A Long Way Gone

by Ishmael Beah

  We had heard of a secret market in town conducted in a yard behind an abandoned house where otherwise unavailable food items were sold to civilians. They sold the items at twice the regular price, but the trip seemed worth the risk and expense. We headed out early in the morning, terrified of seeing someone we knew. We kept our heads down as we hurried past young rebels and soldiers. We arrived as the vendors were just beginning to put their food products out. We bought some rice, some palm oil, salt, and fish; by the time we were done, the market was filling up with people hurriedly trying to buy whatever they could afford.

  As we were about to leave, an open Land Rover roared up and armed men jumped off before it came to a halt. They ran into the crowd of civilians, firing a warning shot. Over a megaphone the commander ordered everyone to put down their bags of food, put their hands behind their heads, and lie flat, facing the ground. A woman in the crowd panicked and decided to run. An armed man in a red headband shot her in the head. She screamed and fell, loudly hitting the stony ground. This caused more panic, and everyone scattered in different directions. We grabbed our goods and ran crouching. This was beginning to be too familiar.

  While we were running away from the area, another Land Rover full of more armed men arrived, and they began firing and knocking people’s heads with the butts of their guns. We hid behind a wall separating the marketplace and the main street, then kept to a fast but cautious path behind the houses off the bay. Almost at the end of the bay, where the tide slammed a sunken boat, we jumped on the main street with our goods tucked under our arms and began the final walk home. We were approaching the Cotton Tree at the center of town when we saw a group of protesters run by, holding posters that read STOP THE KILLING and the like. They wore white shirts and their heads were tied with white cloths. We tried to ignore them, but as we turned a corner to continue home, a group of armed men, half in civilian and half in military clothing, ran toward us, firing into the crowd. There was no way to break from the crowd, so we joined them. The armed men began tossing tear gas. Civilians began to vomit on the sidewalks and bleed through their noses. Everyone started running toward Kissy Street. It was impossible to breathe. I put my hand over my nose, which felt as if it had been dipped in hot spices. I held tight to the bag of food and ran with Mohamed, trying not to lose him in the crowd. Tears ran down my cheeks, and my eyeballs and eyelids felt heavy. I was getting furious, but I tried to contain myself, because I knew I couldn’t afford to lose my temper. The result would be death, since I was now a civilian; I knew that.

  We continued to run with the crowd, trying to find a way out and head home. My throat began to ache. Mohamed was coughing until the veins on his throat were visible. We managed to break free, and he put his head under the public pump. Suddenly another group of people came running toward us, as fast as they could. Soldiers were pursuing them, so we too began to charge ahead, still carrying our food.

  We were now in the midst of student protesters on a street lined with tall buildings. A chopper that had been cycling above started to descend and move toward the crowd. Mohamed and I knew what was going to happen. We ran for the nearest gutter and dove in. The chopper swept down to street level. As soon as it was about twenty-five meters from the protesters, it spun around and faced them sideways. A soldier sitting in the open side opened fire with a machine gun, mowing down the crowd. People ran for their lives. The street that a minute before had been filled with banners and noise was now a silent graveyard full of restless souls fighting to reconcile their sudden deaths.

  Mohamed and I ran head down through alleyways. We came to a fence that faced a main street on which there was a roadblock. Armed men patrolled the area. We lay in the gutter for six hours, waiting for nightfall. Chances to escape death were better at night, because the red track of the bullets could be seen in the dark. There were others with us. One, a student in a blue T-shirt, had a sweaty face, and every few seconds he wiped his forehead with his shirt. A young woman, probably in her early twenties, sat with her head between her knees, trembling and rocking. Against the wall of the gutter, a bearded man whose shirt was stained with someone else’s blood sat holding his head in his hands. I felt bad about what was happening, but was not as scared as these people, who had not experienced war before. It was their first time, and it was painful to watch them. I hoped that Uncle would not worry too much about our whereabouts. More gunshots and a cloud of tear gas floated by. We held our noses until the wind took the gas away. Nightfall seemed so far away, it felt like waiting for Judgment Day. But as it must, night finally came, and we made it home, crouching behind houses and jumping fences.

  My uncle was sitting on the verandah, tears in his eyes. When I greeted him, he jumped up as if he had seen a ghost. He embraced us for a long time and told us not to go to the city anymore. But we had no choice. We would have to, in order to get food.

  The gunshots didn’t cease for the next five months; they became the new sound of the city. In the morning, families sat on their verandahs and held their children close, staring at the city streets where gunmen roamed in groups, looting, raping, and killing people at will. Mothers wrapped their trembling arms around their children each time the gunshots intensified. People mostly ate soaked raw rice with sugar or plain gari with salt, and listened to the radio, hoping to hear some good news. Sometimes during the day, there were several plumes of smoke rising from houses that had been set on fire by gunmen. We could hear them excitedly laughing at the sight of the burning houses. One evening, a neighbor who lived a few doors down from my uncle’s house was listening to a pirate radio station that accused the new government of committing crimes against civilians. A few minutes later, a truck full of soldiers stopped in front of the man’s house, dragged him, his wife, and his two older sons outside, shot them, and kicked their bodies into the nearby gutter. My uncle vomited after we had seen the act.

  For the first three weeks people were so afraid that they didn’t dare to leave their houses. But soon enough, everyone got used to the gunshots and the madness. People began going about their daily business of searching for food, even though stray bullets were likely to kill them. Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was an AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun. I mostly sat outside on the flat rock with Mohamed and we were both quiet. I was thinking about the fact that we had run so far away from the war, only to be caught back in it. There was nowhere to go from here.

  I had lost contact with Laura in New York for more than five months. Before that, she and I had constantly written letters to each other. She would tell me what she was doing and ask that I take good care of myself. Her letters came from all over the world, where she had storytelling projects. Recently I had tried calling her collect every day, but was unsuccessful. The phones at Sierra-tel, the national telephone company, weren’t going through anymore. Each day I sat on the verandah with my uncle and cousins looking toward the city. We had stopped listening to the storytelling cassette, as curfews started before dark. My uncle laughed less and less, and sighed more and more. We continued to hope that things would change, but they kept getting worse.

  My uncle became sick. One morning we were sitting on the verandah when he complained he wasn’t feeling very well. In the evening he developed a fever and he lay inside, groaning. Allie and I went to a nearby shop and bought medicine, but Uncle’s fever grew worse day after day. Auntie Sallay would force him to eat, but he would vomit everything the moment she was done feeding him. All the hospitals and pharmacies were closed. We searched the city for doctors or nurses, but those who hadn’t left would not leave their homes for fear they might not be able to return to their families again. One evening I was sitting by my uncle, wiping his forehead, when he fell off the bed. I caught his long body in my arms and held his head on my lap. His cheekbones stood out of his round face. He looked at me and I could see in his eyes that he had given up hope. I begged him not to leave us. His lips were about to utter something, but the
y stopped shaking, and he was gone. I held him in my arms and thought about how I was going to break the news to his wife, who was boiling him some water in the kitchen. She came in soon afterward and dropped the hot water, splashing it on both of us. She refused to believe that her husband had died. I still held my uncle in my arms, tears running down my face. My entire body had gone numb. I couldn’t move from where I sat. Mohamed and Allie came in and took Uncle away from me and put him on the bed. After a few minutes, I was able to get up. I went behind the house and punched the mango tree until Mohamed took me away from it. I was always losing everything that meant something to me.

  My cousins cried, asking, Who is going to take care of us now? Why did this happen to us in these difficult times?

  Down in the city, the gunmen fired off their guns.

  My uncle was buried the next morning. Even in the midst of the madness, many people came for his burial. I walked behind the coffin, the sound of my footsteps clinging to my heart. I held hands with my cousins and Mohamed. My aunt had tried to come to the cemetery, but she collapsed right before we left the house. At the cemetery the imam read a few suras and my uncle was lowered into the hole and covered with mud. People quickly dispersed to continue their lives. I stayed behind with Mohamed. I sat on the ground next to the grave and talked to my uncle. I told him that I was sorry that we couldn’t find him any help, that I hoped he knew that I really loved him and wished he could have been alive to see me as an adult. After I was done, I placed my hands on the heap of mud and quietly wept. I didn’t realize how long I had been at the cemetery until after I had stopped crying. It was late in the evening and the curfew was about to begin. Mohamed and I ran as fast as we could back home before the soldiers started shooting.

  A few days after my uncle was buried, I was finally able to make a collect call to Laura. I asked her if I could stay with her if I made my way to New York City. She said yes.

  “No. I want you to really think about this. If I make my way to New York, can I stay with you at your house?” I asked again.

  “Yes,” she said again, and I told her that “I would visualize it” and would call her when I was in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, the one neighboring country that was peaceful and the only way out of Sierra Leone at that time. I had to leave, because I was afraid that if I stayed in Freetown any longer, I was going to end up being a soldier again or my former army friends would kill me if I refused. Some friends who had undergone rehabilitation with me had already rejoined the army.

  I left Freetown early in the morning of the seventh day after my uncle passed away. I didn’t tell anyone that I was leaving except Mohamed, who was to relay my departure to my aunt after she was done grieving. She had turned herself away from the world and everyone in it after Uncle’s death. I left on October 31, 1997, while it was still a little dark outside. The curfew was still in place, but I needed to leave the city before the sun came out. It was less dangerous to travel at this hour, as some of the gunmen were dozing off and the night made it difficult for the militiamen to see me from afar. Gunshots echoed in the quiet city, and the morning breeze felt harsh against my face. The air smelled of rotten bodies and gunpowder. I shook hands with Mohamed. “I’ll let you know where I end up,” I told him. He tapped me on my shoulder and said nothing.

  I had only a small dirty bag containing a few clothes. It was risky to travel with a big or fancy bag, as armed men would think that you were carrying something valuable and would possibly shoot you. As I walked into the last remains of the night, leaving Mohamed standing on the verandah, I became afraid. This was becoming too familiar. I stopped next to a utility pole for a bit, exhaled heavily, and threw some angry punches in the air. I have to try to get out, I thought, and if that doesn’t work, then it is back to the army. I didn’t like thinking this way. I hurriedly walked near the gutters and took cover when I heard a vehicle approaching. I was the only civilian on the street, and I sometimes had to bypass checkpoints by either crawling in gutters or crouching behind houses. I safely made it to an old bus station that was no longer in use at the edge of the city. I was sweating and my eyelids trembled as I looked around the station. There were a lot of men—in their thirties, I presumed—some women, and a few families with children five years of age and older. They all stood in line against the dilapidated wall, some holding bundles of things and others their children’s hands.

  I walked to the back of the line and sat on my heels to make sure my money was still inside my sock, under my right foot. The man in front of me kept mumbling things to himself and pacing away from the wall and back. He was making me more nervous than I already was. After several minutes of quietly waiting, a man who had been standing in line with everyone else proclaimed himself the bus driver and asked everyone to follow him. We walked farther into the abandoned station, making our way over falling cement walls into an open area where we got on a bus, which was painted dark, even its rims, so that it would blend with the night. The bus rolled out of the station, its lights off, and took the back road out of the city. The road hadn’t been used for years, so it seemed the bus was moving through bushes, as leaves and branches heavily slapped its side. It slowly galloped in the dark until the sun began to rise. At some point, we had to get off and walk behind it so that it would be able to climb a little hill. We were all very quiet, our faces tensed with fear, as we hadn’t yet safely left the city area. We got back on the bus, and about an hour later it dropped us off at an old bridge.

  We paid the driver and walked across the rusty bridge two at a time, and then had to walk all day to a junction where we waited for another bus that would arrive the next morning. This was the only way to get out of Freetown without being killed by the armed men and boys of the new government, who hated it when people left the city.

  There were over thirty of us at the junction. We sat on the ground near the bushes and waited all night. No one said a word to one another, as we all knew that we hadn’t completely escaped the madness. Parents whispered things in the ears of their children, afraid to let out their voices. Some people stared at the ground and others played with stones. Gunshots were faintly heard in the breeze. I sat at the edge of the gutter and chewed on some raw rice I had in a plastic bag. When will I stop running from this war? What if the bus doesn’t show up? A neighbor in Freetown had told me about this only way out of the country. So far it seemed to be safe, but I was worried, as I knew how quickly things change for the worse in such circumstances.

  I put the raw rice back into my bag and started walking down the dirt road to find a suitable place to sit for the night. There were people sleeping under the bushes near the bus stop. This way, they would be able to hear the bus if it pulled up during the night. Farther down, there were others clearing spaces under branches of plum trees that had woven into each other. They pushed the dried leaves aside with their hands and piled up fresh leaves to make headrests on the ground. One of the men made a broom from the branches of a tree, which he used to effectively push the leaves aside. I jumped over the gutter, sat against a tree, and, throughout the night, thought about my uncle and then my father, mother, brothers, friends. Why does everyone keep dying except me? I walked up and down the road trying not to be angry.

  In the morning people stood up and dusted themselves off with their hands. Some of the men washed with dew. They shook leaves of little plants and trees, rubbing the residue of water onto their faces and heads. After hours of waiting impatiently, we heard the clunking of an engine down the road. We weren’t sure if it was the bus, so we gathered our bags and hid in the bushes near the road. The sound of the whining engine grew until the bus could finally be seen. Everyone ran out of hiding and hailed the bus until it came to a stop. We hurriedly piled on and were off. As the bus proceeded, the apprentice came around to collect the fare. I paid half price, because I was under eighteen, but half price in those times was more than full price when everything was peaceful. I looked out the window and watched the trees go by. And t
hen the bus began to slow down and the trees were replaced by soldiers with big guns, all aiming at the road, at the bus. They asked everyone to step out of the bus; then they made us walk through a barricade. I looked around, and in the bushes I saw there were more men with submachine guns and grenade launchers. I was observing the formation they had and almost ran into a soldier who was making his way to the bus. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes and a face that said, “I will kill you if I want to and nothing will come of it.” The look was familiar to me.

  They checked the bus for reasons nobody understood. After a few minutes, everyone was on board again. As we gradually started moving, I watched the barricade disappear and I recalled when we used to attack such barricades. I dismissed the thoughts before I was transported back to those times. There were too many barricades, and at every one of them the soldiers behaved differently. Some demanded money even when passengers had the correct documents. Refusing to pay, one risked being sent back to the city. Those who didn’t have money had their watches or jewelry or anything of value taken from them. Whenever we were approaching a roadblock, I would quietly start reciting prayers that I hoped would aid my passing through it.

  At about four in the afternoon, the bus reached a town called Kambia, its final destination. For the first time since we left the city, I saw some of the passengers’ faces relax a bit. But soon enough, our faces tensed again, and we all grumbled as the immigration officers also asked us to pay before we could cross the boundary. Everyone reached into their socks, the hems of pants, under headties, to get the remainder of their money. A woman with two seven-year-old boys pleaded with the officer, telling him that she needed the money to feed her boys in Conakry. The man just kept his hand out and yelled at the woman to step aside. It sickened me to see that Sierra Leoneans asked money from those who had come from the war. They were benefiting from people who were running for their lives. Why does one have to pay to leave his own country? I thought, but I couldn’t argue. I had to pay the money. The immigration officers were asking for three hundred leones, almost two months’ pay, to put a departure stamp in passports. As soon as my passport was stamped, I crossed the border into Guinea. I had a long way, over fifty miles, to get to Conakry, the capital, so I walked fast to take another bus that would get me there. I hadn’t thought about the fact that I didn’t know how to speak any of the languages in Guinea. I became worried a bit but I was relieved to have made it out of my country alive.