To the Children Growing Up in the Aftermath of Their Parents' War

All of us are scoundrels. The soldier, the general, the president, the first lady, the farmer, the architect, the husband, the wife, the pastor, the nun, the witch doctor, the westerner, the native, the butcher, the bushman, the city dweller, the brother, the daughter, the son, the father, the mother, the aunt, the uncle, the old, the young, the saint, the sinner, the virgin, the whore, down to the girl-child digging in the dirt to plant a seed. That's what I gather from surviving the touch of war. The first thing a war does is dislocate skin from bone, head from neck, and joint from finger until it moves to dislocating nations, lands, and regions.

I surmise that when the war touched my parents something in their biochemistry mutated and poisoned them with a bit of scoundrel. The infection was meant to stay for the purpose of surviving the unthinkable, like beholding decapitated limbs and rearranged faces that showed the handiwork of war on a body. Inch by inch the infection took over their sense of goodness. Take my mother's story about the war she survived. The war that displaced her heart. She was seven years old when it happened.

"I don't want it to touch me ever again. No thank you!"

That was her declaration to the civil war she survived. The war of 1967. Her father had moved everyone to live with their grandmother where the gunshots wouldn't follow them.

"It didn't matter if you were Igbo or not. If somebody holds a gun to your head, you have to pick a side. These soldiers could gouge your eyes out, chop your limbs, and plunge the butt of their guns into your heart because in war, that's the last thing you should have. A heart."

My mother told me that as soon as she returned home from the war she went outside to garden. Digging in the dirt and planting seeds were her favorite things to do. But when she dug into the earth she found a human skull. The skull had a gash above its right eye with worms and insects scattering about. She took the skull to her mother and her mother grabbed the skull and threw it in the bush. Later that day, the girl-child (that's my mother) and her siblings found the skull and decided to kick around the decapitated head as if it were a soccer ball. When it was my mother's turn to kick the skull it shattered to pieces. She never told me whether she got to plant the seed that day, but this story let me know the war infected her with a dose of scoundrel.

I imagine my mother having to excrete her heart out after the skull broke. Her heart must have known there wouldn't be much use for it in a world like hers. It's easier to imagine my mother relinquishing her heart than imagining her as a child who liked to play for the hell of it. It's difficult to see her chasing butterflies or stomping ants for sport. She never smiles because the lines around her lips keep her face hanging down. And that's what the scoundrel wants from its victims. No heart, no whimsy. Joy is its kryptonite. It's always looking for its next high. On the prowl.

That's where my generation comes in. The generation of iPhones, text messages, and sound bites. The generation of instant gratification and American arrogance. The generation once removed from their parents' homeland. We wager that if we're born in the land of milk and honey, we'll never starve to the point of our stomachs blowing up like balloons or stumble upon gashed skulls. We expect our parents to come into our present moment; the world of skyscrapers and tv you can stream, imax, and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. Tankinis and dreams of wearing tons of sequins because you're famous (or because you've won the lottery).

We're...