He was watching the news on telly, so I had to wait. I hadn’t seen them before. I’d seen them, but they hadn’t made sense. Like writing before you can read, you know it’s there but you look at the pictures. The telly was reflecting on to his glasses. He had eight scars on each cheek, broad slits going across, in two columns ... How couldn’t I have seen sixteen scars? I was sitting beside him and he put his arm around me. Tanks were clanking on the telly into Biafra.

‘Daddy?’

‘Sh,’ he said.

I saw a man standing up and firing a gun, and lots of dust coming up. Children were starving. That was his country. ‘ United we stand, divided we fall,’ that’s what all his friends were saying.

‘What are those scars?’ I said when the weather came on. He looked at me and touched some of the craters in his face around his glasses. I hadn’t seen those before either. They were like black spots pitted round his eyes.

‘Smallpox,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s when God comes and takes away your children.’ I sat rigid, but he shook himself out of watching the telly and gave me a hug. ‘No, there’s no god of smallpox in this country,’ he said. ‘I’m going to keep you.’ But there were shadows in his eyes that weren’t there before.

I looked up at him as his head moved and his eyes blanked out with the light reflecting on his glasses. I saw windows surrounded by spots of smallpox. I couldn’t see what he was thinking. He must have seen I wasn’t sure because he kept hold of me.

‘Is that like chickenpox?’ I said.

‘At home we say Obaluaye – which means “king of the world”. But it’s not this world. It’s another one, and a long time ago.’

It sounded like a story, I felt better. ‘What happened?’

‘The children I had before you gave up the ghost,’ he said.

I wasn’t shocked, I was calm, but I was tumbling backwards. I didn’t know about children he’d lost. I didn’t know what this was. I wanted my dad again. I wanted the peace between us. It was shattered.

‘Who?’ I said. But as he tilted his head towards me I didn’t know what that meant, so I said, ‘What children?’

‘You’re my child now,’ he said. ‘No one will come and take you away from me.’

I had to get my dad back. I reached out to touch his face and drew my fingers across his scars. They were smooth.

‘There’s no smallpox in this country.’

‘That’s what these are?’ I was seeing them properly for the first time.

‘No!’ and he started laughing. ‘These are tribal marks.’