by Ishmael Beah
The rebels said a lot of things as we walked. Whatever they said didn’t sound friendly. I couldn’t hear their words, because all I could think about was death. I struggled to avoid fainting.
As we approached the village, two of the rebels ran ahead. Six of us and one rebel, I thought to myself. But he had a semiautomatic machine gun and a long belt of bullets wrapped around him. He made us walk in two lines of three, with our hands on our heads. He was behind us, aiming his gun at our heads, and at some point he said, “If any of you makes a move, I will kill everyone. So don’t even breathe too hard or it might be your last.” He laughed and his voice echoed in the distant forest. I prayed that my friends and brother wouldn’t make any sudden moves or even try to scratch an itch. The back of my head was getting warm, as if expecting a bullet anytime.
When we got to the village, the two rebels who had run ahead had gathered everyone who was there. There were over fifteen people, mostly young boys, some girls, and a few adults. They made us all stand in the compound of a house that was closer to the bush. It was getting dark. The rebels took out their big flashlights and placed them on top of the rice-pounding mortars, so that they could see everyone. While we stood there under gunpoint, an old man who had escaped from Mattru Jong was heard crossing a creaky wooden bridge leading to the village. While we watched, the youngest rebel walked toward the old man and waited for him at the foot of the bridge. He was placed at gunpoint as soon as he crossed over and brought in front of us. The man was probably in his sixties, but looked weak. His face was wrinkled from hunger and fear. The rebel pushed the old man to the ground, put a gun to his head, and ordered him to get up. On trembling knees the old man managed to stand. The rebels laughed at him and made us laugh with them by pointing their guns at us. I laughed loudly, but I was crying internally and my legs and hands trembled. I clenched my fists, but that made the trembling worse. All the captives stood at gunpoint watching as the rebels proceeded to interrogate the old man.
“Why did you leave Mattru Jong?” a rebel asked while examining his bayonet. He measured the length of his knife with his fingers and then held it against the old man’s neck.
“It looks like a perfect fit.” He motioned driving the bayonet through the old man’s neck.
“Now are you going to answer my question?” The veins on his forehead stood out as his fierce red eyes watched the trembling face of the old man, whose eyelids were shaking uncontrollably. Before the war a young man wouldn’t have dared to talk to anyone older in such a rude manner. We grew up in a culture that demanded good behavior from everyone, and especially from the young. Young people were required to respect their elders and everyone in the community.
“I left town to look for my family,” the old man said in a frightened voice, as he managed to catch his breath. The rebel with the semiautomatic machine gun, who had been standing against a tree smoking a cigarette, furiously walked toward the old man and pointed his gun between the old man’s legs.
“You left Mattru Jong because you don’t like us.” He put his gun on the old man’s forehead and continued. “You left because you are against our cause as freedom fighters. Right?”
The old man closed his eyes tightly and began to sob.
What cause? I thought. I used the only freedom that I had then, my thought. They couldn’t see it. While the interrogation went on, one of the rebels painted RUF on all the walls of the houses in the village. He was the sloppiest painter I have ever seen. I don’t think he even knew his alphabet. Rather, he only knew what R, U, and F looked like. When he was done painting, he walked up to the old man and placed his gun to the old man’s head.
“Do you have any last words to say?” The old man at this point was unable to speak. His lips trembled, but he couldn’t get a word out. The rebel pulled the trigger, and like lightning, I saw the spark of fire that came from the muzzle. I turned my face to the ground. My knees started trembling and my heartbeat grew faster and louder. When I looked back, the old man was circling around like a dog trying to catch a fly on its tail. He kept screaming, “My head! My brains!” The rebels laughed at him. Finally, he stopped and slowly raised his hands toward his face like a person hesitant to look in a mirror. “I can see! I can hear!” he cried out, and fainted. It turned out that the rebels hadn’t shot him but had fired at close range near his head. They were very amused at the old man’s reaction.
The rebels now faced us and announced that they were going to select some people among us to be recruited, as it was the sole reason for their patrol. They ordered everyone to line up: men, women, even children younger than I. They walked up and down the line trying to make eye contact with people. First, they chose Khalilou, and then myself, then a few others. Each person that was chosen was asked to stand in a different line facing the previous one. Junior wasn’t chosen, and I stood facing him on the other side of the crowd, on my way to becoming a rebel. I looked at him, but he avoided eye contact, putting his head down. It seemed as if our worlds were different now and our connection was breaking. Fortunately, for some reason the rebels decided to do a fresh pick. One of them said that they had chosen wrongly, since most of us who had been chosen were trembling and that meant we were sissies.
“We want strong recruits, not weak ones.” The rebel pushed us back to the other side of the crowd. Junior edged next to me. He gave me a soft poke. I looked up at him and he nodded and rubbed my head.
“Stand still for the final pick,” one of the rebels screamed. Junior stopped rubbing my head. During the second pick, Junior was chosen. The rest of us weren’t needed, so they escorted us to the river followed by the chosen ones.
Sweeping an arm in our direction, one of the rebels announced, “We are going to initiate all of you by killing these people in front of you. We have to do this to show you blood and make you strong. You’ll never see any of these people again, unless you believe in life after death.” He punched his chest with his fist and laughed.
I turned around and looked at Junior, whose eyes were red because he was trying to hold back his tears. He clenched his fists to keep his hands from trembling. I began to cry quietly and all of a sudden felt dizzy. One of the chosen boys vomited. A rebel pushed him to join us by smashing him in the face with the butt of his gun. The boy’s face was bleeding as we continued on.
“Don’t worry, guys, the next killing is on you,” another rebel commented, and laughed.
At the river they made us kneel and put our hands behind our heads. Suddenly loud gunshots not far away from the village were heard. Two of the rebels ran for cover behind the nearest trees; the other lay flat on the ground, aiming his gun toward the direction of the sound.
“Do you think they are…” The rebel on the ground was interrupted by more gunshots. The rebels began to fire back. Everyone scattered, running for their lives into the bushes. The rebels noticed what had happened and fired after us. I ran as fast as I could deep into the bush and lay flat on the ground behind a log. I could hear the gunshots coming closer, so I began to crawl farther into the bush. A bullet hit a tree directly above my head and fell on the ground next to me. I halted and held my breath. From where I lay, I saw the red bullets flying through the forest and into the night. I could hear my heart beat, and I had started breathing heavily, so I covered my nose to control it.
Some people were captured and I could hear them crying from whatever pain was being inflicted upon them. The sharp, harsh cry of a woman filled the forest, and I felt the fear in her voice piercing through my veins, causing my teeth to feel somehow sour. I crawled farther into the bush and found a place under a tree, where I lay for hours without moving. The rebels were still in the village, angrily cursing and shooting their guns. At some point they pretended to be gone, and someone who had escaped went back to the village. They captured him and I could hear them beating him. A few minutes later, gunshots were heard, followed by thick smoke that rose toward the sky. The forest was lit up by the fire that was set in the village.
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It had been almost an hour and the rebels’ gunshots had gradually faded. As I lay under the tree thinking of what to do next, I heard whispers from behind. At first I was afraid, but then I recognized the voices. It was Junior and my friends. They had somehow ended up running in the same direction. I was still a little hesitant to call them, so I waited just to be absolutely sure. “I think they are gone,” I heard Junior whisper. I was so certain at this point that my voice involuntarily left me: “Junior, Talloi, Kaloko, Gibrilla, Khalilou. Is that you?” I spoke quickly. They got quieter. “Junior, can you hear me?” I called out again. “Yes, we are here by the rotten log,” he replied. They guided me toward them. We then crawled closer to the village to get to the path. Once we found the path, we started walking back toward the village where we had spent most of our hunger days. Junior and I exchanged a look, and he gave me that smile he had held back when I was about to face death.
That night’s journey was very quiet. None of us spoke. I knew we were walking, but I couldn’t feel my feet touching the ground.
When we got to the village, we sat around the fire until dawn. Not a word was said. Everyone seemed to be in a different world or seemed to be pondering something. The following morning, we started speaking to each other as if awakened from a nightmare or a dream that had given us a different take on life and the situation we were in. We decided to leave the village the next day and go somewhere safe, somewhere far away from where we were. We had no idea where we would go or even how to get to a safe place, but we were determined to find one. During that day, we washed our clothes. We had no soap, so we just soaked them and put them out in the sun to dry while we sat naked in a nearby bush waiting for them to be ready. We had agreed to leave early in the morning of the next day.
6
BEING IN A GROUP of six boys was not to our advantage. But we needed to stay together because we had a better chance of escaping the day-to-day troubles we faced. People were terrified of boys our age. Some had heard rumors about young boys being forced by rebels to kill their families and burn their villages. These children now patrolled in special units, killing and maiming civilians. There were those who had been victims of these terrors and carried fresh scars to show for it. So whenever people saw us, we reminded them of the massacres, and that struck fear in their hearts again. Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their families and communities. Because of these things, we decided to bypass villages by walking through the nearby bushes. This way we would be safe and avoid causing chaos. This was one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you.
One day, as soon as we had left the forested area of a village we had bypassed, a group of huge, muscular men sprang from the bushes onto the path in front of us. Raising their machetes and hunting rifles, they ordered us to stop. The men were the voluntary guards of their village and had been asked by their chief to bring us back.
A large crowd had gathered in the chief’s compound for our arrival. The huge men pushed us to the ground in front of them and tied our feet with strong ropes. Then our hands were pulled behind our backs until our elbows touched, making our chests tight from the pressure. I was in tears from the pain. I tried to roll on my back, but that made it even worse.
“Are you rebels or spies?” The chief stamped his staff on the ground.
“No.” Our voices trembled.
The chief became very angry. “If you do not tell me the truth, I am going to have these men tie stones to your bodies and throw you in the river,” he roared.
We told him we were students and this was a big misunderstanding.
The crowd shouted, “Drown the rebels.”
The guards walked into the circle and started searching our pockets. One of them found a rap cassette in my pocket and handed it to the chief. He asked for it to be played.
You down with OPP (Yeah you know me)
You down with OPP (Yeah you know me)
You down with OPP (Yeah you know me)
Who’s down with OPP (Every last homie)
The chief stopped the music. He stroked his beard, thinking.
“Tell me,” he said, turning to me, “how did you get this foreign music?”
I told him that we rapped. He didn’t know what rap music was, so I did my best to explain it to him. “It is similar to telling parables, but in the white man’s language,” I concluded. I also told him that we were dancers and had a group in Mattru Jong, where we used to attend school.
“Mattru Jong?” he asked, and called for a young man who was from that village. The boy was brought before the chief and asked if he knew us and if he had ever heard us speak parables in the white man’s language. He knew my name, my brother’s, and those of my friends. He remembered us from performances we had done. None of us knew him, not even by his face, but we warmly smiled as if we recognized him as well. He saved our lives.
We were untied and treated to some cassava and smoked fish. We ate, thanked the villagers, and got ready to move on. The chief and some of the men who had tied our hands and feet offered us a place to stay in the village. We thanked them for their generosity and left. We knew that the rebels would eventually reach the village.
Slowly, we walked on a path through a thick forest. The trees hesitantly swayed with the quiet wind. The sky looked as if it was filled with smoke, endless gray smoke that made the sun dull. Around sunset we arrived at an abandoned village with six mud houses. We sat on the floor of the verandah of one of the houses. I looked at Junior, whose face was sweating. He had been so quiet lately. He looked at me and smiled a little before his face resumed its dullness. He got up and walked out to the yard. Never moving, he stared at the sky until the sun disappeared. On his way back to sit on the verandah, he picked up a stone and played with it throughout the evening. I kept looking at him, hoping that we could have another eye contact and maybe he would then say something about what was going on in his head. But he wouldn’t look up. He only played with the stone in his hand and stared at the ground.
Once, Junior taught me how to skip a stone on a river. We had gone to fetch water and he told me he had learned a new magic that let him make stones walk on water. Bending his body sideways, he threw stones out, and each one walked on the water farther than the last. He told me to try, but I couldn’t do it. He promised to teach me the magic some other time. As we were walking back home with buckets of water on our heads, I slipped and fell, spilling the water. Junior gave me his bucket, took my empty one, and returned to the river. When he came home, the first thing he did was ask me if I was hurt from falling. I told him I was fine, but he examined my knees and elbows anyway, and when he was done, he tickled me. As I looked at him that evening sitting on the verandah of a house in an unknown village, I wanted him to ask me if I was fine.
Gibrilla, Talloi, Kaloko, and Khalilou were all looking at the top of the forest that engulfed the village. Gibrilla’s nose twitched as he sat with his chin on his knee. When he exhaled, his whole body moved. Talloi continuously tapped his foot on the floor, as if trying to distract himself from thinking about the present. Kaloko was restless. He couldn’t sit still and kept switching positions, and sighed each time he did so. Khalilou sat quietly. His face showed no emotion and his spirit seemed to have wandered away from his body. I wanted to know how Junior was feeling, but I couldn’t find the right moment to break into the silence of that evening. I wish I had.
The following morning, a large group of people passed through the village. Among the travelers was a woman who knew Gibrilla. She told him that his aunt was in a village about thirty miles from where we were. She gave us directions. We filled our pockets with unripe oranges that were sour and unbearable to eat but the only source of food at our disposal, and we were on our way.
Kamator was very far away from Mattru Jong, where the rebels were still in control, but the villa
gers were on guard and ready to move anytime. In return for food and a place to sleep, the six of us were appointed watchmen. Three miles from the village was a big hill. From the top, one could see as far as a mile down the path toward the village. It was at the top of that hill that we stood watch from early in the morning until nightfall. We did this for about a month and nothing happened. Still, we knew the rebels well enough to brace for their arrival. But we lost our vigilance to the gradual passing of time.
The season for planting was approaching. The first rain had fallen, softening the soil. Birds began building their nests in the mango trees. Dew came down every morning and left the leaves wet and soaked the soil. The odor of the soaked soil was irresistibly sharp at midday. It made me want to roll on the ground. One of my uncles used to joke that he would like to die at this time of year. The sun rose earlier than usual and was at its brightest in the blue, almost cloudless sky. The grass on the side of the path was half dry and half green. Ants could be seen on the ground carrying food into their holes. Even though we tried to convince them otherwise, the villagers grew certain the rebels weren’t coming, and so they ordered us from our scouting posts and out into the fields. It wasn’t easy.
I had always been a spectator of the art of farming and as a result never realized how difficult it was until those few months of my life, in 1993, when I had to assist in farming in the village of Kamator. The village inhabitants were all farmers, so I had no way to escape this fate.
Before the war, when I visited my grandmother during harvest season, the only thing she let me do was pour wine on the soil around the farm before harvest commenced, as part of a ceremony to thank the ancestors and the gods for providing fertile soil, healthy rice, and a successful farming year.
The first task we were given was to clear a massive plot of land the size of a football field. When we went to look at the bush that was supposed to be cut, I knew tough days lay ahead. The bush was thick and there were lots of palm trees, each surrounded by trees that had woven their branches together. It was difficult to get around them and chop them down. The ground was covered with decayed leaves that had changed the top color of the brown soil to dark. Termites could be heard rummaging under the rotten leaves. Every day we would repeatedly stoop and stand under the bushes, swinging machetes and axes at the trees and palms that had to be cut lower to the ground so that they wouldn’t grow fast again and disrupt the crop that was to be planted. Sometimes when we swung the machetes and axes, their weight would send us flying into the bushes, where we would lie for a bit and rub our aching shoulders. Gibrilla’s uncle would shake his head and say, “You lazy town boys.”
