KWENU! Our culture, our future

BOOK REVIEW

Oseloka Obaze

THE HORRORS OF WAR: From The Eyes of A Child by John Dureke, Jr.

(ISBN 0-9701144-2-7, Hyattsville, MD: Jahs Publishing Group. 2002, pp 47, $8.95.)

In 1942 Franklin Roosevelt wrote in his April 23 message to the American Booksellers Association: “Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory…. In this war, we know books are weapons.” Ever since, the same has been true about wars and books about them.

In The Horrors Of War, John Dureke, Jr. recaptures for every child that lived in the Biafran enclave, a vivid memory. He confirms that after thirty-something years one cannot abolish memory or indeed, the pangs of war. This is a slim book of nightmares – those of the protagonist, P, who as Dureke asserts, is a living example that war “can precipitate multiple problems that are social, biological, educational, economical psychological and traumatic for any child.

In four stages the books takes the reader through the author’s childhood mind’s eye from the birth of Biafra on May 30 1967 to life in the refugee camps and the loss innocence of beholding Christmas in war time. The book is about fear, confusion and the tragic loss of innocence. At its core, are the sort of things that in the modern day create vast employment for counselors and psychiatrists, who specialize in posttraumatic stress syndrome. It is a book for children that could have been written by any child who survived Biafra – and there are many. No one who has lived through war can forget quickly, if ever, the sound of shelling, air raids mortars and other artilleries. Nor for that matter death and the acrid stench of war death. Dureke, recaptures such onomatopoeic gun sounds like kwapum, kwapum, kwapum — which in his native Igbo dialect, meant literally evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. And many children spent most of the 30 grueling months of the Biafran war evacuating from one town to another – often on foot and bare feet.

The children of war in Biafra are now grown men with their own families. If they are overly protective of their children it is because they survived the horrors of the war, thanks to the protection they got from adults. This comes through clearly in Dureke’s book. Interestingly, this is not a book of fiction. It is a book children should be allowed to read because the future belongs to them, and because those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat its mistakes. More importantly, this book is laced with morals for the young – ethos of, and about the importance of family, virtues of forgiveness and courage and making do in a world where the well to do could overnight become refugees. Finally, the book is about leadership, it strives to impact the challenge of leadership at a tender age by having a child advise future leaders in the book’s closing chapter. One such advice – “Sometimes dispute can lead to fights if not resolved initially.” How poignant, in the era where rationale for going to war has become a matter of whims and falsity –an era where children still ask why America and Iraq are at war and why can’t the adults talks to each other?

Those who have led a sheltered life, and have never experienced war should feel blessed. For those of us who have, and did so as children, may we always say in the Igbo word that is a child’s name Ozoemena – may it not happen again. Dureke, on his second outing at writing children friendly books, has given his best. He is a credit to his generation and to his alma mater, Christ the King College, Onitsha, where young men are nurtured to be Primus Inter Pares – First Among Equals.

Inquiries about the book can be made through 301-864-2800 or info@jahspublishing.com.