I couldn't leave Chisa alone. Also, I wasn't ready to live with the rest of the Nigerian society.

But Chisa gave birth and the tides changed. Her baby was just like me. I looked in his eyes. I didn't see Igbo, Hausa, or Yoruba. I saw a boy by the fireplace. A reminder of the innocence the war stole from me.

“You have to name him,” Chisa pleaded, rejecting him. I have been too engrossed that I ignored the depression she battled everyday.

“Feel him,” I persuaded.

“I don't want him.”

“Then treat him as my brother. Not as the stranger's son. Nurse him for me.” I begged her. 

I called him Nwannahiudo after the Igbo saying: "a child solicits peace." To me, he was the healing I needed, to live in the post civil war society. Beyond that, Chisa learnt to forgive herself. She nursed her son. I raised a brother.