Half of a Yellow Sun

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It was the same soldier who, when they arrived at the training camp, a former primary school with buildings sheathed in palm fronds, shaved Ugwu’s hair with a piece of broken glass. The rough scraping left his scalp tender, littered with nicks. The mats and mattresses arranged in the classrooms crawled with vicious bedbugs. The skinny soldiers – with no boots, no uniforms, no half of a yellow sun on their sleeves – kicked and slapped and mocked Ugwu during physical training. The parade left Ugwu’s arms stiff. The obstacles training left his calves throbbing. The rope climbing left his palms bleeding. The wraps of garri he stood in a queue to receive, the thin soup scooped from a metal basin once a day, left him hungry. And the casual cruelty of this new world in which he had no say grew a hard clot of fear inside him.