A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (9 page)

It was past midday when we arrived at a crowded village. We were shocked by how noisy it was in the middle of the war. It was the biggest village we had been to so far. It sounded like a marketplace. People were playing music and dancing, children were running around, and there was that familiar good smell of cooked cassava leaf in rich palm oil.

As we walked through the village trying to find a place to sit away from the crowd, we saw some familiar faces. People hesitantly waved to us. We found a log under a mango tree and sat down. A woman whose face wasn’t among the familiar ones came and sat facing us.

“You.” She pointed at me. “I know you,” she said.

I did not know her face, but she insisted that she knew my family and me. She told me that Junior had come to the village a few weeks earlier looking for me and that she had also seen my mother, father, and little brother in the next village, which was about two days’ walk. She told us the direction and ended by saying, “In that village there are lots of people from Mattru Jong and the Sierra Rutile mining area. All of you might be able to find your families or news about them.”

She got up and began dancing to the
soukous
music that was playing as she left us. We all began laughing. I wanted to leave right away, but we decided to spend the night in the village. Also, we wanted Saidu to rest, even though he kept telling us that he was fine. I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.

We went to the river for a swim, and there we played hide-and-seek swimming games, running along the river’s edge screaming “
Cocoo
” to commence the game. Everyone was smiling.

That night we stole a pot of rice and cassava leaves. We ate it under coffee trees at the edge of the village, washed the pots, and returned them. We had no place to sleep, so we chose a verandah on one of the houses after everyone had gone inside.

I didn’t sleep that night. My hands began shaking as soon as my friends started snoring. I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. The dogs began to cry and ran from one end of the village to the other.

Alhaji woke up and sat by me. “The dogs woke me up,” he said.

“I couldn’t sleep to begin with,” I replied.

“Maybe you are just anxious about seeing your family.” He chuckled. “I am, too.”

Alhaji stood up. “Don’t you think it is strange, the way the dogs are crying?”

One dog had come near the verandah on which we sat and was vigorously crying. A few more dogs joined in. Their crying pierced my heart.

“Yes. They sound very human,” I said.

“That is the same thing I was thinking.” Alhaji yawned. “I think dogs see things we do not see. Something must be wrong.” He sat down.

We became quiet, just staring into the night. The dogs cried all night long, one continuing till the sky was completely clear. Babies then began to take up the cry. People started getting up, so we had to vacate the verandah. Alhaji and I began waking our friends. When he shook Saidu, Saidu was still.

“Get up, we have to go now.” He shook Saidu harder as we heard the people on whose verandah we had slept getting ready to come outside.

“Saidu, Saidu,” Kanei coaxed him. “Maybe he fainted again,” he said.

A man came out and greeted us. He carried a small bucket of water. He had a smile on his face that told us he had known all along that we were on the verandah.

“This will do it.” The man sprinkled some of the cold water from his bucket on Saidu.

But Saidu didn’t move. He just lay on his stomach, his face buried in the dust. His palms were turned upside down and they were pale. The man turned him around and checked his pulse. Saidu’s forehead was sweaty and wrinkled. His mouth was slightly opened and there was a path of dried tears at the corners of his eyes down to his cheeks.

“Do you boys know anyone in this village?” the man asked.

We all said no, shaking our heads. He exhaled heavily, put his bucket down, and placed both his hands on his head.

“Who is the oldest?” he asked, looking at Alhaji.

Kanei raised his hand. They stepped outside the verandah and the man whispered something in his ear. Kanei began to cry on the man’s shoulder. It was then that we admitted that Saidu had left us. Everyone else was crying, but I couldn’t cry. I felt dizzy and my eyes watered. My hands began shaking again. I felt the warmth inside my stomach, and my heart was beating slowly, but at a heavy rate. The man and Kanei walked away, and when they returned, they brought with them two men, who carried a wooden stretcher. They placed Saidu on it and asked us to follow them.

Saidu’s body was washed and prepared for burial that same day. He was wrapped in white linen and placed in a wooden coffin that was set on a table in the living room of the man whose verandah we had slept on.

“Are any of you his family?” a tall, slender, muscular man asked. He was in charge of the burial ceremonies in the village. We all shook our heads no. I felt as if we were denying Saidu, our friend, our traveling companion. He had become our family, but the man wanted a real family member who could authorize his burial.

“Does any one of you know his family?” The man looked at us.

“I do.” Kanei raised his hand.

The man called him over to where he stood on the other side of the coffin. They began talking. I tried to figure out what they were saying by reading the elaborate gestures that the man made with his right hand. His left hand was on Kanei’s shoulder. Kanei’s lips moved for a while, and then he began nodding until the conversation was over.

Kanei came back and sat with us on the stools that were provided for the funeral service, which only we attended, along with the man on whose verandah Saidu had left us. The rest of the people in the village quietly sat on their verandahs. They stood up as we walked through part of the village to the cemetery.

I was in disbelief that Saidu had actually left us. I held on to the idea that he had just fainted and would get up soon. It hit me that he wasn’t going to get up only after he was lowered into the hole, just in the shroud, and the diggers started covering him with the earth. What was left of him was only a memory. The glands in my throat began to hurt. I couldn’t breathe well, so I opened my mouth. The man who had asked earlier if any of us were Saidu’s family began to read suras. It was then that I began to weep quietly. I let my tears drip on the earth and the summer dust absorb them. The men who had carried Saidu began placing rocks around the grave to hold the mounds of earth.

After the burial, we were the only ones left in the cemetery. There were mounds of earth all over. Very few had sticks with something written on them. The rest were anonymous. Saidu had just joined them. We sat in the cemetery for hours, as if expecting something. But we were young—all of us were now thirteen, except for Kanei, who was three years older—and our emotions were in disarray. I couldn’t comprehend what or how I felt. This confusion hurt my head and made my stomach tense. We left the cemetery as night approached. It was quiet in the village. We sat outside on the log we had first sat on when we entered the village. None of us thought of going to sleep on a verandah. Kanei explained to us that Saidu had had to be buried, as the custom in the village was that the dead couldn’t be kept overnight. It was either that or we would have had to take Saidu out of the village. No one responded to Kanei. He stopped talking and the dogs began to cry again. They did all night, until we became restless.

We walked up and down the village. Most people weren’t asleep; we could hear them whispering when the dogs took breaks or went to cry on opposite ends of the village. I remembered a few weeks back when Saidu had spoken about parts of him slowly dying each passing day, as we carried on with our journey. Perhaps all of him had died that night when he spoke in that strange voice after we had survived that attack by men with machetes, axes, and spears, I thought. My hands and feet began to shake, and they continued to do so throughout the night. I was worried and kept calling out my friends’ names, so that they wouldn’t fall asleep. I was afraid if any did, he was going to leave us. Early in the morning, Kanei told us that we were going to leave after sunrise and head for the next village. “I can’t stand another night listening to these dogs. They terrify me,” he said.

That morning we thanked the men who had helped bury Saidu. “You will always know where he is laid,” one of the men said. I nodded in agreement, but I knew that the chances of coming back to the village were slim, as we had no control over our future. We knew only how to survive.

As we left the village, everyone lined up to watch us go. I was scared, as this reminded me of when we had walked through the village with Saidu’s body. We went by the cemetery, which was at the edge of town, by the path that led to where we hoped to reunite with our families. The sun penetrated the graveyard, and as we stood there, a slight breeze blew, causing the trees surrounding the mounds of earth to sway gracefully. I felt a chill at the back of my neck, as if someone were softly blowing on me. A strand of smoke was rising from the village, making its way to the sky. I watched it as it disappeared. We were leaving our friend, or as my grandmother would put it, “His temporary journey in this world had ended.” We, on the other hand, had to continue.

When we started to walk away, we all began to sob. The cockcrows faded, only to make us aware of our silence, the silence that asked, Who will be next to leave us? The question was in our eyes when we looked at each other. We walked fast as if trying to stay in the daytime, afraid that nightfall would turn over the uncertain pages of our lives.

11

W
E HAD BEEN WALKING
in silence through the night until we stopped to listen to the singing of morning birds shattering the silence of the day. As we sat on the side of the path, Moriba began to sob. He was sitting away from us, something he usually did with Saidu. He played with a piece of branch, trying to distract himself from what he was feeling. Everyone except me started to sob and moved next to Moriba, who was now crying loudly. I sat by myself, covering my face with the palms of my hands to hold back my tears. After a few minutes, my friends stopped crying. We continued on without saying a word to each other. We all knew that we could grieve only for a short while in order to continue staying alive.

“I look forward to getting to this village. Ah, I will give my mother a very tight hug.” Alhaji smiled and then continued. “She always complains, though, when I give her a tight hug: ‘If you love me, stop squeezing my old bones so I can be alive longer.’ She is funny.”

We giggled.

“I have a feeling that we will find our families, or at least news of them.” Kanei stretched his hands as if trying to catch the sun. He looked at Alhaji, who was smiling uncontrollably. “I heard you have a beautiful sister. I am still just your friend, right?” We all started laughing. Alhaji jumped on Kanei’s back, and they began to wrestle in the grass. When they were done, they followed us on the path, singing one of S. E. Rogie’s songs, “
Nor look me bad eye, nor weigh me lek dat…
” We joined in and sang as if we were having one of life’s most glorious moments. But slowly silence returned and took over.

One side of the sky was completely blue and the other was filled with stagnant clouds. The quiet breeze caused a branch to snap in the forest. The echo sounded like a cry, a wailing. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it, because my friends stopped briefly and listened attentively. The breeze picked up its pace. The leaves of the trees began to rub against each other, resisting the wind. More branches snapped in the forest and the wailing intensified. The trees looked as if they were in pain. They swayed in all directions and slapped each other with their branches. The clouds rolled over the blue sky and it became dark. A heavy rain followed, with thunder and lightning that lasted for less than fifteen minutes. Afterward, the sky returned to its bluest. I walked, perplexed, in my soaked clothes under the sun. At nighttime it began to rain again. The strands of rain fell brutally from the sky, whipping us. We walked for most of the night, wiping the water off our faces in order to see. It became unbearable to continue, so we sat at the foot of huge trees and waited. Whenever the lightning lit the forest, I could see where everyone was sitting. We all had our faces resting on our knees and our arms were crossed.

The last hours of the night were long. By the time the rain stopped, it was light. We were all shivering, our fingertips pale and wrinkled.

“We look like soaked chickens,” Musa said, laughing, as we emerged from under the trees. We found an opening where the sun had begun penetrating, and we squeezed and spread our shirts on the tops of the bushes and sat in the sun to dry ourselves.

It was almost midday when we put on our damp clothes and continued walking. A few hours later we heard a cockcrow in the distance. Musa jumped in the air and we all began to laugh.

Finally, we were approaching the village where seeing our families was actually a possibility. I couldn’t stop smiling. Coffee trees began to replace forest, and footprints appeared on the path. We heard rice being pounded and whispers in the breeze. We quickened our pace as these sounds assured us that life was ahead. On the opposite side of the coffee farm was a small banana farm, and there we came across a man cutting down hands of ripe bananas. We couldn’t see his face, as his head was behind the leaves.

“Good afternoon,” Kanei said.

The man peeped at us from behind a banana leaf. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and walked toward us. As he approached, slowly making his way through the noisy dried banana leaves, the sight of his face awakened my memory.

His face was a little wrinkled now and he was much skinnier than when I had last seen him. His name was Gasemu, Ngor
^*
Gasemu. He used to be one of the notorious single men in my town. Back then, everyone talked about him not being married. The older people always remarked, “He is old enough and responsible enough to find himself a good wife, but he likes to be alone, he likes that loose life.” He never said anything back then and didn’t get upset by what they said. He cooked his own food, and when he was too tired to cook, he ate
gari
^*
with honey. There was a period of time when he ate
gari
with honey for over a week. My mother decided to dish him out a plate every evening. “That food is unhealthy for you,” she had said to him, and he smiled, rubbing his head.

When Gasemu was by the path, he stopped and examined our faces. He smiled, and that was when I became sure that he was the Ngor Gasemu I knew, because he was missing a front tooth.

“You boys want to help me carry some bananas to the village?” he asked in that manner that adults usually ask young people, so that we knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Come on, boys.” He motioned for us to follow him into the banana farm. All of us started walking past him as he continued waving his hand as if he was pulling us with an invisible rope. When I approached him, he put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed my head.

“Are you still a troublesome boy?” He pulled on my nose.

“There is no time to be troublesome these days,” I said.

“I see that you look very sad. Your forehead used to glow naturally when you were just a child. Your parents and I used to discuss how unusual that was. We thought it was because you were happy all the time. Your mother said you even smiled while you slept. But when you started your troublesomeness and were angry, your forehead glowed even more. We didn’t have any other explanations for your forehead and how it related to your character. And here you are, it isn’t shining anymore.” He paused for a moment, looking at me.

He walked away and began instructing my traveling companions how to pick up a hand of bananas and carry it on their shoulders instead of their heads. “This way you won’t break them in half,” he explained.

I picked up some of the bananas and waited for Gasemu to gather his water jug, machete, and the last bunch. “So how did you get…” I started, but he interrupted.

“Your parents and brothers will be happy to see you. They have been talking about you every day and praying for your safety. Your mother cries every day, begging the gods and ancestors to return you to her. Your older brother left to look for you, but he returned about a week ago. His face was sad when he returned. I think he blames himself for losing you.”

I dropped the hand as he started giving me this news. He continued walking, so I quickly picked up the bananas and followed him. “They will indeed be surprised to see you.”

He walked slowly in front of me. I was breathing fast and couldn’t bring out a word. I wanted to drop the hand and run as fast as I could to the village. My eyelids were twitching, and I felt as if the breeze was passing through my brain. It made me feel light-headed. Excitement and sadness made me feel as if my heart would explode if I waited any longer, but on such a narrow path I couldn’t walk past all those in front of me.

After a few minutes we came to a river and I was happy, because at the edge of most villages there was a river, so I thought we should be there any minute now. But we weren’t yet.

“The village is just over the hill,” Gasemu said. It was a long hill, with rocks on either side of the path and some unmovable ones the road makers had left in the middle. The path zigzagged up to the top, where, when we finally made it, everyone had to rest for a few minutes. I became angry that we had to rest, and I sat on a big rock away from the group. My eyes followed the brown dusty path that continued down the hill to the thick forest, through which I caught a glimpse of the thatched and tin roofs of the village. Part of me was on the way to the village, the other impatiently waited on the hill. Gasemu passed around his jug of water, which I refused. When it got back to him, we picked up the banana hands and started down the hill. I started before everyone else, so that I could walk fast and be in front.

As I was going down the hill, I heard gunshots. And dogs barking. And people screaming and crying. We dropped the bananas and began running in order to avoid the open hillside. A thick smoke started rising from the village. At the top of it, sparks of flames leapt into the air.

We hid in the nearby bushes and listened to gunshots and the screams of men, women, and children. The children wailed, men screamed at high pitches that pierced through the forest and covered the shrieks of women. The gunshots finally ceased, and the world was very quiet, as if listening. I told Gasemu that I wanted to go to the village. He held me back, but I shoved him into the bushes and ran down the path as fast as I could. I didn’t feel my legs. When I got to the village, it was completely on fire and bullet shells covered the ground like mango leaves in the morning. I did not know where to begin looking for my family. Gasemu and my friends had followed me, and we all stood looking at the flaming village. I was sweating because of the heat, but I wasn’t afraid to run in between the houses. Nails were popping off tin roofs, and they flew, landing on nearby thatched roofs, increasing the wrath of the fire. As we were watching a flaming tin roof in flight, we heard screams and loud banging a few houses away. We ran behind the houses at the edge of the coffee trees and came upon the house where the cries were coming from. There were people locked in it. The fire was already too much inside. It showed its face through the windows and the roof. We picked up a mortar and banged the door open, but it was too late. Only two people came out, a woman and a young child. They were on fire, and ran up and down the village, slamming themselves against everything in their way and going back in the other direction to do the same. The woman fell and stopped moving. The child gave a loud screech and sat next to a tree. He stopped moving. It all happened so fast that we just stood there, rooted to the ground. The child’s yelp was still echoing in my head, as if it had taken on a life of its own inside me.

Gasemu had wandered away from where I stood. He began screaming from another side of the village. We ran to where he was. More than twenty people lay facedown in the earth. They were all lined up, and blood still poured out of their bullet wounds. A stream of it had begun running along the ground, making its way under each body, as if joining them together. Gasemu’s sobs grew louder as he turned each body over. Some of their mouths and eyes were open in shapes that showed how much they had cringed as they waited for the bullets from behind. Some had inhaled dirt, perhaps while taking their last breath. The bodies were mostly men in their late and early twenties. A few were younger.

On other paths of the village were the half-burnt remains of those who had fought fiercely to free themselves, only to die outside. They lay on the ground in different postures of pain, some reaching for their heads, the white bones in their jaws visible, others curled up like a child in a womb, frozen.

The fire had begun to die down, and I was running around the village looking for something, something I did not want to see. I hesitantly tried to make out the faces of burnt bodies, but it was impossible to tell who they had been. Besides, there were too many of them.

“They stayed in that house,” Gasemu said to me as he pointed toward one of the charred houses. The fire had consumed all the door and window frames, and the mud that had been pushed in between the sticks was falling off, revealing the ropes through which the remaining fire was making its way.

My entire body went into shock. Only my eyes moved, slowly opening and closing. I tried to shake my legs to get my blood flowing, but I fell to the ground, holding my face. On the ground I felt as if my eyes were growing too big for their sockets. I could feel them expanding, and the pain released my body from the shock. I ran toward the house. Without any fear I went inside and looked around the smoke-filled rooms. The floors were filled with heaps of ashes; no solid form of a body was inside. I screamed at the top of my lungs and began to cry as loudly as I could, punching and kicking with all my might into the weak walls that continued to burn. I had lost my sense of touch. My hands and feet punched and kicked the burning walls, but I couldn’t feel a thing. Gasemu and the rest of the other boys began pulling me away from the house. I kept kicking and punching as they dragged me out.

“I have looked around for them, but I can’t see them anywhere,” Gasemu said. I was sitting on the ground with my legs spread in the dirt, holding my head in my hands. I was filled up with anger. I hissed and boiled, and my heart felt as if it was going to explode. At the same time, I felt as if something had literally been placed on my head, heavier than I could ever imagine, and my neck was beginning to ache.

If we hadn’t stopped to rest on that hill, if we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family, I thought. My head was burning as if on fire. I put my hands on both ears and squeezed them in vain. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I got up, walked behind Gasemu, and locked his neck under my arms. I squeezed him as hard as I could. “I can’t breathe,” he said, fighting back. He pushed me off, and I fell next to a pestle. I picked it up and hit Gasemu with it. He fell, and when he got up, his nose was bleeding. My friends held me back. Gasemu looked at me and said sadly, “I didn’t know this was going to happen.” He walked toward a mango tree and sat by it, wiping the blood falling from his nose.

My friends had pinned me to the ground and were vehemently arguing. Some said it was Gasemu’s fault that we didn’t get to see our parents. Others said it wasn’t, and that if it hadn’t been for him, we would all be dead. I didn’t care. I wanted to see my family, even if it meant dying with them. My friends started fighting among themselves, kicking, punching, throwing each other to the ground. Alhaji pushed Jumah into one of the houses and his pants caught on fire. He screamed as he rolled in the dirt, slapping the fire off. When Jumah got up, he picked up a stone and threw it at Alhaji. It hit Alhaji on the back of his head. Blood ran down his neck. When Alhaji saw his blood, he became furious and ran toward Jumah, but Gasemu intervened. He pulled Alhaji away and tied his bleeding head with a piece of cloth. We were all quiet and angry in the ruins of the village, where it seemed our journey had ended.