The Need for Revenge: How a Father’s Bitterness Poisoned His Legacy
The Need for Revenge
How a Father’s Bitterness Poisoned His Legacy
In the village of Okee, where drums echoed through mango trees and the scent of roasted yam hung in the air, lived a man named Ilua. His smile could calm arguments; his carved walking sticks were prized from one end of the market to the other. He told stories, laughed often, and gave freely.
But beneath the warmth was something colder—something that remembered every insult, every imagined slight. Ilua didn’t forget. And he didn’t forgive.
His wife, Asil, a gifted potter with quiet eyes, had once mistaken his grudge-bearing nature for strength. She married him for his charm but slowly learned to tread carefully, saying little when his bitterness surfaced.
When she asked for honey from the market, Ilua returned with nothing and a grin. “The trader mocked me,” he lied. In truth, he’d destroyed the jar just to spite the man—and to enjoy the quiet sting of disappointing her.
They had two children, Neso and Ayat, who quickly learned their father's smiles came with thorns. One evening, Neso spilled flour on the mat. Ilua made him kneel outside until the moon reached its peak. “A boy who stains must learn to scrub,” he muttered. Neso, young and afraid, learned not just obedience—but silence.
As Neso grew older, he noticed the rumors. Neighbors praised Ilua’s generosity in public, but they whispered behind doors: about a farmer’s tools that mysteriously broke, or a widow’s goats that vanished after a harmless joke. Ilua was always watching. Always remembering.
When Ayat forgot to close the goat pen and one wandered off, Ilua accused her of trying to humiliate him. He burned her sketchbook in the fire. That night, Neso stood beneath the mango tree, the only place he felt brave.
“Baba,” he asked, “why do you turn our mistakes into punishments? Why does everything feel like war?”
Ilua’s face cracked. “My uncle beat me and stole my inheritance. I cried once. He called me weak. So I stopped crying. And I started remembering. Every time someone wronged me, I made sure they felt it.”
“But we are not your enemies,” Neso said. “We are your family.”
Ilua looked away. He could not answer that.
Years passed. Neso became a father to a bright little girl named Omuj. She loved drawing, just like her aunt once did. Ilua, now gray-haired and stone-eyed, visited one afternoon.
Omuj, skipping across the courtyard, tripped and broke one of Ilua’s carved stools. Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” she whispered.
Ilua said nothing. But his silence chilled the air. It wasn’t about the stool. It was about control. About being disrespected.
That night, he placed a cup of sweetened drink near the door and went to bed humming an old tune, one nobody recognized. Omuj reached for it. But Asil—silent, watchful Asil—moved faster.
She sniffed the cup. Her hands began to shake. She poured the liquid into the soil. It sizzled. The smell of venomous herbs rose in the air—enough to stop a child’s breath. Enough to reveal the monster Ilua had become.
“He saw defiance in her accident,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “Just like he always has.”
Neso called the elders. They came without hesitation.
When Ilua heard the verdict—exile—he didn’t protest. He packed nothing. He only carved a new staff with a snake winding up its length, then vanished into the dark with no farewell.
In the years that followed, Asil placed a new pot on her shelf. On its clay surface were coiled snakes—silent, mouths closed—and above them, a rising sun.
This story reminds us that revenge is not justice—it is inheritance, passed like a curse. Break the cycle, or it breaks you.
