Actual events and the haunting nature of romance in the movie The Mood for Love inspire the following.

Love is a Responsibility: 

To the ones you love the most, to the oaths you take, to the friends you make and to the hearts you break. 

Igorima was born on May 22 1939, into a military family. One of the many powerful northern Muslim families of Nigeria. His family was stationed in the South, a stronghold for the Northern government to maintain control over the country of Nigeria. He was a fervent child. He was the only boy of his mother, a brother to 4 sisters and the favourite child of both his parents. There had never been a more perfect child. His dad would call him “my perfect boy, needing and lacking nothing”. He was a straight-A student, an ideal athlete, a prayerful Muslim, obedient to his elders and understood without being told his life steps would be paved by his father to go on into the military and create a family legacy by carrying with what his father and uncles and fathers before him had done. He would serve his father, his country, and his mother by falling in love and marrying whoever she found that loved him, and they would be together until death. Underneath all of this, Igorima truly believed he wanted this all. He wanted the responsibility of the future, but whenever he lay in bed thinking of it, his legs wouldn’t stop fidgeting. His toes curled for hours on end, even affecting how he walked. Everyone pretended not to notice. 

By 26, he was betrothed to Halimat, and she was just 16. The Nigerian tribe looking to break away from the country, now deemed Eastern terrorists, had brutally killed half of her family. While visiting them when she was just a newborn, her brothers and father died in the attack, and her uncle sold her and the rest of her sisters off to different Northern families, hoping to strengthen alliances. Halimat and Igorima were a match to the happiness of his mother. His father never cared enough to voice an opinion on them, only to suggest Halimat had worthy hips enough for childbearing. On the night of their engagement, she cried to him when they were finally alone, and he promised not to touch her until both were ready.  

There was Chuma, the 24-year-old drummer boy—an eastern boy who lived in the South with his grandfather. He was full of sunshine, music and a lust for life. He remembered his mother would tell him before his parents had died. His parents were people of Biafra, believers in the secession of the eastern community from Nigeria, and they were hung in the town square for it. The Northern military officials back in the east. His grandfather fled with him immediately to Port Harcourt, Rivers State, before The Nigerian government decided to send a base of Nothern military troops to Port Harcourt. 

The Biafra War officially commenced in the year 1967. 

Igorima, forced by his family, enlists in the Nigerian army, and Halimat is left alone again. Chuma enlists because he is given no choice. It is either him or his grandfather; men are needed, and although he is not a man, he knows it is his responsibility to make sure not everyone before him dies on a battlefield. 

Love is War, and Love is a Weapon

Only if men could seek pain in any other way but our hands search for salvation and suffering on the battlefield. Fathers are all fools with Honour and courage; do not pray to God to save us from war; he is a father, too. 

A thousand men died on the side of the Biafrans, and 300 men were killed on the side of Nigeria. 

Before the battle, Igorima prays for his Halimat, not to live to consummate their love but for her protection if he dies in war. Halimat prays for the same. Igorima scratches his skin off before battle, fearing the cries he will hear. He has not tired enough to show it; he has murdered 32 Biafran traitors and 7 Nigerian soldiers due to friendly fire. All he hears in his sleep and waking moments are the cries of men, their blood on him, and when he showers, it feels like an ocean of tears. He knows what he must do. He cannot stop. To get to the end, he must get through the middle. He was able to make sense of a war. He understood the Biafran men as traitors, men and women who didn’t understand that loving your country was a responsibility. All his life, he was brought up to understand some Northern men got to decide what was better for everyone, and then there was everyone else. No one understands conviction more than himself, but after every battle and the washing off of blood, he could not wash off this feeling that all the men who died on that day were all men of conviction. He thought to himself that maybe that was the point of war. To get to decide which men with conviction should be left, but yet in his sleep, he heard the cries of the men in death and the cries of the men living beside who had won that day. Dead and alive, their cries were the same. This feeling that he had always ignored, he knew it was doubt, and it had eaten him alive. By this time, he was leading his squadron and wondered how to show if his heart was torn. He prayed and fasted to Allah to give him something to believe in that would take him back to Halimat. 

It was January 15, 1970. 

It was the day Chuma believed he would die as his mother and father had died. It was his first day in the war, and he would go in singing, crying and shaking, but he would not take a life. He had been lonely since the day his parents had left. he was angry and felt abandoned by them, but he understood that love was not always one of peace and forever afters. They loved him, but they were also subject to the love they had for the shape of their existence. He knew what he was, he knew what he loved, and he was not a killer or a fighter, and he had never felt anything in the world could make him one. He loved to dance, run in the forest, share and sing stories, and make sure his grandfather would die peacefully. The world would take care of him, but he must care for his grandfather. Rich men shouldn’t get to dictate how poor men lived, and if one of them in their family could make it to old age, they deserved to see it through. It was his destiny to die young, and honestly, he was a bit excited to learn what was next. He didn’t hate all the men around him, but he did pity them. He felt so bad they all lived a life where all of their power revolved around strength. There were other things of beauty. 

The battle for Owerri commenced, and all the men were advised to be careful of the hilly terrain. Igorima was a natural with his dagger, rifle and pistol. He can always see a weapon not in use and turn it into an extension of his hands. It was a rain of bullets, blood and bombs, but they never stopped him from being the first into enemy territory. As he went further and further, his eye locked on this boy by a tree crying, singing out loud frantically, crouched on the floor. What all of the romantics say is true—time stopped for both of them. Igorima and Chuma locked teary eyes—Igorima with blood on his face and Chuma with tears and snot. Igorima started to saunter towards Chuma, bewildered by this singing boy on his knees with no ounce of blood or dirt on him in the middle of a battlefield. Chuma began to sing louder, welcoming his death at the sight of his enemy coming toward him. Out of nowhere, from behind the tree, a Northern soldier stabs a knife into the back of Chuma, the singing boy. Immediately, like involuntary action, Igorima jumped forward, putting his knife into the eye of his fellow brother as Chuma screamed and fell into him. 

Bombs fell into the field, and men were thrown in all directions. Igorima, Chuma and the bodies of the northern men were thrown, rolling into the crevice of the surrounding hill.

Love is a Confession, a lie, a twisted truth, a test, a kiss without tongue.

The noose around our neck, the power of love, is torture. The importance of lies is how they keep us together when the truth is not strong enough to do so.  

There were three men on the floor. One dead, one dying, and one finally full of regret that once manifested as doubt. For an hour, they all just lay on the ground made of splintered tree parts, gunpowder, bits of bodies and metal. Igorima finally stood up, staggering, and accepted that he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be home with his sisters. He wanted his mother to hold him. He wanted to cry to his father to reprieve him from this responsibility. He didn’t want to have the power bestowed on him, to give life to a woman of his parent’s choosing and to take life from men that could be the brother he had always wanted. His mind was in a frenzy, but he was brought back to the battle when Chuma began to sing again. Lying on the floor, believing he was about to meet his maker, he sang a broken chorus from his fractured mind. Igorima searched through himself, the pockets of the dead soldier beside them, all of their gears to look for whatever would keep Chuma alive. 

It was nighttime; the battle had ended, and Chuma regained consciousness. His fever had come down as his head lay on Igorima’s legs. There was darkness and the fear of the noises from wild animals, but for the first time in years, Igorima and Chuma were at peace. They believed they were in purgatory, lost on the river to death, not all the way gone but not alive. They talked about everything but the war. Music, movies, places they had both been in Port Harcourt and all the places they would love to go. It was a pretence, but what part of life isn’t a performance? They also talked about war but ignored the ones they were in. Chuma talked about his abhorrence for it all. Of all the things to do on our planet in the middle of space, men choose to kill each other; how nonsensical it was. He could stand now, but no matter how far he paced as he ranted about the futility of violence, he stayed next to Igorima, and they both noticed and said nothing. Chuma sang them to sleep, and due to the cold of the night, they held onto each other tightly. For the first time, Igorima slept through the night with no sweat and no toes curling. He had a dream. He was in a flood of fire, but he could swim through a voice in the sea that led him to a lighthouse, and on the top of that lighthouse, he saw a yellowbird in a cage. This bird’s voice he heard in the sea of hell was Chuma’s.

They spent more days together, moving deeper into the forest and killing snakes and weaving words together for new songs to sing. The other was immediately there to catch the other when they would sleep on muddy ground. The forest was their garden of Eden; love was their sin, and for the first time, they felt a God within. They drank from streams; they conjured fires that roasted little things that flew above and crawled below. Their fingers were intertwined, and their kisses were full of greed. As their romance began to blossom, the torture began to set in. Both were naked, playing in the stream when they could hear the bullets again, the reality setting in for them. They didn’t know which was the truth or the lie. The one they currently lived in or the one they left. Igorima finally told him who he was and where he came from. He told the Chuma they were looking for him, and if they found them together, they would kill Chuma. Chuma also told him the Biafran camp was struggling, angry that their men were dying, resources were dwindling, and if they found any northern, they would torture or trade them back for resources. 

They held each other in their arms, fully aware their time was ending, but they could not let go of each other without assurances they would each be fine. They had both saved each other in so many ways. Chuma had loved someone for the first time in years because they were alive enough to choose him. It was there, and then both decided to do whatever it took to protect each other. Until they were caught, Igorima and Chuma learnt and loved from one another. 

Love is a Life once was dead. Love is a transfiguration

A stair and a tear, brothers in arms, bathing in blood, dancing under the moon’s glare. The dust takes our wishes to the sun, and what was dead is now reborn.

Chuma woke up to 6 northern army men looking down on him with rifles aimed at his head. Igorima wasnt there. He would always wake up first to run and hunt for both of them. Before he could utter any words, the northern soldiers pummelled down on him. The butt of a gun, the sole of boots, metal knuckled fists and the pointed end of knives all fell like a waterfall on Chuma. This didn’t go on for long as they started interrogating him about where or what he had done with their missing leader and commander. He could barely speak, but they didn’t care. They knew all they wanted was to kill the traitor anyway; torture was the ornamentation for death for some men. Chuma could barely tell them that Igorima wasnt with him, but they knew he had information. They went through little bottles of alcohol, questioning him on who else was with him and where they could find the body of their late commander. Chuma begged he be killed, but the man had better ideas of his torture now that they were drunk. They whipped him with their belts, urinated on him, burnt him with lighters, and when he couldn’t take any more, thinking he could feel death’s embrace, Chuma started to sing a song with Igorima’s name in it. 

Igorima ran back to them screaming, asking his men what they had done. His men were so happy to see and show him what they had found. They asked him every question about where he had been, why hadn’t he had come back to base, what he was doing in the forest and why Chuma sang songs with his name in them. Only then was he able to collect himself, to remember who he used to be. He could barely hold back the tears, but he must for what was to come. He hugged all of his men, even spitting down on Chuma, telling them Chuma was his prisoner he was bringing back home. He told them some Biafran soldiers captured him, and they told him there was a Biafran base not too far from where they were, which added validity to his tale. He told them he escaped and killed so many of them, and Chuma chased him for days; he subdued him and hoped to bring him back for information and as a prisoner. Chuma lay on the floor hearing all this, hoping death would take him before his heart entirely broke. All the men drank in stupor that night and planned to return to base the following day. Igorima sat opposite Chuma, far enough not to arouse suspicion but close enough that Chuma would feel some warmth from his soul. It would end shortly. 

In the middle of the night, while everyone snored, Igorima sourced out what would be his weapon for the battle of his life. He put a blanket over Chuma and another under his head. He found every little bottle of spirit his men drank and broke the bottoms of each, leaving a broken end of the top. He put as much as he could fit within his knuckles on his hand and taped them so hard until each was immovable. A fist of glass under the moon to put in the bellies of wolves who had left his lover bloodied. He tore through each of them with his fist; they woke up one by one, staggering in shock. Igorima tore through 9 men for 2 hours, having to chase down 2 of the men who were running away in terror. He had aimed for throat and chest wounds; even when pummeled to the floor, he cut through their feet. Once every one of them was dead, his real job would begin. He took Igorima to the nearest stream, washed him off, and changed his clothes to the cleanest uniform of one of his men that wasnt soaked in blood. Igorima then carried Chuma in his arms for almost 5 hours until they reached the Biafran base, where he immediately collapsed. 

Love is a broken watch. Love is an arrow in time.

To love is to stay and to leave; when time passes, lovers grieve. Love is tender. Love is honey. Love is to witness an impossible journey.

Sixty-seven years had passed. The Biafrans had lost, the Eastern states were refused secession, and almost 3 million Nigerian lives were the cost of the war. Igorima was taken as a prisoner when he returned Chuma to the Biafran camp. He was kept in a cell to be sent to the firing squad for combatants caught behind enemy lines, but his death continued to be delayed. The soldier took a liking to him because, in his cell, Igorima would sing the songs Chuma had taught him, songs made from Igbo words, the language of the Biafran people. They would give him more food and water, access to light and a book and pen to diary his thoughts, forsaking the madness that could creep up in a cell. They were also bewildered by how he only ever asked for Chuma before he asked for when he would be put to death. The Biafran soldiers saw him as a brother of war, not an enemy in one, especially after Chuma woke up and told his people how Igorima had saved him from a riot of soldiers and what he had done to bring him home. In a time when a large number of Biafran soldiers had died, one returned home as a testimony under the Nigerian sun. 

Finally, it was time to enact their plan. Chuma would use Igorima as a good to barter back to his people. As the only son of one of the most influential families, they knew Igorimas’s family would do anything to get them back. Igorima gave them enough information about the location and tactics of his base to help the Biafran soldiers in the area avoid any more casualties, told them how many Biafrans they had captured to be exchanged for him and information on him and his family to force the Northern troops to make trade. All of this would go on for 8 months, 8 months Chuma and Igorima were able to get sitting beside each other until he was bartered away. They saved each other and would just look into each other’s eyes as time passed every night, grieving for when it would all end. Igorima finally told him about Halimat and how he genuinely loved her and couldn’t wait to see her again. Chuma told him about his grandfather and how he couldn’t believe he would be able to go back home as a hero of his people. 

In the 67th year after Igorima and Chuma had met, Igorima lay dying in the hospital. He was crying in gratitude for his last moments. Thankful to Allah for his beautiful wife who stood beside him and had stood with him after his return from war. His family had shared their disappointment in his perceived failure of the war. Being captured and the death of his entire unit looking for him, he was almost ostracised, if not for the love of Halimat. They married immediately after he came home so they could both move as far away from it all. They helped each other overcome the horrors of the war, and he told her about Chuma. They would go on to be lovers, best friends, companions and parents throughout their marriage. 

As his last days were around on this evening, when his children and grandchildren had left, Halimat walked in with Chuma and closed the door and curtain behind her. The arrow of time that cut through each of them had finally come full circle. Everyone in the room had experienced affection that saved each other in ways no war could destroy. In the room was a mood of love.

…

I’m Douye Fumudoh, a passionate and emerging writer, eager to share my unique perspectives on stories and living in this world with the people in it. As a fresh voice in the literary landscape, I’m excited to have my work featured in the RIC Journal, and I look forward to connecting with readers through my writing.