A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (10 page)

“None of this is anyone’s fault,” Gasemu said slowly. His words made me angry, and I wanted to rush him again. But we heard loud voices of people approaching the village. We ran into the nearby coffee farm and lay in the dirt watching the village.

A group of more than ten rebels walked into the village. They were laughing and giving each other high fives. Two looked slightly older than me. They had blood on their clothes, and one of them carried the head of a man, which he held by the hair. The head looked as if it was still feeling its hair being pulled. Blood dripped from where the neck had once been. The other rebel carried a gallon of gasoline and a big box of matches. The rebels sat on the ground and started playing cards, smoking marijuana, and boasting about what they had done that day.

“We burned about three villages today.” One skinny guy, who was perhaps enjoying himself more than everyone else, laughed.

Another rebel, the only one dressed in full army gear, agreed with him. “Yes, three is impressive, in just a few hours in the afternoon.” He paused, playing with the side of his G3 weapon. “I especially enjoyed burning this village. We caught everyone here. No one escaped. That is how good it was. We carried out the command and executed everyone. Commander will be pleased when he gets here.” He nodded, looking at the rest of the rebels, who had stopped the game to listen to him. They all agreed with him, nodding their heads. They gave each other high fives and resumed their game.

“Some people escaped in the other two villages,” the other rebel who was standing up said. He paused, rubbing his forehead, as if pondering why that had happened, and then continued: “They probably saw the smoke from this village and knew something was happening. We should change our strategy. Next time we must attack all the villages at the same time.” The others didn’t pay him as much attention as they did when the rebel dressed in the army suit spoke. The rebels went on with their card games, chatting for hours, and then for no apparent reason they shot a couple of rounds into the air. Someone in my group moved and the dried coffee leaves made some noise. The rebels stopped playing their game and ran in different directions to take cover. Two started walking toward us, aiming their guns. They walked fast and then crouched. As if planned, we all got up and started running. Bullets followed us out of the coffee farm and into the forest. Gasemu was in front and he knew where he was going. We all followed him.

When we reached the forest’s edge, Gasemu stopped and waited for us to catch up. “Follow the path straight,” he told us. When I reached him he tried to smile at me. I do not know why, but it made me angrier. I ran past him and followed the narrow path on which grass had grown. I was behind Alhaji, who parted the bushes like a diver heading to the surface for air. Some of the bushes slapped me, but I didn’t stop. The gunshots grew louder behind us. We ran for hours, deeper into the forest. The path had ended, but we kept running until the sky swallowed the sun and gave birth to the moon. The bullets continued to fly behind us, but now their redness could be seen as they pierced through the bushes. The moon disappeared and took the stars with it, making the sky weep. Its tears saved us from the red bullets.

We spent the night breathing heavily under bushes soaked with rain. The hunters had given up. Gasemu began to cry like a child. It always made me afraid when such things happened. In my younger years I had learned that grown men cry only when they have no other choice. Gasemu rolled on the ground in pain. When we finally summoned the courage to pick him up, we found out why he was crying. He had been shot sometime as we ran away the previous night. His right leg was bleeding and had begun to swell. He was holding his side and didn’t want to remove his hand. Alhaji lifted Gasemu’s hand; his side was bleeding as well. It was as if his hand had been holding his blood from flowing. It rushed out of him like water breaking banks. He began to sweat. Alhaji asked me to contain the blood by placing my hand on Gasemu’s side. I did, but his blood continued to slip through my fingers. He looked at me, his eyes sadly beginning to sink deeper into their sockets. He managed to raise his weak right hand to hold the wrist of my hand that was on his side. He had stopped sobbing, even though tears still ran down his eyes, but not as much as the blood that he was losing. Musa couldn’t bear the sight of blood any longer. He fainted. Alhaji and I took Gasemu’s shirt off and tied it around his side to contain his blood. The rest of our companions watched with tense faces. Musa woke up and joined them.

In between Gasemu’s gasps, he told us that there was a
wahlee
^*
nearby and that if we went back toward the farm, he would show us how to rejoin the path and get to it. We had taken the wrong turn during the night. Gasemu put his arms around my shoulder and Alhaji’s. We lifted him up and began walking slowly through the bushes. We set him down every few minutes and wiped his sweaty forehead.

It was past midday when Gasemu began heaving, his entire body shaking. He asked us to set him down. He held his stomach and began to roll in pain from one side to the other. His heaving increased, and he stopped rolling. He lay flat on his back, staring at the sky. His eyes were fixed on something and his legs vibrated and stopped, his hands did the same, and then finally his fingers, but his eyes remained open, transfixed on the top of the forest.

“Let’s pick him up.” Alhaji’s voice was shaking. I put Gasemu’s arm around my neck. Alhaji did the same, and we walked with him, his feet dragging on the ground. His arms were cold. His body was still sweating and he continued bleeding. We didn’t say a word to each other. We all knew what had happened.

When we finally got to the
wahlee
, Gasemu’s eyes were still open. Alhaji closed them. I sat by him. His blood was on my palm and my wrist. I regretted hitting him with the pestle. The dry blood was still in his nose. I began to cry softly. I couldn’t cry as much as I wanted to. The sun was getting ready to leave the sky. It had come out to take Gasemu with it. I just sat by him, unable to think. My face began to harden. When the breeze blew against it, I felt how my flesh resisted enjoying the cool wind. All through the night no sleep came to me. My eyes watered and dried over and over again. I did not know what to say. For a few minutes I tried to imagine what it felt like for Gasemu when his fingers vibrated to let the last air out of his body.

12

W
E MUST HAVE BEEN
walking for days, I do not really remember, when suddenly two men put us at gunpoint and motioned, with their guns, for us to come closer. We walked in between two rows of men carrying machine guns, AK-47s, G3s, and RPGs. Their faces were dark, as if they had bathed them in charcoal, and they stared intensely at us with their extremely red eyes. When we got to the back of the line, there were four men lying on the ground, their uniforms soaked with blood. One of them lay on his stomach, and his eyes were wide open and still; his insides were spilling onto the ground. I turned away, and my eyes caught the smashed head of another man. Something inside his brain was still pulsating and he was breathing. I felt nauseated. Everything began to spin around me. One of the soldiers was looking at me, chewing something and smiling. He took a drink from his water bottle and threw the remaining water at my face.

“You will get used to it, everybody does eventually,” he said.

Gunshots erupted nearby, and the soldiers began to move, taking the six of us with them. We came upon a river where the soldiers’ aluminum boats, with motors, gently floated. We saw bodies of eleven- and thirteen-year-old boys in army shorts piled by the river. We turned our faces away. The gunshots were getting louder. As we climbed into the boats, an RPG flew from the bushes, exploding on the shore. The top of the river was boiling. A man in army trousers came running down the path toward the boats, shooting at the soldiers. One of the men in my boat opened fire, dropping the man on the ground. The boats headed downstream, and we were let off near a tributary. A soldier led us to Yele, a village that was occupied by the military. It was a big village with more than ten houses. The soldiers occupied most of them. They had cut down the bush around the village except for the entrance from the river through which we arrived. This way, the soldiers explained to us, it would be difficult for the enemy to attack.

In the beginning, it seemed we had finally found safety at Yele. The village was always full of lively chattering and laughter. The adults, civilians and soldiers, spoke about the weather, planting seasons, hunting, and nothing about the war. At first we couldn’t understand why people behaved this way. But gradually the smiles on people’s faces assured us that there was nothing to worry about anymore. All that darkened the mood of the village was the sight of orphaned children. There were over thirty boys between the ages of seven and sixteen. I was one of them. Apart from this, there were no indications that our childhood was threatened, much less that we would be robbed of it.

We stayed in a big unfinished cement-brick house along with other boys. A large green tarp served as its roof, and we slept on the cement floor on tiny blankets that two people shared. The soldiers set up their garrison in another unfinished brick house, and there they socialized separate from the civilians. In the evenings they watched movies, played music, laughed, and smoked marijuana. The smell of it covered the entire village. During the day they mingled with the civilians, and we helped in the kitchen. Kanei and I fetched water and washed dishes. The rest of our friends helped by chopping eggplants, onions, meat, and the like in the kitchen. I liked busying myself with work all day, going back and forth to the river and continuously washing dishes. It was the only way I could distract myself from the thoughts that were giving me severe headaches. But by midday all the daily chores were done; the evening meal was prepared and only awaited consumption. Everyone sat on the verandahs of the houses facing the village square. Parents picked their children’s hair, girls played singing and clapping games, and some of the young soldiers played soccer with the boys. Their jubilation and clapping could be heard far down the river. Life was not lived in fear during the day in this village.

The soccer games reminded me of the league matches I used to play in when my family first moved to the mining town of Mogbwemo. In particular, I remembered a final match that my team, which consisted of Junior and some friends, won. Both my parents were at the game, and at the end, my mother applauded and smiled widely, her face glowing with pride. My father walked up to me and rubbed my head before he held my right hand and raised it up, as he declared me his champion. He did the same to Junior. My mother brought us a cup of water, and as we drank she fanned us with her head cloth. The excitement caused my heart to pound faster and I was sweating profusely. I could taste the salty sweat that ran from my forehead to my lips. Standing there with my family, I felt light, as if I were getting ready to fly. I wanted to hold the moment longer, not only to celebrate our victory, but because the smile on my parents’ faces that evening made me so happy that I felt every nerve in my body had awoken and swayed to the gentlest wind that sailed within me.

I distanced myself from games in the village and sat behind houses, staring into the open space until my migraines temporarily subsided. I didn’t tell anyone what was happening to me. My symptoms weren’t mentioned in the morning when the “sergeant doctor”—as the civilians called him—lined up children and families for treatment. The sergeant doctor called for fever, cold, and many other illnesses, but he never asked if anyone was having nightmares or migraines.

At night, Alhaji, Jumah, Moriba, and Kanei played marbles on the cement floor under the moonlight that made its way through the open windowpanes. Musa had grown popular among the boys and would always end the night with a different story. I quietly sat in the corner of the room clenching my teeth, as I didn’t want to show my friends the pain I felt from my headache. In my mind’s eye I would see sparks of flame, flashes of scenes I had witnessed, and the agonizing voices of children and women would come alive in my head. I cried quietly as my head beat like the clapper of a bell. Sometimes after the migraine had stopped, I was able to fall asleep briefly, only to be awoken by nightmares. One night I dreamt that I was shot in the head. I was lying in my blood as people hurriedly walked past me. A dog came by and began licking my blood ferociously. The dog bared its teeth as my blood sweetened its mouth. I wanted to scare it away, but I was unable to move. I woke up before it started what I was afraid it was going to do to me. I was sweating and couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

One morning the atmosphere in the village suddenly became tense. It wasn’t clear what had caused the change, but something was about to happen. All the soldiers assembled at the village square, dressed in their uniforms, carrying their weapons and ammunition in backpacks and waist belts. Their bayonets hung by the sides of their army trousers as they stood still, with their helmets underneath their arms. “Attention.” “At ease.” “Attention.” “At ease.” I heard the voice of the drill instructor as I walked to the river with Alhaji to fetch water. When we returned, the drill instructor had stopped warming up the soldiers. Instead, Lieutenant Jabati stood in front of his men, his hands crossed behind his back. He addressed them for hours before they were released for lunch. While the lieutenant was talking to his men, we quietly went about our daily chores and at the same time tried to eavesdrop on what he was saying, but in order to hear him, we would have had to get closer and join the line of soldiers, which was out of the question. We walked about all day quietly speculating about what the lieutenant could have told his men.

In the evening the soldiers cleaned their guns, sometimes firing a couple of rounds into the air. These random gunshots sent the younger children diving between the legs of their parents. The soldiers smoked cigarettes and marijuana; some sat alone, while others gambled and joked with one another into the night. Some watched a movie under one of their big tents.

Lieutenant Jabati sat on the verandah of his house and read a book. He would not look up, not even when his men whistled loudly at the size and sophistication of a gun in the war movie they were watching. He looked up only when it was quiet. He caught me looking at him and called me to sit with him. He was a tall man, with barely any hair. His eyes were big and they complemented his full cheekbones, which looked as if he had something in his mouth. He was a quiet individual, but his quietness had a forceful authority that all his men feared and respected. His face was so dark that it took courage to have any eye contact with him.

“Are you getting enough to eat here?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, as I tried to look at what he was reading.

“It is Shakespeare.” He showed me the cover. “
Julius Caesar.
Have you heard of it?”

“I read
Julius Caesar
in school,” I told him.

“Do you remember any of it?” he asked.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths…” I began, and he recited the whole speech with me. As soon as we were done, his face resumed its sternness. He ignored me and seemed to delve into his book. I watched as the veins on his forehead became transparent through his flesh and disappeared as he absorbed the contents of the book or thought about whatever else was on his mind. I tiptoed away from him as the sky exchanged sunlight for darkness.

When I was seven, I used to go to the town square to recite monologues from the works of Shakespeare for the adults of my community. At the end of every week, the male adults would gather to discuss matters of the community. They sat on long wooden benches, and at the end of their discussions I would be called upon to recite Shakespeare. My father would cough loudly to alert the other adults to be silent so that I could start. He sat in the front, with his arms crossed and a big smile on his face that looked as if it would take years to fade away. I stood on a bench and held on to a long stick as my sword. I would then start with
Julius Caesar.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” I always recited speeches from
Macbeth
and
Julius Caesar
, as those were the adults’ favorites. I was always eager and excited to read for them, because it made me feel that I was really good at speaking the English language.

I was awake when the soldiers left in the middle of the night, the echo of their marching leaving an eerie air about the village that continued until dawn and through the rest of the day. There were ten soldiers left behind to protect the village, and they stood at their posts all day. Just when the evening was waving its fingers, signaling night to approach, the soldiers issued a curfew by shooting a few rounds into the air and ordering everyone to “get inside and stay low to the ground.” That night Musa told no stories and Moriba didn’t play marbles with the other boys. We quietly sat against the wall listening to the rapid bursts of gunfire in the distance. Just before the last hours of night, the moon sailed through the clouds, showing its face through the open window of the building before it was driven away by a cockcrow.

That morning didn’t come just with sunrise; it brought with it soldiers, the few who were able to make it back to the village. Their well-polished boots were drenched in dirt and they sat away from each other, clinging tightly to their guns, as if those were the only things that comforted them. One soldier, who sat on a cement brick underneath the kitchen, bowed his head in his hands and rocked his body. He got up and walked around the village and returned to sit on the brick again. He did this over and over throughout the day. Lieutenant Jabati was on the radio, and at some point he threw it against the wall and walked into his room. We civilians didn’t speak among ourselves during that day. We only watched the madness unfold in some of the soldiers.

At midday a group of over twenty soldiers arrived in the village. The lieutenant was surprised and delighted when he saw them, but he quickly hid his emotions. The soldiers prepared themselves and left for war. There was nothing to hide anymore; we knew the war was near. Soon after the soldiers left, we began hearing gunshots closer to the village. The soldiers who guarded the village ordered everyone inside. The gunfight went on into the evening, interrupting the songs of birds and the chants of crickets. At night soldiers came running to the village for ammunition and a quick respite. Wounded soldiers were brought back only to die by lamplit surgery. The soldiers never brought back their dead colleagues. Prisoners were lined up and shot in the head.

These things went on for many days, and each time the soldiers went to the front lines, few returned. Those left behind became restless and started shooting civilians who were on their way to latrines at night. The lieutenant asked his men to gather everyone at the square.

“In the forest there are men waiting to destroy all of our lives. We have fought them as best as we can, but there are too many of them. They are all around the village.” The lieutenant made a circle in the air with his hands. “They won’t give up until they capture this village. They want our food and ammunition.” He paused, and slowly continued: “Some of you are here because they have killed your parents or families, others because this is a safe place to be. Well, it is not that safe anymore. That is why we need strong men and boys to help us fight these guys, so that we can keep this village safe. If you do not want to fight or help, that is fine. But you will not have rations and will not stay in this village. You are free to leave, because we only want people here who can help cook, prepare ammunition, and fight. There are enough women to run the kitchen, so we need the help of able boys and men to fight these rebels. This is your time to revenge the deaths of your families and to make sure more children do not lose their families.” He took a deep breath. “Tomorrow morning you must all line up here, and we will select people for various tasks that have to be carried out.” He left the square, followed by his men.

We stood in silence for a while and slowly started walking to our respective sleeping places, as the curfew was approaching. Inside, Jumah, Alhaji, Kanei, Moriba, Musa, and I quietly discussed what we were going to do.

“The rebels will kill anyone from this village because they will consider us their enemy, spies, or that we have sided with the other side of the war. That is what the staff sergeant said,” Alhaji said, explaining the dilemma we faced. The rest of the boys, who were lying on their mats, got up and joined us as Alhaji continued: “It is better to stay here for now.” He sighed. We had no choice. Leaving the village was as good as being dead.