In 1968, on a supposedly beautiful morning, rapid gun shots and heavy shelling woke them but Mira barely slept through the cricket chirping night and was awake before the first shelling touched ground that day. Her legs would trample bodies, leaves, and would even take long strides in shallow streams. Finally, her legs would be tied, so tight the roped smeared her skin. Mira would be thrown behind a van with other captives who would be dropped subsequently until she was the only one left and finally had to be dropped. An itchy hood stole her sight and strong hands yanked her out of the van, moving faster than the bound on her leg would allow, stumbling here and there.

It had been one week since her capture by the Nigerian soldiers in Aba. At night, in her rat infected cell, she dreamt how they killed everyone; rounded them up and fired rapidly at them. Mama. Papa. Everybody. Even though they surrendered.

Footsteps squashed in mud, swift and agile, approaching her cell. Mira sat up, shielding her eyes from an assaulting flash light. The gates opened, and wordlessly, the pistol armed soldier roughly guided her to another unpainted building; the only building within that area. The grass around there blossomed; they weren't trampled on regularly.

An unpleasant stench clouded her nostrils as they got to the gate. The tall, skinny soldier unhooked a bunch of keys from his belt hook and unlocked the gate that made heavy claps as he turned the key. He pushed her in and locked the gate. "Why are you keeping me here!" she ran and held the bars. "Just kill me already! Hey!"

He didn't crane. He walked out of sight and complete silence enveloped her.

She turned around, facing the seemingly large space. A man sat, propped on the wall, legs lying in front of him. He stared with sunken eyes. His ribs outline on his skin.

Mira followed the man's frail hand as it moved, shakingly. He pointed to her, then slowly slid the finger across his neck. she understood what it meant like she was deaf.

The next day, she woke up but the man didn't. Two days later, a soldier came and dragged the man's corpse out. The stench of death already settled in the unventilated cell. A book became visible when his body was removed. The cover; an image of an ancient warrior clad in full amour and was about to drive his bloody sword into his sheath. Beauty Of Wars. Mira leaved the pages and fell to reading one that was dog-eared: Wars are fought by the plebeians and bourgeois for the elites."