“My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who’s the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn’t go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until … he could go to the refugee camp. … And he goes there and he says, ‘I want to know where my father was buried.’ And somebody waved very vaguely and said, ‘Oh we buried the people there.’ So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he’s kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard.”

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“My father tells a story about his father dying in a refugee camp. His father was a titled man in Igboland, which meant that he was a great man. He had one of the highest titles a man could have. But his hometown fell, so he had to leave and go to a refugee camp, and he died and he was buried in a mass grave. Which is just heartbreaking for a man, particularly a man like him. My father, who’s the first son, and who takes his responsibilities very seriously, couldn’t go to bury his father because the roads were occupied. He was in a different part of Biafra and so it took a year until … he could go to the refugee camp. … And he goes there and he says, ‘I want to know where my father was buried.’ And somebody waved very vaguely and said, ‘Oh we buried the people there.’ So it was a mass grave. So many people had died. And my father says he went there and he took a handful of sand, and he said he’s kept the sand ever since. For me, that was one of the most moving things I had ever heard.”

On how warfare in Nigeria affected her family in “'Americanah' Author Explains 'Learning' To Be Black In The U.S.” in NPR (2013 Jun 27)