My room is a cocoon of darkness, pierced only by the rhythmic drumming of rain against the windowpane. Outside, Lagos trembles beneath the weight of the storm, the streets slick with water, the air thick with a dampness that clings to the skin like an unwanted memory.

The grating hum of my neighbor’s generator gnaws at the silence, a relentless, metallic growl that should unsettle me—but tonight, I welcome the distraction. My earphones are in, anyway, and Alan Jackson’s “Remember When” seeps into my soul, each note stirring ghosts of the past.

The melody wraps around me, warm yet haunting, coaxing forth a memory I have never truly escaped—the cold, unforgiving October of 1999.

The day my childhood ended. The day innocence was swallowed whole by war drums and the scent of burning flesh.

We were playing ten-ten in the yard when the first ripple of fear ran through the streets.

An urgent voice, thick with tension, called from a window, “Go inside! Now!”

The Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) had clashed with the Ijaws. Ajegunle, our home, was about to become a battlefield.

My mom herded us inside, her face taut with unspoken fear. “Pick a book,” she commanded, as if printed words could shield us from the chaos outside. My siblings obeyed, flipping through pages they did not read, playing pretend with pictures of houses and cars as if our world had not just cracked open. But I?

I watched my parents instead.

My dad paced, his breath shallow, his hands clenched. His usually portly frame seemed smaller under the weight of what was to come. He disappeared into the room and emerged moments later with a thin white cloth, tying it around his wrist with practiced hands.

A neighbor burst in, his face slick with sweat. “They’ve started. Amuwo Odofin—bodies everywhere.”

My mom  gasped, pressing her chest as though she could contain the horror in her heart. We children stared, wide-eyed, too young to understand but old enough to feel the air shift.

Dad turned to leave. “I need to inform the boys.”

“I hear say dem don almost finish our brothers for Tunkarimo!” the neighbor added, fueling the fire in my father’s eyes.

My dad did not hesitate. He vanished into the night, into the belly of the war.

Hours later, they returned—Dad and the Egbesu boys, their faces hardened, their wrists wrapped in the same white cloth. One among them stood out. Bare-chested, his lower eyelids smeared with black paint, his feet wrapped in white bindings. He exuded power, an aura thick with the weight of unseen forces.

My mom shoved us into the room, but curiosity anchored me by the door. I caught whispers of war, of men “fortified” against bullets, of entire families slaughtered.

Ogbowankwo was a graveyard.

Tunkarimo, a ghost town.

Rumors spread like wildfire. The OPC wielded bombs made of akara—bean cakes infused with dark magic that exploded on impact. The Egbesu warriors fought back with eggs laced with incantations, their bodies resistant to bullets, their skin untouched by fire.

Dad confirmed the whispers.

He had seen men step into a boiling pot, steam hissing against their skin, and emerge unscathed—”spiritually bulletproofed.” He spoke of enemies who emptied rounds into Ijaw warriors only to watch them march forward, undeterred, unstoppable.

He was a soldier now. A warrior baptized in blood and myth.

For days, the city burned. Shops shuttered, schools deserted, mothers clutching their children with white-knuckled hands. We lived on the precipice of destruction, waiting for the cry—”Oya! Run!”

Then the killings became too close, the gunfire too familiar.

The once vibrant Anosike Street, always alive with the calls of hawkers and the laughter of children, fell into a haunting silence. Shuttered windows stood like sealed tombs, doors barricaded with wooden planks and hurried prayers. Stray dogs roamed the empty streets, their ribs pressing against thin fur, their eyes reflecting the fear that had swallowed the city whole.

At night, the air was thick with whispers and muffled sobs, the weight of uncertainty pressing against every breath we took. The scent of burning rubber and charred flesh lingered, seeping into the very walls of our home.

We no longer played ten-ten in the yard, no longer chased each other down the alleys. The streets were no longer ours. They belonged to ghosts now—the echoes of gunshots, the shadows of those who had not made it through.

Dad sent us away. Somewhere safe. Anywhere but the ghost remains of a baseless war.

We left in the dead of night, squeezing into an overfilled bus headed for Ikeja. On the highway, uniformed men patrolled, their sirens wailing like banshees. Mom held us tight, whispering prayers into our scalps. “If they start shooting, run.”

But where? The Apapa-Wharf express had no cover, no shelter from the coming storm. I did not think I would run. I thought instead of Dad, of the men who had become gods in the fire of war, their bodies immune to bullets, their spirits woven into the fabric of battle.

But no battle came. The soldiers passed, the transporters resumed their shouting, and life moved on.

As if the world had not just tilted on its axis.

We were safe.

But home was gone.

I spent New Year’s Eve in Ikeja, surrounded by cousins who laughed too easily, who scoffed at the mere idea of fear. We were the children of the ghetto, the survivors of a war no history book would ever truly capture.

And when the embers cooled, when the city exhaled its first breath of uneasy peace, I returned to Ajegunle.

But it was not the home I had left.

The streets were scarred, lined with the wreckage of war. The houses sagged with exhaustion. The people moved with the heavy gait of those who had seen too much. The children were no longer children; their eyes held stories too weighty for their years.

We were changed.

We had been to the edge of war and returned, not unscathed, but alive. And for those of us who remained, there was no forgetting, no undoing.

We were the remnants of a forgotten battle, ghosts of a war that did not belong to us, yet shaped us in ways we could never escape.

And even now, all these years later, I remember.

And my heart aches for all who did not return.