Prologue
Stories of wars and children are as old as time and have been told in every form and in every culture. They have even been romantized. However when these stories are told by a master story teller like Chris Dahi it takes a totally different tone and develops a life of its own.
Chris being a war child himself with his experiences in the terrible three year Biafra war is able to inject that tangible touch of reality into these stories in the Little Pieces of Trauma. This reality with that style that is essentially Dahi he has succeeded in smoothening its harshness by embracing the eight stories with sonorous poems from his book of poetry.
The issues boldly addressed in this book are unfortunately that aspect of human life that we have decided to close our eyes to, gloss over, sweep under the carpet or totally ignore. The truth of the matter however being that we can not pretend this societal anomaly does not exist.
Though Chris has succeeded in making these stories come out as fiction so as to make them acceptable to the millions of readers out there in this generation and the future who will read the Little Pieces of Trauma, it still remains that if the world does not use instruments and tools such as this work to address the plight of war and street children, they will live with us and one day we will be forced to address this problem with red faces and with broken hearts.
When I read books of fiction, I treat them just as that; wonderful stories and that is all, but the Little Pieces of Trauma is a fiction you just can not treat as that. This book leaves your mouth dry as you know it is reality in fiction. Though Dahi has succeeded in cutting out the likely gory and lurid details and created literary names of people and places in this work yet the power of it still captivates and grips your heart as you are transported into the heat of it and share the pains, sorrows and terrors with these children.
I must say that Dahi has really out done himself this time.
