In secondary school, history was my favorite subject. We had just learnt about the Nigerian civil war, when I went home for the holidays I was happily retelling the stories from the textbooks over to my mom and grandma. By the time I was done my grandma's eyes were red

She wasn't listening to me, I knew that something personal had happened to her during the war but she never mentioned it. It was then she mentioned the words that changed my views on history.
"THE TEXTBOOKS DIDN'T TELL YOU THE WHOLE STORY"

She talked about how the Nigerian soldiers raided their homes. Everything and everyone they had known and loved vanished before their eyes.
Including her baby brother...
In their hurry they didn't realize that he was missing. He was just a child.

Sometimes, I wonder what happened to him, did he die? Is he alive? Is he looking for his family? Did he find love?
This is what scares my grandma, the unknown.
Sometimes she blames herself over and over again for loosing her brother.
Her story is one of the millions of stories,

The textbooks never recorded
#ozoemena