Ikechukwu Henry // One Verse A Time // Fiction
Ikechukwu Henry
One Verse at a Time
Hope had long since stopped reporting for duty; only the anthem still showed up. And there are days when a man can hear his soul grinding. This was one of them. The air tasted like chalk and regret, and both clung to Mr. Bello’s throat. He sat motionless behind his desk, fingers curled loosely around a stub of chalk. Not writing. Just holding. The chair beneath him creaked when he shifted slightly, then settled again. He hadn’t greeted the class. Hadn’t called the register. He just sat, as if waiting for something nameless to end.
In Nigeria, even the silence showed up late. But the anthem? Always on time. At 7:45am, it arrived. Not from the school’s PA—those speakers had died years ago—but from a loudspeaker mounted outside the local government office across the street. The sound sliced through the classroom windows in a jagged whine.
“Arise, O compatriots…”
The voice was brittle, stretched thin by static, as if the anthem itself were embarrassed to be heard.
Mr. Bello didn’t lift his head. The hum of the loudspeaker crawled into his bones, rusted and tired, like a relic trying to haunt its way back into relevance. Each note was a broken promise weighed deep into his chest.
Standing—responding—would feel like pretending it still meant something.
The chalk trembled once in his grip. His jaw clenched, not with anger, but with the effort of suppressing memory. And then it slipped out of him. A dry, accidental scoff. A few chairs shifted. Pencils froze mid-scratch.
“Sir,” Aisha said, tone light but focused. “Why do you hate the anthem?”
He looked up. Aisha. Front row. Hijab sharp, gaze sharper. The question wasn’t barbed. It was precise. Disarming in its sincerity. Curiosity could undo more than anger. He had learned that too late in life. Anger was expected; manageable. But curiosity? That was the kind of thing that crept under your ribs and stayed.
His fingers stiffened around the chalk. He could feel her eyes holding him there. Measuring him. Not mocking. Wanting to know. There was a pause—just long enough for a decision to happen. He thought of saying nothing. Of pretending not to hear. He imagined it would pass like everything else: ignored, buried, forgotten. Like David’s name. Like the blood on his collar.
But his throat was dry. Too dry. He needed the moment to move. He forced his jaw to loosen. His voice came out flatter than he wanted. “I didn’t say I hated it,” he said. “I cleared my throat.”
The lie sat heavily in the room. It wasn't convincing. It wasn't meant to be.
He stood slowly, the legs of the chair scraping the tile like a reluctant confession.
“Open to page one-four-two,” he added. “Post-Colonial Reforms.” His voice had hardened now, not from strength, but from defense.
The question hit deeper than it should have. And he hated that it did. Not because she was wrong. But because once, he’d been her. That part hurt most. He didn’t answer right away. His eyes drifted, not to her, not to the class, but toward the windows, where the morning light hung pale and motionless. The trees beyond the open space barely moved.
Something inside him did.
His fingers flexed slightly, then stilled. He let out a slow breath.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to her. It wasn’t to anyone in the room. It was to something behind him. Something gone.
“I believed in it.”
The class went still.
“I believed in every word of that song once,” he continued, as though reciting something from a different lifetime. “I used to sing it. Loudly. Even during protests. Especially during protests.”
He was no longer looking at Aisha. He was looking somewhere far past her, beyond the cracked wall, beyond the dry trees outside, into a city that didn’t exist anymore.
“I was at university in the '80s. David and I—we marched against the military. Fuel subsidies, disappearances, midnight arrests. But we sang the anthem each time. We believed the song would outlive the guns. We believed the country could be shamed into remembering its promise.”
He paused.
Aisha’s voice came softer now. “What happened to David?”
Mr. Bello’s jaw shifted, but no words came. Not yet. He looked down at the chalk in his hand, suddenly aware of it. His grip tightened until his knuckles paled. For a moment, it seemed he might say nothing at all.
Then his eyes fluttered shut, just briefly, like blinking against something too bright to look at directly.
When he spoke, his voice barely cleared his throat.
“He was shot… in front of the Senate building.”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was hollow, like a rib cage missing the heart it was meant to protect.
“He was singing the anthem. Second stanza…Got as far as ‘Help our youth the truth to know’. Then silence.” He looked at his fingers, dry with chalk. A tremor passed through them.
“I carried his body to the campus clinic. The blood wouldn’t come off my shirt for days.”
No one spoke. Not even the wind.
“I kept teaching because I thought if I gave up, then David died for nothing,” he said. “But after thirty years of watching every hope unravel, every leader lie, every anthem played at every empty ceremony, it became harder to believe in the song. Harder to stand when it played.”
His voice thinned. Not with weakness. With fatigue that had no place to go.
“But I don’t hate it,” he added. “I hate how easily we let it mean nothing.”
The classroom stayed silent, though it seemed full of something just below the surface. A kind of suspended breath.
Aisha’s pen had rolled off her desk and lay forgotten on the floor. She didn’t notice. She shifted slightly in her seat, her spine no longer as straight, her hands now folded carefully together. Her eyes, always sharp, softened, not in fear, but in quiet recognition.
Then, gently: “But sir… if people like you stop believing, how are we supposed to start?” Mr. Bello didn’t speak. He didn’t move. The question hung there, quiet and dangerous.
“I teach history so you’ll know where the bodies are buried,” he said. “Not just the literal ones. The promises. The betrayals. But I also teach it so you can build something better over them.”
He looked up, his eyes scanning the room. No one met his gaze but no one looked away, either.
“The anthem is not the country,” he said quietly. “But maybe… it’s the country we’re still trying to build. One verse at a time.”
His voice cracked on ‘trying’, but he didn’t flinch. He looked directly at Aisha.
“Your generation must sing it louder than we did. Not because it’s perfect. But because we weren’t.”
He sat down slowly, as though the chair might disappear beneath him.
Silence followed. Not empty, but thick. Dense with something cold and real.
One student shifted slightly. Another exhaled, long and quiet, as if letting go of something they hadn’t realized they were holding. Someone else rubbed their forehead like trying to wake from a slow dream. The boy with the dyed hair blinked twice, jaw set, hands suddenly still.
They weren’t just listening. They were absorbing.
Then Aisha stood. She didn’t salute. She didn’t smile. She just walked to the desk and stopped.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
She turned and left.
The rest followed. Quietly. Slowly. Like people leaving a church after sitting through a truth they weren’t ready for—but couldn’t unhear.
Mr. Bello stayed behind. The air was still dry. Outside, the light had changed. Clearer now, like the haze had begun to lift. He looked out the window. And, a melody, long suppressed, rose from deep within him, finding his lips with a surprising gentleness.
It was broken, quiet, almost tuneless. But it was the anthem. And it didn’t sound like defeat.
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Ikechukwu Henry's Writings tackle the issues of Environmental and climatic crisis, mental health, queerness and family dramas, and speculations of the otherworldly. When not writing, he could be found sourcing out the latest magazine to submit to or growing his large followers on X. He lives in a country that threatens to swallow him whole and tweets about it @Ikechukwuhenry_ on X.