In the Shadow of War

“In the Shadow of War,” a fictional short story by Nigerian author Ben Okri, was first published in the London magazine West Africa in 1983. Five years later, Okri included a revised version in his collection Stars of the New Curfew, which has been out of print since 2004. This anthology marked a point in Okri’s career during which he began to incorporate more magical and fantastical elements into his otherwise realist writing. Okri was a young child living in Nigeria during the time of the country’s civil war--an experience that influenced the subjects of his work and is paralleled in this story of a young boy witnessing the horrors of the war. As many of Okri’s other works do, this story blurs the edges of reality, making it difficult to distinguish what is imagined or real. Okri has received numerous prestigious awards throughout his career including a fellowship to the Royal Society of Literature (1997) and the Order of the British Empire (2001).

In an unnamed Nigerian village, a young boy named Omovo and his father listen to the news of war on the old radio in their home. From the window, Omovo observes three soldiers arrive and settle in at the nearby bar. As his father prepares to leave, the radio announcer says a lunar eclipse is expected that night. Omovo’s father explains an eclipse is “when the world goes dark and strange things happen” (4).

After his father boards a bus, presumably to work, Omovo sits and waits in his windowsill hoping to see “a strange woman with a black veil over her head” (3), who has been passing through the village on her way to the forest for the past week. Omovo notices the soldiers stop children who pass the bar to speak to them and give them money, so he leaves his house and slowly walks by. A soldier asks Omovo his name; he lies and tells him it is “Heclipse,” which makes the soldier laugh. He asks Omovo if he has seen the veiled woman and Omovo says no. The soldier hands him some money and explains the woman is “a spy” who “helps [their] enemies” (4), requesting Omovo inform them the moment he sees her. Omovo refuses the money and returns home.

In the stifling heat, Omovo falls asleep by the window. When he wakes in the early evening, he watches the soldiers following the woman through the village. Omovo chases them and when the soldiers split off in a different direction in the forest, Omovo follows the woman. When they reach an encampment by a cave, Omovo watches sickly children and tattered women thank her, and the woman leaves with them a red basket. He continues to follow her to a river where he sees clothes, food, and outdated currencies littering the water. What he first thinks are “capsized canoes” transform “into the shapes of swollen dead animals,” and he notices “the terrible smell in the air” (7).

The soldiers arrive and surround the woman while Omovo hides behind a tree. One soldier demands to know where “the others” (8) are and accuses her of being a witch. Even when they hit her, she remains silent. When one soldier tears off her veil, Omovo can see her bald head is “disfigured with a deep corrugation” and she has “a livid gash along the side of her face” (8). One soldier pushes her to the ground and in the changing light of the forest, Omovo realizes the swollen dead animals in the water are human corpses. The woman rises, spits in a soldier’s face, and “[begins] to howl dementedly” (8). Two of the soldiers begin to retreat, but the third fires his gun at her. “A violent beating of wings” (8) in the forest scares Omovo from his hiding place and he runs away screaming. The soldiers chase after him until he trips over a tree root and knocks himself unconscious.

Omovo wakes in a dark room, thinking he has gone blind. He finds his way to the balcony where he discovers his father drinking palm-wine with the three soldiers. His father directs Omovo to thank the soldiers for bringing him “back from the forest” (9). When Omovo frantically begins to tell his father what he witnessed, his father “[smiles] apologetically at the soldiers” (9) and carries Omovo back to bed.