Tears of the Golden Rising Sun (eBook)

An Eyewitness Perspective in the Biafran Story)

Ikechukwu Joseph (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
145 Seiten
Ikechukwu Joseph (Verlag)
978-0-00-073389-4 (ISBN)

Infos

But Emily woke up in an abandoned farmhouse. She looked the sleepier and drowsier. She couldnt recognize herself. All she could hear was the croaking songs of bullfrogs and the corresponding lighter response of their female counterpart. Sandwich in-between was the horns of distant vehicles. Emily slept off again like a log. Sleep was so sweet now. The sedative didn't only induce sleep but came with calming and soothing effect. It was already sunrise with sun-worshippers and sunbirds doing their thing when poor Emily woke up. She was still tired and dazed. 'Hello! hello! Anyone there?' She tried to get up but her hands and legs were tied to the chair. In terror she screamed but no one could hear her. Looking out the window she saw a red Sedan saloon car parked at what looked like the back of the farmyard. Emily struggled to free herself but was very feeble. The effect of the sedatives. She looked round and saw gun at one side of the room. It has been long she saw one since she escaped the war zone. Her strong will fought the panic in her voice.
'Baby are you awake?' A husk voice approached from behind and touched her neck, massaging.
Emily shuddered, remembering all the stories both from MM and the novels. The serial rapist, the kidnappers and ritualist. 'But what did I do?' She looked up to the old man wearing grey hair and flaming eyes.
'Damsel, you did nothing. But you broke my rule number one which is don't be caught outside late-night. My name is Angelo Angelo (AA). You must be hungry?' The old man went out and came back with salad. 'This is salad with Italian dressing. Here you have water, vinegar. You could replace that with lemon juice, then there's vegetable oil, chopped bell peppers, sugar and numerous herbs and spices. Baby you will like it. They'll calm your nerves.'
Emily had already gone crazy but survival was the game now. She must play along. She remembered what happened to her music idol. How she was cut down by an obsessed fan. 'Please let me go and I will not break your rules again...'
'Baby you have to eat to get strength to fight your enemies...' When Angelo opened one of the stacks of bags something that looked like human bone fell off. He kissed it and laughed hysterically muttering words like 'your meat was very sweet, sweet lady, your husband must have missed you. Hope God give me another like you that breaks rule number one.'
It then dawned on Emily that she'd fallen prey to a human cannibal. She prayed all the prayers but seemed not to have answers. She cried all the cries and begged to no avail.
Tears of the Golden Rising Sun (An Eyewitness Perspective in the Biafran Story) is the powerful story of the twins passion in a world at war. The story of the Biafra-Nigeria war. A gripping, masterful, thoroughly researched historical grounded novel of one of the struggles of survival of a people. Told with memories of the missing gun powders, body bags, graveyards and meticulous details. From before operation damisa (Leopard) of the first coup d'état to coup d'arret, to the exodus, to the massacre, to the genocide and to the operations. Operation hiroshima, operation aure (marriage), operation biafra babies, operation do or die, operation OAU, kinshasha special, tailwind, zaki (lion), tiger claw, Torch and even to Unicord: a codename to keep Nigeria one. The life's journey (ije uwa) of the twins, Emily and Ugo like in a survival game began with no resources but only their strong bloodline. A bloodline that never say no where they can say yes. Each must on their own locate or craft resources in order to survive the hurdles of life. Find out the truth in this book. Get a copy for your friends too

Textauszug

Chapter One

Homecoming

"We have tried to live a Nigeria designed by Great Britain and handed to us. We have found it difficult to live in that Nigeria. We have fought a civil war, killed so many people and still have the same problems reoccurring. Perhaps a time has come to revisit the very foundations of Nigeria" - Chukwuemeka O.Ojukwu, Biafran Supreme commander (Extracts from video of @Nigeriainvideos)

"In sufferings some people collapse and succumb to pressures of life while others find strength to fight their way out. Just like the disciples, in sufferings and persecutions, we can draw strength and faith to win our battles, to fulfill our destiny and become what God want us to be. 'Tough times they say never last but tough people do.' The young shall grow. You too can travel." Those were the exact words of Emily Adaora Okafor when she came home after the long sojourn in the land of strangers whither, she had gone. Or rather where the winds and circumstances of life had taken her to.

"Ije uwa odi nfe? Onye biara ngam siya ga abiagbum abiagbu, ya lawa nkpu-nkpu ga puya nazu."

Ugo, all of a sudden had become a custodian of the Igbo proverbs. Blood they say would never lie. The spirit of his birth place had followed him all these years in the land of strangers. This proverb with its preceding cliche mildly put says, "Is life's journey easy? Whoever comes to my house and overreaches me, when he's going, he will carry a hunch back." All these years Ugo had been haunted by the spirit of those who died in the war. As a small child, he saw the many killed by the war bullets. Those who died of kwashiorkor, a protein deficiency sickness of which he was a victim too. In that land of strangers, he decided to study medicine with bias in law and military strategy. Later his exploits overseas in the orphanage earned him adoption by the childless president of Republic of Bonga. All these went on while his bloodstream was still strongly attached to home. He left with the common phrase in local parlance that "Agaracha must come back." A word often used by his father whenever he ran off at the sight of a whipping cane or koboko, a braided rope or thong nicknamed doctor-do-good. "If you run to the moon or Jupiter, you must come back," his father would warn him. Those words after over fifty years had guided or acted as a compass to redirect Ugochukwu Okafor to his fatherland, though now in a better and mature perspective and not as a threat. Unlike his twin sister Adaora, he did a lot of background work about his roots. Memories of his childhood at Odutola street and Sanigiwa street all in Kano state, Okija street in Diobu Port Harcourt and Umuehie ikperejere, his home town come and go in flashes. In his search he stumbled over an African proverb book titled, "Words of Wisdom: a collection of African proverbs with categorizations and meanings" by a fellow countryman named Ikechukwu Joseph. His spirit stood up and he decided to buy the book online. Learning those proverbs awoken the eastern blood, nwa afo, son of the soil, in him. Now he's a big boy and a celebrity. The twins had come home to restore their ancestral landmark. To share in the pains of their people and contribute to the development of fatherland. Ugo, surprising people punctuated his speeches with proverbs when he said,

"Okuko boro sham sham, si ka ihe ochei buru ihe ochei,” which when translated means that "the chicken brushed the soil left and right behind it and say let bygones be bygones."

"We have come home to join hands to rebuild our nation," Ugo reaffirmed.

****

This song of freedom. These sons and daughters of freedom. Children of divine destiny. Your sun will shine again.

Your sons will rise again. This song we sing is a song of hope.

It is time to go home to where we belong.

~~*~~

For long we have waited to be together. But they have held us bound for so long. In an unholy marriage that paid no dividend. That never offered any ray of hope.

~~*~~

Oh, beautiful home of the rising sun.

Oh, promising sun of the morning. Where we’ll never cry again.

Where we'll never be marginalized. Where we’ll never be second fiddle. Where the sun will never set but grow,

glow and go places.

Where we’ll sing our makers song without suspicion or fear. Where we'll sing our freedom song of the full-blown sun. Freedom freedom freedom forever.

Home sweet home.

East or west, north or south, home they say is the best

*****

Already construction work had begun at their ancestral home site where they planned to expand to build a modern estate with farm, school, market, recreational home, hospital, old people's home, library and more. The contract was outsourced to a foreign company. But the work had early mysterious hitches and delays. The noise of the bulldozers and caterpillars had awoken the owners of the attached evil forest. Ugo had acquired an abandoned portion of land which was an Amadioha shrine full of tall Iroko trees. The priest of Amadioha then, the son of Eberendu, a young boy abandoned the shrine and its sacrificial obligations when the head and staff of Amadioha was stolen. How can a god or deity like Amadioha be stolen? The young owner and town crier went round the village threatening deaths to the thieves if they don't return it. People were saying let the deity fight for itself. This stolen Amadioha-head was a woven pear-shaped bunch. About four to five feet long with a circumference of about 100cm. No one knew what was inside but it had fowl feathers and blood all over it. When they couldn't find it and no one died for it, the owner abandoned it and relocated to town for greener pastures. After many years Ugo acquired this shrine land for expansion purposes. The problem now was that the noise of the bulldozers woke up what was believed to be the spiritual owners. Two huge big pythons would stand on their tails, with mouths open, tongues darting in and out and head moving to the right and left each time the bulldozers and caterpillars roared. The pythons were more like the reticulated python, malayopython reticulatus, the longest snake in the world, measuring about 6.25 meters each in length. They visited the shrine once every three years around Christmas period. All effort to expel them by fetish doctors failed even after all the sacrifices. Until they called in a high priest who prayed and commanded the snakes to depart. Their dead bodies were found later where they hung down from the trees

In the process of this developmental work also they excavated a very huge pot, ancestral pot that looked like a slave pot. The huge clay pot, decorated with uri curvilinear traditional designs and otangele eye beauty pencil retouch, could accommodate five full grown adults. The curiosity of Adaora and Ugo heightened. What could this historical pot mean or portend? They found, inter alia, diaries of war in the strange huge clay pot. Their uncle George Okafor fondly called uncle Georgy fought in the Biafran war and left them a legacy or presents. Diaries of war, Madsen: a light machine gun model originally designed for Colonel V. H. Oluf Madsen, the Danish minister of war in 1902. Madsen was the world's first true light machine gun produced in quantity and distributed to over 34 countries. Late Lt. Col. George concealed this gun in a rubber bag with a little bottle of engine oil. After the war, Georgy kept this gun for himself. Periodically he would clean, oil and test its efficacy whenever there was heavy rains in the night, just to avoid people knowing. The local police took away the gun but Ugo held tight unto the diaries. It was like a legacy that the parents and uncle left for them about the war. With the little they remembered and searched out, Adaora and Ugo decided to put together what really happened during the Nigerian civil war. As eyewitnesses and having read the half-truths and false records about the war, they decided to say the truth for posterity’s sake and to the memory of old soldier, uncle Georgy. Georgy was a war veteran. He would be remembered for his dedication, diplomacy, eloquence and patriotism.

This morning Ada and Ugo sat over the long breakfast table in the breakfast bar discussing their plans after a warm breakfast cereal. Cereal made from processed maize grains and oat, with milk and sugar added to taste. Just midway into their talks, the loud blaring sound of motor horns and high-sounding accelerators of T.V vans came from the gate. Ugo and Ada looked at each other in amazement. It has been long since they heard such loud noise in their serene environment.

"I hope it is not what am thinking," Ugo murmured. They wanted their homecoming to be quiet so they could carry out their projects. "Have thou found me oh my enemy?" Ugo yawned trying to figure out who was after them, in a manner of speaking. Ada was mute. Unusual! They say people change over time, Ugo thought. His twin sister used to be noisy when they were younger but now, she's grown into a quiet, beautiful cinderella complex. An unconscious desire to be taken care of by a powerful man. Ugo decided to find out who came this quiet morning. It was the crew from Daily News. The hullabaloo raised by this visit aroused the curiosity of their neighbors. People rushed out as the T V cameras flashed up and down, taking snapshots of the serene environment, the people and the peaceful green vegetation.

Ugo took the first quick jab from the merciless reporter. He went straight for the jugular, to the very secret of secrets. "Mr. Ugo, are you ready to forgo the presidency of a huge country for what you call your ancestral name or...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.3.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-10: 0-00-073389-X / 000073389X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-073389-4 / 9780000733894