by Majok Tulba
Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to him belong
They are weak, but he is strong.
Back home I was never much of a singer. Pina had been given a beautiful voice. She was the best singer in Sunday school. I used to play an old guitar to keep birds out of the garden and I could tune it to her voice, she knew the notes so well.
The Mobile Force love to sing about death and rape and fire. Boys that haven’t even held a gun yet. And those words get in your head, like a dream you once had. I see it in the other boys around me. The songs they sing turn into plans, weave themselves into real desires.
I’ve been fighting against those songs from the beginning, but the tunes embed themselves in your mind. You can’t resist. Once, just sitting in the evening, toying with the dummy rifle they gave each recruit, I heard the words of one rape song coming from somewhere nearby.
I fucked her front and I fucked her back
I went on fucking until she was dead
And then when I saw what I had done
I laughed and decided to fuck her head.
Then I realised I’d been singing it. It was in my head, singing itself. The worst one, though, was the one about killing your parents.
My mother talked too fast
My father ran too slow
So I cut his legs and took her head
Buried both and pissed in the hole.
They teach us to kill before the person can plea for mercy. Of course, they say, one day we’ll learn to enjoy the power of those pleadings, we’ll understand how they can give us strength, and therefore strengthen the revolution. But we’ll have to kill a few before we can learn that. They teach us to deny family, supposing we ever met them on the road. If a family member calls out to us, we are meant to act like they are strangers. If they persist, we must shoot them.
The most terrible part of all is seeing Akot transform. While I try to resist the songs, he gets into contests with other recruits over who can sing louder, especially on the hard parts of the run. Those first few first days of mine, he was next to me in the field formation. Soon, though, he was springing out of his bed faster than anyone. Front row, every morning.
Back in the barracks he does push-ups, competing even with the adults. Whenever someone cleans their gun, he watches like a vulture circling a wounded rodent. He stops looking at me, stops caring when I’m beaten. He just presses on. The dimness that I saw in him back in the village becomes a bright fire in the camp. It has never been about the revolution for him, though he can quote the slogans as well as the General. This is a different world from the village, and here he knows what to do.
Of the recruits from our village, Akot is the first to get a real gun, much sooner than anyone else. He is married to that gun and spends every moment practising out at the firing range. I can always tell when he’s come back from shooting because that fire is brightest in his eyes. That terrible fire of an attack dog bringing scraps of victims to please his master. We know it is dangerous for us to be seen talking. Our only family here is the revolution. Blood ties are gone. Akot has made his decisions about how to survive here.
After that first encounter, Priest and I meet quite often. Every day, I see him reading his bible. It’s the most beaten-up holy book I’ve ever seen. Even since I’ve known him, he’s had to fix the cover twice. We don’t have glue, so he uses tree sap, which works well enough.
Today I ask him how he can read the Bible and still be a soldier.
‘Do you believe in God?’ he replies.
‘I suppose,’ I tell him. ‘One of the soldiers said that God’s forgotten about Africa. I think he might have forgotten about us here, anyway. But I believe he’s out there.’
Priest nods. ‘If you believe in God, why can’t you read the Bible?’
‘Because, if I did what it said, the Captain would shoot me.’
‘Many of the saints died in much worse ways for their faith.’
‘I don’t want to be a saint. I just want to live.’
‘Me too, with God’s help. Remember what God says in Psalm 91 – he will give orders to his angels about you and they will hold you up with their hands so that not even your feet will be hurt on the stones. Do you know what the Bible says you should do with your life?’
I shrug. It feels like it’s been years since I opened a bible. ‘It says . . .’ and I try to remember the verses the missionaries told us to memorise. ‘That you have to be sorry for your sins. You have to forgive people. Don’t kill.’
Again, Priest nods. ‘What it really says is that you must love others. You must make them more important than you.’ He looks at the sky. ‘ “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.” ’
‘And don’t steal things.’
‘I have a brother, like you. When the rebels came to my village, the elders went out to meet them, clapping and waving. Of course, the elders didn’t like the rebels, but they didn’t want to have our village burned, raped and murdered either. So they greeted the rebel leaders like old friends and ordered a big feast. The rebels were so surprised they didn’t know what to do.’ Priest laughs.
‘When they decided to leave,’ he continues, ‘they said they would give the privilege of serving in the army to ten of the boys in the village. Two brothers actually volunteered. Their father beat them every day, they just wanted to get away from him. Plus, he had hit them in the head, so they were a bit slow. Then the rebels started picking boys. One they picked was my little brother. They didn’t pick me because my arm was broken.
‘I jumped up and said that my brother was just a baby, that he threw up when he saw his own skinned knee. It was my right arm that was broken, so I told them I was left-handed. None of that was true, but who cares? I asked them to trade me for him. They agreed, then they told me that if I died they’d go back and get my brother to replace me. So, I am here, doing what I’m told so that I can survive. And maybe I won’t get into heaven, but my brother will. If there is no greater love than giving up your life for another person and I am here for my brother, maybe God will forgive everything else.’
Priest and I eat most meals together, and he even rescues me from the Captain from time to time by volunteering to punish me. Priest is the only one I can trust in this godforsaken place. He, like me, has secrets – secret thoughts, actions and hopes. I find myself telling him about how I sing the church songs rather than the revolutionary songs. I talk with him about what might be happening back in our home villages and how our loved ones might be faring. We have a meeting place upstream from the camp, where the rapids start, and with boulders to hide us and the sound of running water to disguise our conversations. Priest teaches me to be invisible to the Captain, to not stand out. He begins to give me lessons in fighting – with my bare hands and with his AK-47.
We set up our own shooting range and each day I have to report to him for practice. Priest teaches me how to line the sights up and hold the heavy weapon to my shoulder, so I don’t end up sitting on my rear from the recoil. Sometimes he laughs at my efforts. Later, he shows me how to control my breathing and squeeze the trigger gently, not jerk it, and not fear it. He teaches me about being quick to concentrate, aim and fire, so that no one else can shoot you first.
Eventually Priest brings his guitar. I show him the few chords I know from my village. Our time together becomes a lot of lessons. First gun, then guitar and, later the bible. His bible is in English, the old kind. He loves the psalms and often quotes from them. His favourite is ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ And he knows a lot of English songs.
I like hitting the target, but I love the feel of the strings under my fingertips and the sound of the soothing twang when I get a chord right.
We couldn’t leave the camp, but there were places you could escape to, if just for a little while. Especially if you got up early, you could have a few
hours of life without the commanders and their ‘Yes, sirs!’ The jungle could be beautiful, if you looked at it for a little while, with all different shades of green, and the flashes of yellow from the parrots and red spikes of the ginger plants. A few thin clouds threw cool shadows under a beautiful sky. The birds sang extra loud and no one was in a mood there to shoot at them. Best of all, the wind blew the smell of the latrine away from you. That was the time to sit alone, or sometimes with Priest.
Priest told me about the drugs that the Great General seized from some of the trucks we captured, and that sometimes, when they were bored, the officers took with the General. Priest said they used them to get out of it. I wanted them too, if that was what they did, but Priest said they were too valuable to give to recruits. The General traded them with the white people for guns.
The drink and drugs would take till noon to work their way out of the officers and senior soldiers. Withdrawal always made them cranky. Not all of them took drugs and never very often, because they didn’t get many. Priest didn’t take drugs. He just said God bless to whoever had them. The drugs made people laugh foolishly, and although I wanted to laugh too, laughing in this place made me afraid, and angry. That’s when Priest would take me into the jungle to play guitar, or to practise shooting. He said I looked like his little brother.
We’re scared all the time. Sometimes, scary things can seem funny here, and I hate that worst of all.
When it rained in my village, I used to hate it. It meant that I’d either be pulling goat hooves out of the mud all day or, if it was really bad, that I had to stay in my hut with Akot and do homework. Sums or English. All day. Here in the camp, rain means a lot of things. The bomb crater that we use as a latrine overflows and, luckily, the run-off goes away from camp. We have a good week after that, with less smell. Rain here means mud too, and lots of it. Mud means we don’t have to run. It means we can fill up our bowls and bottles with clean water without boiling it. Then, the mice. When it starts really coming down, the rodents all take off. The bad bit is that you know soon the mosquitoes will get really bad. And rain usually means we get to stay inside, sleeping, or playing cards, or talking.
This rainy day we hear screaming outside in the yard.
‘Attention!’ one of the captains is yelling. ‘Attention! On deck! Everyone out here, you lazy maggots! I’m going to shoot the last of you little bastards that gets in line.’
The older boys are used to this and jump straight up and run outside. Priest grabs his gun and runs out too. I follow him, but a little behind.
Out in the yard we start lining up, automatically, before we realise the commander is naked. He stands there in pouring rain so thick you can’t see more than three metres in front of you, and he’s naked except for his boots, his hat, and a pistol waving at everyone. He has a strap tied tightly around the top of his arm.
‘Now, listen here, maggots!’ he yells. ‘There’s a patrol of government troops three kilometres north. We’re going to move out and ambush them and fuck them in the ass!’ He starts humping the air and I see that he has a large erection swinging against his belly. ‘No guns! We don’t need guns! We’re going to fuck ’em up the ass!’
Other officers step out. The Captain stands close by, chuckling behind a loosely rolled cigar.
‘Sir,’ one of the younger boys says. ‘Sir, I don’t want to . . . do it with a man. I’m not a faggot, sir!’
‘You think I’m a faggot?’ The commander swings his handgun right at the boy’s forehead. I don’t know what makes that kid so bold. I don’t want to do it either, but I’m not going to say so.
‘Plague!’ the Great General yells, storming out of his hut in uniform, one of his wives holding an umbrella over him. ‘What are you doing? Where did you hear about these government troops?’
‘Sir,’ Commander Plague says. ‘A leopard came into my hut and told me in a song.’
Lots of laughing.
‘Are you laughing at me?’ He turns on the boy who’d spoken, pressing the barrel of his gun into the kid’s forehead until he falls over. ‘You think I’m a faggot and you’re laughing at me?’ He pulls the trigger. Click. Nothing.
Commander Plague cocks the slide and tries again. Click. He smacks the gun against his palm a couple times. The General says nothing, rubbing his nose. Plague flips the gun around and peers down the barrel, then smacks it a couple more times. Bang! A chunk of the Commander’s face explodes away from his head. The recruits gasp and some scream. I can’t breathe, but a small part of me wants to laugh with relief. The General just stands there.
‘Shit,’ he says eventually. Then he points at the boy Plague had meant to kill. ‘You. I want this moron’s body out of my yard, right now.’
The boy jumps into action. At first he just looks like he’s following orders, moving quickly out of fear. But there is something in his steps, a kind of bounce and sway. I think he enjoyed seeing that crazed bastard blow his own head off. Not that I blame him. He disappears into the rain, taking Plague with him.
The grave is a big hole they’ve dug a little way outside the camp. Sometimes, when we come back in the morning, we find half the bodies gone, eaten by wild animals, but the dead are so many that no hungry animals can eat them all. We don’t bury bodies, we just throw them in the hole. Every once in a while, whenever the hole fills up, we throw some pieces of wood on top, or pour on some petrol. Light it up. The smell of a burning body isn’t nearly as bad as a rotting one.
Once the boy has gone, the General dismisses the rest of us.
Over the next few days, the kid Plague meant to shoot is put through the grinder. The other officers get him for every little thing. If he doesn’t say ‘Yes, sir’ fast enough they hit him. If he doesn’t run fast enough, they make him stare at the sun for an hour or two. The Captain ties the kid to a tree branch by his wrists and leaves him there for a day.
They could do that, punish you for no reason. You did something wrong, they’d say. Yes, sir, you say. Take your punishment, they say. Yes, sir, you say. Grab your ankles, they say. Yes, sir, you say . . .
Today I’m practising the ‘Tambourine Man’ song, with Priest beside me on the edge of the jungle. We have become lost in our conversations and our secrets when a girl walks up the path. She’s only a couple of years older than me – I recognise her as one of the wives, but when she stops and smiles at my song, for the first time I see that she is beautiful. I look at the ground and miss a chord. The girl giggles.
‘I like that song,’ she says, ‘but I don’t remember it sounding quite like that.’
‘No, Miss,’ Priest says, nodding to her. ‘Baboon is having an off day. I taught him better than that.’
She giggles again and walks on down to the banana grove. I go on with my practice, although without talking now. I don’t know what to think about. When she returns, she has a dozen bananas in her hand. She tears one off the bunch and throws it to me. ‘Maybe that will help Baboon concentrate.’
‘I hope so,’ Priest replies in a gentle voice, and bows his head a little.
I hold the banana, looking hard at the ground as she walks back down the path. I still haven’t visited the hospitality house, it’s meant for soldiers, not recruits. I don’t want to go there, except maybe to see Akidi. Although I don’t want to see Akidi in the hospitality house. I know what happens between a man and a woman and I hate it, but I also want to know more.
Priest is looking at me. ‘She’s called Christmas,’ he says.
I don’t know what to reply. ‘She seems nice.’
‘And she belongs to the Captain.’
The Captain seems to have forgotten about me a little – he doesn’t train the recruits, and he’s often away on raids. Now other recruits make far worse mistakes than me.
I think about the power of the Captain, how he can get whatever he wants.
Priest looks up at the blue sky. ‘Maybe he’s getting bored with her, letting her walk around like that. Or maybe she’s figured
out how to earn favours.’ He laughs.
But I’m wrong. He hasn’t forgotten.
I’m on my own, sitting and cooking ears of corn for dinner. Back in my village, men don’t cook. Cooking is done by girls and women, but here we are whatever the commanders want us to be.
The Captain looms over me, looking twice as big as he ever has.
‘Baboon’s Ass,’ he barks.
‘Yes, sir?’ I reply, forgetting to stand.
‘Were you at the creek today?’ His voice gives no clue to the way I should answer.
‘Uh . . . yes, sir.’
‘At what time?’
‘I don’t know exactly.’ We don’t have watches. The only times I know are sunrise, sunset and meals. ‘Maybe . . . five?’
The Captain sneers. ‘The same time as my wife?’
Now I know. ‘No, sir!’ Now I’m standing. ‘I haven’t seen your wife at all today, sir.’
But the Captain doesn’t keep shouting. He looks at my face for a while, rolling a thin stick between his lips. ‘So, you play guitar?’
‘No, sir. I don’t play.’
‘Liar! You do! My wife says you play. Unless there’s another baboon playing guitar around here.’
‘Well, I used to play in my village, just to keep the birds away. Priest has been teaching me, but I only know a few songs.’
The Captain grunts. ‘You are playing at my house, tonight.’ He turns on his heel and marches into the darkness of the gathering sunset.
I grab my corn and run for Priest’s new hut. Most of the soldiers live in the barracks, but Priest has carried his hut’s materials on his own back, so the officers don’t object. When I arrive he is cooking a guinea fowl that he shot. He trades me some bird for an ear of corn and we eat together. I can barely speak, which suits Priest. He never speaks more than when he’s eating. He tells stories from the missions he has been on, and the way different people reacted to facing death at a soldier’s hands. Sometimes he sounds very old, much older than the Great General, even. The Captain smiles when he hears Priest talk about the fighting and the burning huts. I don’t like listening to their talk.
