“Shut up!” is screaming the first one. Then she is turning to me, but before she is saying any more thing, I am moving from corpse to corpse and picking up gun and knife and ammunition clips and putting them in my pocket. And this girl is saying thing like more people are coming to get us and that police compound is many kilometers away, but none of this is meaning anything to me.

Then Uzodinma is seeing me, and I am stopping collecting weapons.

I have to go back, I am telling him, and he is seeing not just Ify as I last saw her, at Kufena Hills, but Ify as she is always appearing in my rememberings. Ify as little girl, Ify as older girl, so many different Ifys, and I am feeling in my body that I am loving all of them, and I need to know why. All of this, I am saying to Uzo when I am saying, I have to go back.

Instead of Uzodinma saying word to me, he is showing me image and recording of all of us being together in the forest. He is showing footage of some of us sitting down and finding peace or climbing tree or playing game and giggling or teaching each other thing. It is taking me several second before I am understanding what he is saying. I have to protect them, he is telling me. And it is not until now that I am looking at him like leader. But they are not calling him Commandant. They are calling him Uzo and sometime they are calling him Commandant, and I am wishing that when I am being child of war, I am having Uzodinma with me, because then maybe I am feeling less alone.

But I am saying, Protect them, and then I am realizing that this might be the last time I am seeing Uzodinma. I am having rememberings in me of people when they are to be parting and they are hugging, so I am going to Uzodinma and even though there is rifle and knife in my hands, I am hugging him. I am not caring that we are looking strange to the people watching, because I am feeling love for Uzodinma and I am wanting him to know I am feeling this thing.

Then I am running away.

■  ■  ■  ■  ■

I am running, and while I am running I am aiming and shooting. And I am hitting tires of jeeps, and they are swerving back and forth and skidding and making screeching noise, and as they are toppling, I am leaping over them and climbing over them and running back to the police station. And in the beginning I am not knowing why I am doing this, but then I am seeing in my mind eye the last face I am seeing before they are putting me in van. I am seeing face of Ify.