Chukwunonso Nwanze
Eze Mbakwe turned his gaze to the floor, pressing his lips into a thin line. “The worst kind of sickness is not physical but spiritual. Our villages still hear the cries of those stolen. Our rivers murmur their names in the night. Our ancestors walk with bent backs; their shame is heavier than the weight of the earth itself.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “We are haunted, nwa m” (my son), he said. “The trade of flesh did not leave us unscathed. It stole from us too—it took not just our children but our soul.”
Alexander exhaled sharply. His pulse roared in his ears.
“I do not ask you to forget; only a fool forgets,” the eze said, stepping down from his stool. “But I ask—” He hesitated as his voice broke slightly. “Can you, Afamefuna’s son, forgive?”
The room held its breath.
Alexander had not expected this. He had expected history and perhaps even acknowledgment but not this raw, unfiltered sorrow. His ancestor had been sold from this very soil by these people, torn from his mother’s love, shackled, and swallowed by the abyss of the Atlantic. Could he forgive? Did he want to?
Eze Mbakwe slowly knelt before him. The eze-igwe of Oguta, the Little Hill, was kneeling! Gasps echoed through the obi, and the Orinrinzere shifted uneasily. The eze-igwe did not kneel, not to anyone.
Alexander’s eyes burned. His breath caught in his chest.
The monarch extended his hands with his palms upturned. “May the land bear witness to my words,” he said as his voice quivered with emotion. “May the spirits of our forebears hear me now. May the Upright Place record this day—that we, the sons of those who remained, ask for the forgiveness of the sons of those who were taken.”
A gust of wind swept through the open doors, stirring the hanging beads.
Eze Mbakwe closed his eyes and lifted his face to the rafters. “Let this curse be lifted,” he prayed. “Let the waters that once stole our children bring them back home. Let the ocean, which has been a graveyard, now be a bridge.” His voice grew stronger, carrying through the chamber like a song. “Let the tide of sorrow turn. Let the severed roots find their way back to the earth. Let our lost children come home. Laghachi n’ulo!”
Alexander had thought the time for crying was over, but he couldn’t hold back the tears that welled in his eyes. He sank to his knees, mirroring Eze Mbakwe, as his chest rose and fell with the weight of it all.
Why this excerpt was chosen: I chose this excerpt—where the Monarch of Oguta asks Alexander if he can forgive what his ancestors did to Afamefuna—because it represents the trembling center of He Shall Return. As I wrote that scene, I felt the weight of centuries pressing through my fingertips: remorse, silence, guilt, inheritance, and the fragile possibility of healing. I wanted to dramatize what happens when history finally looks its descendants in the eye—not with defensiveness, but with sorrow deep enough to name itself. This moment is not about blame; it is about courage, about two men standing inside a story bigger than both of them, one carrying the burden of a lineage that inflicted harm, the other bearing the ache of a lineage that survived it. When the monarch asks for forgiveness, the air changes. And I wanted readers to feel that change—to feel what I felt as I wrote it: that reconciliation is not a soft word, but a fierce, trembling act of return.
Excerpted with permission from the Publisher. All rights reserved.
