CIVIL PEACE
by Chinua Achebe, 1972

In the preface to his collection Girls at War (1972) Chinua Achebe has argued that his short stories have provided only "a pretty lean harvest" and that he cannot lay any great claim to the literary form—but this is only the protest of a naturally modest writer. Running through all his short fiction is the same economy of language and sharpness of observation that informs his early novels.

Above all, though, his best short stories have a distinct focus: the disastrous and tragic civil war that raged in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, costing over a million people their lives. Much ink has flowed due to this conflict, which followed the secession of Biafra from the newly independent republic, and it inspired a number of West African writers to come to terms with the nation's fight, not just from the standpoint that it was a human tragedy but also because it was a war in which sides had to be taken.

One response is Achebe's short story "Civil Peace," set in the first days of the uneasy peace settlement of 1970. Its title is deeply ironic. At first reading it signifies a state of normality, but "civil" is normally applied to war: as the main protagonists discover, for all the hopeful signs, the conflict is not yet over for them. On that level it is a classic rendering of the old saying that a bad peace is worse than war itself.

The mood is set in the opening paragraph when Jonathan Iwegbu, the central character, gladly associates himself with the greeting that has gained a sudden currency in the first days of peace: "Happy survival!" In fact Jonathan has good reason to be pleased. His wife and three out of their four children have managed to weather the fighting and have come through the experience unscathed. So too has his beloved bicycle, which at one point had almost been commandeered by a bogus army officer.

A bigger miracle awaits them when they return to their home base in the mining town of Enugu to find their small house still standing. Soon the family is back in its stride and flourishing. The children are sent to pick mangoes and sell them to soldiers' wives, his wife cooks meals for the villagers, and Jonathan opens a small bar selling palm-wine. Their good fortune is in stark contrast to the fate of Jonathan's fellow coalminers, who have been made destitute by the war and who face a troubled future. To cap it all he is able to change his Biafran money back into 20 pounds of treasury currency—a considerable sum he is careful to hide in the safety of his house.

Throughout these short opening scenes Achebe invokes the Iwegbu family's good fortune and their ensuing domesticity in language that is redolent of the scriptures. (The house is a "blessing"; his "overjoyed" family carry five heads on their shoulders.) This is reinforced by Jonathan's constant exclamations that "nothing puzzles God," and by the comparisons between their happy lot and the misfortunes that have engulfed the rest of the country. At this point, with Jonathan closing his fist over the notes—nicknamed "egg rashers" because no one can pronounce their official name—Achebe makes it clear that for the Iwegbu family at least, the war is over.

Significantly the change of mood is presaged by the onset of night, when the friendly neighborhood noises die down one after another to leave the world in darkness. The stillness is interrupted by a thunderous knocking on Jonathan's door: thieves have come to rob the Iwegbu family. They are powerless to save themselves. Passionate pleas to their neighbors go unanswered—Achebe does not make clear the reasons for their refusal but they do not intervene—and the "tief-men" demand that Jonathan hand over his money. This order they back up with a short burst of automatic fire.

Frightful though the scene undoubtedly is, the real horror lies in the thieves' apparently reasonable statements that they mean no harm because the war is over and that they are acting under the constraints of "civil peace." Having survived the war Jonathan stands in great danger of losing everything once more. The tension is increased further by Achebe's device of keeping the thieves unseen: only their menacing voices are heard by the hapless Iwegbus.

Inevitably Jonathan is forced to hand over the money to the raiders. He is left with nothing, a poor reward for having survived the war. In the light of day his neighbors arrive to commiserate with the family, but Jonathan puts a brave face on his misfortune. What are the "egg rashers," he asks, compared to the fact that he and his family are safe and well? Like everything else he has experienced, the loss of the money seems to be part of a larger plan.

Although Achebe's message is bleak—that the war has transformed Nigeria utterly and that nothing can be the same again—there is a strong sense of hope in the creation of Jonathan Iwegbu. Like other great survivors of warfare—Hasek's Schweik comes to mind—Jonathan gets by because he refuses to take life too seriously.

All around him his country is in ruins and he himself has been robbed, but these disasters count for nothing provided that life goes on as before. With optimism like Jonathan's, Achebe seems to be saying nothing is so terrible that humans cannot overcome it.

—Trevor Royle