by Ishmael Beah
We took the guns and ammunition off the bodies of my friends and left them there in the forest, which had taken on a life of its own, as if it had trapped the souls that had departed from the dead. The branches of the trees looked as if they were holding hands and bowing their heads in prayer. We crouched into the forest and formed another ambush a few meters away from our initial position. Once again, we waited. It was between evening and nighttime. One lonely cricket tried to start singing, but none of its companions joined in, so it stopped to let silence bring night. I lay next to the corporal, whose eyes were redder than normal. He ignored my stare. We heard footsteps on the dried grasses and immediately took aim. A group of gunmen and boys emerged from under the bushes, crouched, and took quick cover behind trees. As they got closer, we opened fire, dropping those who stood in front. The rest we chased into the swamp, where we lost them. There, crabs had already begun feasting on the eyes of the dead. Limbs and fragmented skulls lay on top of the bog, and the water in the swamp had been replaced by blood. We flipped the bodies over and took their ammunition and guns.
I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them. I found a G3, some ammunition, and a handgun that the corporal kept for himself. I noticed that most of the dead gunmen and boys wore lots of jewelry on their necks and wrists. Some even wore more than five gold watches on one wrist. One boy, whose uncombed hair was now soaked with blood, wore a Tupac Shakur T-shirt that said: “All eyes on me.” We lost a few adult soldiers on our side and my friends Musa and Josiah. Musa, the storyteller, was gone. There was no one around to tell us stories and make us laugh at times when we needed it. And Josiah—if only I had let him continue sleeping on the first day of training, perhaps he wouldn’t have gone to the front line in the first place.
We arrived in the village with nightfall and sat against the walls of the army house. It was quiet, and as if we were afraid of silence, we began cleaning the blood off our guns and the ones we had brought with us, cleaning and oiling their chambers. We shot the weapons into the air to test their effectiveness. I went for supper that night, but was unable to eat. I only drank water and felt nothing. As I walked back to my tent, I stumbled into a cement wall. My knee bled, but I didn’t feel a thing. I lay on my back in the tent with my AK-47 on my chest and the G3 I had brought with me leaning on the peg of the tent. Nothing happened in my head. It was void, and I stared at the roof of the tent until I was miraculously able to doze off. I had a dream that I was picking up Josiah from the tree stump and a gunman stood on top of me. He placed his gun on my forehead. I immediately woke up from my dream and began shooting inside the tent, until the thirty rounds in the magazine were finished. The corporal and the lieutenant came in afterward and took me outside. I was sweating, and they threw water on my face and gave me a few more of the white capsules. I stayed up all night and couldn’t sleep for a week. We went out two more times that week and I had no problem shooting my gun.
14
THE SHARP ACHES IN MY HEAD, or what I later came to know as migraines, stopped as my daily activities were replaced with more soldierly things. In the daytime, instead of playing soccer in the village square, I took turns at the guarding posts around the village, smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them. They gave me a lot of energy. The first time I took all these drugs at the same time, I began to perspire so much that I took off all my clothes. My body shook, my sight became blurred, and I lost my hearing for several minutes. I walked around the village aimlessly, as I felt restless because I simultaneously felt a tremendous rush of energy and numbness. But after several doses of these drugs, all I felt was numbness to everything and so much energy that I couldn’t sleep for weeks. We watched movies at night. War movies, Rambo: First Blood, Rambo II, Commando, and so on, with the aid of a generator or sometimes a car battery. We all wanted to be like Rambo; we couldn’t wait to implement his techniques.
When we ran out of food, drugs, ammunition, and gasoline to watch war films, we raided rebel camps, in towns, villages, and forests. We also attacked civilian villages to capture recruits and whatever else we could find.
“We have good news from our informants. We are moving out in five minutes to kill some rebels and take their supplies, which really belong to us,” the lieutenant would announce. His face evinced confidence; his smiles disappeared before they were completed. We tied our heads with the green cloths that distinguished us from the rebels, and we boys led the way. There were no maps and no questions asked. We were simply told to follow the path until we received instructions on what to do next. We walked for long hours and stopped only to eat sardines and corned beef with gari, sniff cocaine, brown brown, and take some white capsules. The combination of these drugs gave us a lot of energy and made us fierce. The idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had not only snapped during the first killing, it had also stopped making remorseful records, or so it seemed. After we ate and did drugs, we would guard the perimeter while the adults rested for a bit. I shared a post with Alhaji, and we would time each other on how fast we could take out a magazine and replace it.
“Sometime I am going to take on a whole village by myself, just like Rambo,” Alhaji told me, smiling at the new goal he had set for himself.
“I’d like to have some bazookas of my own, like the ones in Commando. That would be beautiful,” I said, and we laughed.
Before we got to a rebel camp, we would deviate from the path and walk inside the forest. Once the camp was in sight, we would surround it and wait for the lieutenant’s command. The rebels roamed about; some sat against walls, dozing off, and others, boys as young as we, stood at guard posts passing around marijuana. Whenever I looked at rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many as I could, but I didn’t feel better. After every gunfight we would enter the rebel camp, killing those we had wounded. We would then search the houses and gather gallons of gasoline, enormous amounts of marijuana and cocaine, bales of clothes, crapes, watches, rice, dried fish, salt, gari, and many other things. We rounded up the civilians—men, women, boys, and young girls—hiding in the huts and houses, and made them carry our loot back to the base.
On one of these raids, we had captured a few rebels after a long gunfight and a lot of civilian casualties. We undressed the prisoners and tied them until their chests were tight as drums.
“Where did you get all this ammunition from?” the corporal asked one of the prisoners, a man with an almost dreadlocked beard. He spat at the corporal’s face, and the corporal immediately shot him in the head at close range. He fell onto the ground and blood slowly leaked out of his head. We cheered in admiration of the corporal’s fierceness and saluted him as he walked by. Suddenly Lansana, one of the boys, was shot in the chest and head by a rebel hiding in the bushes. We dispersed around the village in search of the shooter. When the young muscular rebel was captured, the lieutenant slit his neck with his bayonet. The rebel ran up and down the village before he fell to the ground and stopped moving. We cheered again, raising our guns in the air, shouting and whistling.
“If anyone starts any funny business, shoot him.” The lieutenant eyed the prisoners. We set the thatched roofs on fire and left, taking the prisoners with us. The flames on the thatched roofs waved us off as they danced with the afternoon breeze, swaying as if in agony.
“We”—the lieutenant pointed to us—“are here to protect you and will do all we can to make sure nothing happens to you.” He pointed to the civilians.
“Our job is a serious one and we have the most capable soldiers, who will do anything to defend this country. We are not like the rebels, those riffraffs who kill people for no reason. We kill them fo
r the good and betterment of this country. So respect all these men”—he pointed to us again—“for offering their services.” The lieutenant went on and on with his speech, which was a combination of instilling in the civilians that what we were doing was right and boosting the morale of his men, including us, the boys. I stood there holding my gun and felt special because I was part of something that took me seriously and I was not running from anyone anymore. I had my gun now, and as the corporal always said, “This gun is your source of power in these times. It will protect you and provide you all you need, if you know how to use it well.”
I cannot remember what prompted the lieutenant to make this speech. A lot of things were done with no reason or explanation. Sometimes we were asked to leave for war in the middle of a movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission. We were always either at the front lines, watching a war movie, or doing drugs. There was no time to be alone or to think. When we conversed with each other, we talked only about the war movies and how impressed we were with the way either the lieutenant, the corporal, or one of us had killed someone. It was as if nothing else existed outside our reality.
The morning after the lieutenant’s speech, we proceeded to practice killing the prisoners the way the lieutenant had done it. There were five prisoners and many eager participants. So the corporal chose a few of us. He picked Kanei, three other boys, and me for the killing exhibition. The five men were lined up in front of us on the training ground with their hands tied. We were supposed to slice their throats on the corporal’s command. The person whose prisoner died quickest would win the contest. We had our bayonets out and were supposed to look in the faces of the prisoners as we took them out of this world. I had already begun staring at my prisoner. His face was swollen from the beating he had received, and his eyes looked as if they were watching something behind me. His jaws were the only tense part of his facial expression; everything else seemed calm. I didn’t feel a thing for him, didn’t think that much about what I was doing. I just waited for the corporal’s order. The prisoner was simply another rebel who was responsible for the death of my family, as I had come to truly believe. The corporal gave the signal with a pistol shot and I grabbed the man’s head and slit his throat in one fluid motion. His Adam’s apple made way for the sharp knife, and I turned the bayonet on its zigzag edge as I brought it out. His eyes rolled up and they looked me straight in the eye before they suddenly stopped in a frightful glance, as if caught by surprise. The prisoner leaned his weight on me as he gave out his last breath. I dropped him on the ground and wiped my bayonet on him. I reported to the corporal, who was holding a timer. The bodies of the other prisoners fought in the arms of the other boys, and some continued to shake on the ground for a while. I was proclaimed the winner, and Kanei came second. The boys and the other soldiers who were the audience clapped as if I had just fulfilled one of life’s greatest achievements. I was given the rank of junior lieutenant and Kanei was given junior sergeant. We celebrated that day’s achievement with more drugs and more war movies.
I had a tent to myself, which I never slept in because sleep never came to me. Sometimes late in the night, the quiet wind brought to my ears the humming of Lansana. It seemed as if the trees whispered the tunes of the songs he had sung. I would listen for a bit and then fire a few rounds into the night, driving the humming away.
15
THE VILLAGES THAT WE CAPTURED and turned into our bases as we went along and the forests that we slept in became my home. My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone. My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen. I knew that day and night came and went because of the presence of the moon and the sun, but I had no idea whether it was a Sunday or a Friday.
In my head my life was normal. But everything began to change in the last weeks of January 1996. I was fifteen.
I left one morning with twenty members of my squad for Bauya, a small town a day’s walk south of us, to get ammunition. My friends Alhaji and Kanei came, too. We were excited to see Jumah, who was now stationed there. We wanted to hear his war stories, hear how many people he had killed. I was also looking forward to seeing the lieutenant. I hoped we might find some time to talk about Shakespeare.
We walked in two lines on the sides of a dusty path, looking into the dense bushes with our bloodshot eyes. We arrived at the outskirts of Bauya just before sunset and waited in the bushes as our commander went ahead to make sure our colleagues wouldn’t shoot at us. We sat against trees and watched the path. The commander returned after several minutes and motioned for us to move into town. I hoisted my gun on my shoulder and walked next to Kanei and Alhaji as we entered the base. The cement houses in the town were bigger than the ones I had seen in other villages, and everywhere we looked were unfamiliar faces. We nodded to acknowledge other soldiers as we walked around town looking for Jumah. We found him sitting in a hammock on the verandah of a cement house that faced the forest. There was a semiautomatic machine gun next to him and he seemed lost in thought. We slowly walked up to him, but before we could scare him, he heard our footsteps and turned toward us. His face seemed to have gotten older and he had stopped nodding when he spoke. We shook hands with him and examined his gun.
“I see that you carry heavy weapons these days,” Alhaji joked with him.
“Well, what can I say, I am moving up from the AKs,” he replied, and we all laughed.
We told him that we would return to sit with him in a few minutes and went to load our bags with ammunition and food to take back. While we were in the ammunition house, our commander told us that the lieutenant had asked us to stay the night and that dinner was ready. I wasn’t hungry, so I returned by myself to see Jumah while Kanei and Alhaji went to eat. We sat quietly for a while before he started talking.
“I am going on a raid tomorrow morning, so I might not see you before you leave.” He paused, fingered the side of the machine gun, and continued: “I killed the owner of this gun in our last raid. He took out a lot of us before I could get him. Since then I have used it to do some damage myself.” He chuckled, and we high-fived each other and laughed. Immediately after that, we were ordered to report for the nightly gathering in the yard at the center of town. It was a social event for commanders to mingle with everyone else. Jumah picked up his gun and put his arm around my shoulder as we walked to the yard. Alhaji and Kanei were there; they had already started smoking. Lieutenant Jabati was present, too, and he was a little jovial that night. Most of his colleagues, Staff Sergeant Mansaray and Corporal Gadafi, had died, but the lieutenant had miraculously managed to stay alive unscarred. He had also been able to replace his dead colleagues with other men who were fierce and disciplined. I wanted to talk to the lieutenant about Shakespeare, but he was busy going about the gathering, shaking everyone’s hand. When he finally stood in front of me, he held my hand tight and said, “Macbeth shall never vanquished be until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.” He nodded at me and said loudly to everyone, “I shall take leave of you fine gentlemen.” He bowed and waved as he left. We raised our guns in the air and cheered. After the lieutenant had gone, we began singing the national anthem, “High we exalt thee, realm of the free, great is the love we have for thee…” and marching, smoking and sniffing the cocaine and brown brown that was in abundance at Bauya. We chatted all night, mostly about how good the drugs were.
Before morning, Jumah and a few others left for their raid. Alhaji, Kanei, and I shook hands with him and promised that we would catch up more on our next visit. Jumah smiled, clutched his machine gun, and went running into the darkness.
A few hours later a truck came to the village. Four men dressed in clean blue jeans a
nd white T-shirts that said UNICEF on them in big blue letters jumped out. One of them was a white man and another was also light-skinned, maybe Lebanese. The other two were nationals, one with tribal marks on his cheeks, the other with marks on his hands just like the one my grandfather gave me to protect me from snakebite. The men were all too clean to have been in the war. They were shown to the lieutenant’s house. He had been expecting them. As they sat talking on the verandah, we watched them from under the mango tree, where we sat cleaning our guns. After a while, the lieutenant shook hands with the two foreigners and he called over the private who was guarding the meeting. The private ran toward us and told us to form a line. He went around the town gathering all the boys, exclaiming: “This is an order from the lieutenant!” We were accustomed to taking orders and did what we were told. We formed a horizontal line and waited.
The lieutenant stood before us and we saluted him, expecting to hear about our next raid on a rebel camp. “Stand at ease, boys,” he said. He slowly walked along the line, the visitors a few paces behind him, smiling.
“When I point at you, fall out and form a line by the private. Understand.” The lieutenant gave his orders from the far end of the line. “Yes, sir,” we shouted, and saluted. The smiles on the visitors’ faces disappeared. “At ease.”
“You, you…” the lieutenant pointed as he walked down the line. When the lieutenant picked me, I stared at his face, but he ignored me and continued his selection process. Alhaji was also picked, but Kanei was left behind, maybe because he was older. Fifteen of us were chosen. The lieutenant then ordered us, “Remove your magazines, put your weapons on safety, and put them on the ground.” We laid our weapons down, and the visitors, especially the two foreigners, began smiling again. “Attention. Forward march,” a private ordered us, and we followed the lieutenant toward the truck the visitors had arrived in. We stopped when the lieutenant turned around and faced us. “You have been great soldiers and you all know that you are part of this brotherhood. I am very proud to have served my country with you boys. But your work here is done, and I must send you off. These men will put you in school and find you another life.” That was all he said; then he smiled and walked away, asking the other soldiers to strip us of our military equipment. I hid my bayonet inside my pants and a grenade in my pocket. When one of the soldiers came to search me, I pushed him and told him that if he touched me I would kill him. He walked away and searched a boy standing next to me instead.
