by Ishmael Beah
It began with about ten people carrying small bundles wrapped with tarp or cloth. Their children, about six of them, all no more than ten years old, walked beside them. They had been traveling for two days now, starting in a passenger vehicle for five hours and walking the rest of the way. Vehicles hadn’t resumed their routes to Imperi. As they entered town, their pace slowed while their eyes ran ahead, surveying the bullet holes in walls, the dark spots where fire had licked with its red tongue, the grasses that had grown in the remains of what used to be homes. Then their eyes would return to their children as an assurance to continue into the belly of their hometown. Their hesitations were in every part of their bodies, the way their arms were tightly tucked to their frames, their lips pulled in, their eyelids quickly closing and opening. But as they ventured into the town, they gradually relaxed, and one of the children, a young girl whose face was clearly filled with another story that she had heard of this place, asked her mother, “Where is the place you used to sit and hear stories and is that happening tonight?”
The mother’s smiling face looked down upon her child, her palm cupping the little girl’s face. She did not respond, but her arms began swinging freely to their natural rhythm, her body and stride now showing an ease that comforted the girl, who buried her sharp cheek in her mother’s palm. Others came with plastic bags that the wind almost knocked out of their hands, revealing the bags’ near emptiness. They had walked the entire way—three days’ journey for those who could walk fast—as they had no money to pay for transportation. They came two or more at a time. No one said much, even though they knew one another from before. There were only acknowledgments in their eyes, filled with fear, that held the tongue from saying more.
The majority of people walked into town with nothing. Some came with families and with children they had given birth to elsewhere. Other mothers arrived alone and stared anxiously at the faces of every child, every young person, to see if they could find their own. Sometimes they ran after a child and when he or she turned around, the mother would fall sluggishly to the ground, defeated. Most had searched for seven years, and this was their last chance to free the burden on their hearts.
Children and young people came by themselves with no parents. In the beginning they came one at a time, then in pairs, followed by four, six, or more in a group. They had been at various orphanages and households that had tried to adopt them. Some had even been at centers to learn how to be “normal children” again, a phrase they detested, so they had left and become inhabitants of rough streets in cities and towns. They were more intelligent than their years and had experienced so much hardship that each day of their lives was equal to three or more years; this showed in their fierce eyes. You had to look closely to see residues of their childhood. They knew where their parents were from and so they had returned to this place that they hoped would ease their suffering or grant them the possibility of reuniting with family. They had walked longer than everyone else who had arrived in Imperi. Among these children was a young girl no more than sixteen, who came with a child on her back, a boy, about two. She was taller than most her age, with a long face and narrow eyes. She walked with her lips tucked in as though to muster strength for every step she took. Her breasts told that the child was hers. Her eyes, especially when placed upon the child, held love and deep hatred. Mama Kadie rose to meet her, this daughter of her neighbor who no longer walked the earth in physical form.
“Mahawa, welcome home, my child. I am glad you remembered the way back. May I hold my grandchild?” Mahawa reluctantly removed the child from her back and gave him to the old woman while she continued to search her memory for something familiar.
She must have known me before, which is why she calls my name that I haven’t gone by in so long. Her voice spoke inside her as she looked into the eyes of the woman whose delight for the young boy was instant. She was rubbing her nose on the child’s belly, making him laugh. She never asked who the father was. Mahawa was already dreading having to explain how this child had come to this world, a story she didn’t want to remember, not yet, perhaps not ever. She wanted people to make their own assumptions and leave her out of it.
“You can stay with me and we could help each other. I need a daughter, and the gods have returned you just in time. Take him to the house over there.” Mama Kadie pointed. “Feed him and yourself with whatever is in the pots. You will introduce yourself properly later on.” The elders were silent with an inkling of the ordeal that the child carrying the child had endured. Their silence was, however, short-lived as more young people arrived, in particular a group of four—three boys and a girl. Three of them carried pillowcases filled with things and tied with ropes to prevent their contents from spilling out. The oldest, who was eighteen, walked ahead of the group, his muscular body erect in a manner that showed discipline and purpose. His eyes were as strong as his cheekbones, and they were attentive to everything. His face was so hardened, dark, and harsh that you knew that no smile or even smirk had passed on it for years. His eyes surveyed the town not in the way the other arrivals had, with hesitation, but more with a confidence that showed he feared nothing. He walked, almost running, toward the elders.
“Good day Pa, Pa, and Mama. My name is Colonel.” He shook the hands of the elders strongly and looked deep into their eyes, forcing them to turn their gaze away, something that usually happened the other way around. He pointed at and spoke the names of the others: Salimatu, the girl, sixteen; and the boys, Amadu, the same age, and Victor, seventeen. Their faces looked like children but their mannerisms were those of adults, and they seemed to have been with one another for a while. The elders didn’t ask Colonel for his real name, which they knew, on that first encounter. Would they do so? This was to be determined by circumstances.
“They are my brothers and sister. Our parents are from here so we have come home, like you,” Colonel said to the elders. The young people shook the right hand of each elder and sat on the ground facing them. Colonel remained standing, his hands now in the pockets of his trousers, removing them only to gesture when he spoke.
“We will take one of the burnt houses and rebuild it. We know which one used to belong to Amadu’s father. We can be security for the town if there is a need for that,” Colonel said, not really asking or waiting for the elders to respond. He was tall for his age and had an air of forcefulness about him. Even when he asked politely for something, it sounded as though he was demanding it, and you couldn’t say no to him.
“You are all welcome back in peace,” Pa Moiwa responded. Colonel said no more but nodded to the elders and walked to the house he had spoken of, which was at the edge of town. Amadu, Salimatu, and Victor followed him.
“Well, at least those alive are coming back, even if some are in the clothing of the strangers they have become. That boy in charge of the others. I knew him before all that madness happened,” Pa Kainesi said, scratching his head as if to think some more.
“We must let him be Colonel as long as he chooses to be. The others with him are clearly now his responsibility, so we must let him take care of them as he has been doing. We can observe and steer him on the right path gently if necessary,” Mama Kadie told the others in a whisper.
The elders refreshed their faces for other arrivals, and indeed there were more who needed to be welcomed without the burden of those who had come before them. Not long after Colonel and his group arrived, there came a man named Sila and his two children. Sila carried a small sack that used to be a rice bag, balancing the luggage effortlessly on his flat head, which seemed bigger than the rest of his body. He had a smile so wide, so brimming with happiness that the sun hid behind the clouds for a while to give permission to the display of unrestrained delight within him. His expressions conjured smiles on the faces of the elders even as he neared and they saw that his right hand was missing, his arm cut off above the elbow. Hawa, his nine-year-old daughter, was missing her left arm; Maada, his son, eight, was missing both, one cut above
the elbow and the other below. The children, too, were smiling, walking on either side of their father. They had learned by watching him how to manage the awkwardness that came about when people saw their condition.
Sila and his children had been in the area around Imperi for two years before the war ended. He had been able to escape the attack on the town with only his two children, carrying the younger one and pulling the other along. Sila had kept them together since, hiding in the forest, moving to other towns until they were attacked, and then back to the forest. Then one day he had decided to take his children to the capital city to register them for school. The war wasn’t coming to an end as quickly as he had thought. That evening, after walking all day, he and his children stopped to pass the night in the ruins of a town about eight miles from Imperi. Unfortunately, a squad of armed men and boys had also been passing through and decided to spend the night in the same burnt village, which had two houses whose roofs were somewhat intact. The men captured Sila and his children and tied them to a tree until morning. The children were seven and six at that time. Their father’s eyes told them not to cry. He couldn’t speak, as he had been beaten on his head earlier when he tried to plead for his children not to be tied so tightly. His swollen jawbone and head had pained him all night, but he couldn’t cry because he wanted to remain strong for his children.
In the morning, the commander asked a slim little boy with a long, rough, pimpled face—they called him “Sergeant Cutlass”—to chop off the family’s hands.
“I am in a very good mood, so you will only have your hands cut off. You can keep your lives for today,” the commander had said.
“I am giving you my best man for the job. He is so good that by the time you think about it, it will be finished.” He laughed and called on the sergeant. The young boy’s sunken face was as cold as the blades he carried. All of them had residues of blood and flesh, and some were dull while others were very sharp. Depending on how much pain the commander wanted his victims to feel, he would ask for either a dull or sharp machete. This young boy had been forced at gunpoint to do his first cutting when he was nine years old. And they were the hands of his mother, father, grandmother, and two uncles. Afterward the commander had killed them because the boy didn’t do the job to his liking; “It wasn’t as clean as I wanted,” he had said before shooting all of them. The commander had then made the boy part of the group to fight as a soldier and with the special task of chopping off hands only.
“Okay, bring them here.” The commander asked for Sila and his children to be brought to the log near the bushes. “Sergeant Cutlass, go on and we move out after. One last thing: if any of you make any noise, I will have you all shot.”
He laughed as the hands of the children were first placed on the logs and cut, and then it was Sila’s turn. Sergeant Cutlass had cut many hands, but this was the second time that it tormented him—the first had been his family. He didn’t know what it was, but something about this family got to him. He had also never witnessed such silence from cuts—even when the commander threatened to shoot people, they cried out. Not this family, though, and the silence made him hear the sound that the machete made when it went through the flesh, the bone, and then the flesh again, finally hitting the log.
The sound echoed in his head from that day on. The commander had told his sergeant to cut with a combination of “long sleeve” and “short sleeve,” which meant a cut above the elbow (short sleeve) and below the wrist (long sleeve). The squad left right after they had chopped Sila’s and his children’s hands. The commander had thought that they would die bleeding, but Sila had lost enough people already. He rolled on the ground to gain some strength, got up, looked for some old cloths, and, using his one hand and mouth, tied the fresh wounds of his children and himself. It ceased their bleeding just a bit. He begged his children to forgive him because he was unable to protect them and also encouraged them to be strong, to stand up and walk with him. They did, all of them weak and staggering from the loss of blood. They continued, though, their father calling, “Hawa, Maada, you are still there. Don’t leave your father alone.”
“Yes, Papa,” each would say, and sometimes Hawa would reach her right hand to wipe the sweat off her younger brother’s face. They went on in this manner until they hit a main road, where they all fainted on the earth at the side of the road.
They awoke at a hospital in the capital city on beds next to one another, their wounds bandaged. The nurse explained to Sila that a driver who had said his name was Momodou had kicked all the passengers off his vehicle and loaded Sila and his children inside, forfeiting all the money he could have made, especially at such a difficult time for the country. He had brought them to the hospital and paid for the initial treatment, adding, “This man and his children are brave to have walked all that way,” pointing at their tattered bare feet, “so someone must do something to complete their will to live despite all this.” Momodou had said nothing more and left. Sila and his children were at the hospital for a week, and from the nurse he learned that he would have to pay the remaining bill. He didn’t have the money and wouldn’t have for many months, if ever. So one night he quietly woke his children and they escaped the hospital and went to an amputee camp. The camp seemed like a good idea in the beginning. But then people would come by to watch them as though they were animals in the zoo. Sila left with his children after two weeks. He found a job carrying loads, which enabled him to rent a shack on the outskirts of the city. Doing menial jobs that came with cruel comments bruised his dignity. But he was a strong man physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Every morning, he would chant to himself under his breath before going out for the day, “I can always restore my dignity, and may my ears become deaf to negative voices today.” He never showed his despair about his situation outwardly, perhaps for his children’s sake. And his children learned from their father to carry themselves with dignity even when looked upon with questioning eyes. It did take getting used to, though, how to function without a hand or hands. Sila couldn’t wait to return home and saved up so he would be ready.
Other people who wanted the same jobs as him called him names and suggested that he wasn’t as capable. On one occasion, while a group of desperate young men were trying to convince a trader to hire them to carry his loads instead of the “one-arm useless man,” he proved them wrong by picking up the two huge bundles one at a time with his only hand and loading them into the vehicle without any help. The young men were going to do it together and had been negotiating payment for four workers. They had walked away angry, and the trader happily paid Sila for the job of four people. He left with his children on the first day he knew he could safely do so.
En route to Imperi, they passed through the town where they had been amputated. There was no other road. It was the only time tears came down all their faces. They walked quickly, saying nothing to one another, but someone heard their heavy footsteps. It was Sergeant Cutlass, who was no longer a soldier but was being hunted by them since his squad had been dismantled at the end of the war; he had come to the town and stayed in its ruins. He had been there for a week, unable to sleep, tormented by everything about the place—but still something held him there. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Sila and his children. He thought they had died. He was happy, a bit, that they were alive, but all that had happened that day came back vigorously in his mind. He sat on the ground, sighing, his sun-beaten face twitching with so much pain that it no longer had its youthfulness. He decided to follow Sila and his family, thinking he needed to make amends, but he didn’t know how. Sila and his children were unaware that he was behind them. They strode home, finally happy, as their father had told them they would have a simple and perfect life there in their own family house, never worrying about getting kicked out because they couldn’t afford rent.
“Greetings to you, all my elders, to the trees, the land, and all that remains. Sila is home to where his spirit brightens.” He bent to the side so the b
ag on his head fell toward his left hand, which caught it swiftly and set it down on the earth.
“Welcome back, Sila. Your house is the only one in slightly better condition than most in town,” Pa Moiwa said, feeling a bit awkward about not knowing how to greet Sila properly. Greetings were customarily done with the shaking of right hands. The elders bowed slightly to acknowledge Sila, who was in his forties.
“My children, Hawa and Maada. We lost everyone else.” He said the last part quickly and went on. “But blessings that our house is somewhat standing. We are home, children, greet your grandparents.” The children each walked to the sides of the elders and awkwardly thrust their little frames forward for embraces. The elders held them as best as possible so they didn’t feel different, but the extra care to avoid their stumps was enough to show the discomfort. As the embraces were completed and smiles resumed, someone’s voice rang in their ears. No one had heard the person arriving because of his dead footsteps.
“Greetings to my elders and to all of you.” A stammering sixteen-year-old boy spoke and everyone turned to see who he was. The smile and joy on the faces of Sila, Hawa, and Maada extinguished abruptly as soon as they looked at the boy whose right eye was twitching incessantly. His face was less pimpled but still rough, and they remembered him even though it had been some years. There was a heavy silence, which made everyone’s body tighten with fear. The sun came from behind the clouds to replace the lost delight that Sila had brought with him. The sixteen-year-old boy avoided eye contact with everyone.
