Unearthing Echoes: Why Some Stories Must Be Told

“Even the wind remembers.”

— Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter

This week, as the world marks the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica, we pause to remember not only the documented tragedies of history—but the quieter wounds that history books often forget. The ones buried in the silence of those who survived, and the stillness of those who never had the chance to speak. At the heart of my novel, Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter, lies a question that has haunted many generations:What happens to the children born after the war—when the smoke clears, but the silence remains?

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A Story Woven from Shadows and Truth

This novel does not aim to tell “the” story of Biafra, Nigeria, or the Cold War. Instead, it tells a story—one of many forgotten, fragmented, or denied. Through characters like Nkasiobi Ikenna (Kasi) and Nadia Mensah, we explore the psychic terrain of trauma, exile, and inherited grief. They are not heroes in the conventional sense. They are survivors. Witnesses. Carriers of memory.Their lives, from the banks of the Imo River to the freezing train platforms of Soviet Russia, unfold as echoes of unspoken pain—and as a resistance to the erasure that so often follows conflict.

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The Sound Between Silences

One of the recurring symbols in the book is the flute. Kasi’s father, once a gentle man turned war commander, loses his words after the war—but still plays the flute. Music becomes his final language. For Kasi, that sound is both a lullaby and a lament.The flute in the novel is more than an instrument. It is a vessel of memory. A way of saying: Even if you cannot speak of what happened, it lives in the notes you play. And those who listen closely, will hear.

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Why Stories Like This Matter

In a world saturated with content, it is tempting to believe that everything worth telling has already been told. But for many of us—particularly in postcolonial societies where trauma was repackaged as “peace”—the real stories still sit in the shadows.Some histories were interrupted. Some were rewritten. Some were buried.Once Upon a Time in the Shadows of War and Winter is my attempt to unearth what was hidden:The lingering silence after civil warThe generational ache of children who grow up with broken fathers and grieving mothersThe fragile beauty of love that tries to bloom in cold placesThe exile that happens not just across borders, but inside the soul

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Commemorating Through Fiction

Fiction allows us to hold the complexity of truth without flinching. It lets us sit beside characters like Kasi and Nadia and say: You are not alone. It reminds us that memory is not only what we record—but what we feel, what we fear, what we carry. As we reflect this week, I invite you not only to remember what was lost, but to also recognize what still echoes. In our families. In our identities. In the unspoken things we pass down to the next generation.

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Final Thought

Some stories may be fiction. But the emotions they evoke—the longings, the absences, the scars—are very real. They help us name what was previously unnamed. They help us remember what must not be forgotten.And so, even as the pages close, may the wind still carry the echoes.