A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

by Ishmael Beah

  One afternoon, while we were searching for food in a deserted village, a crow fell out of the sky. It wasn’t dead, but it was unable to fly. We knew this was unusual, but we needed food and anything at that point would do. As we took the feathers off the bird, Moriba asked what day it was. We all thought about it for a while, trying to remember the name of the last day when our lives were normal. Kanei broke the silence.

  “It is a holiday.” He laughed. “You can call it any day you want,” he continued.

  “But it is not just a day, it is a strange one. I don’t feel too good about it,” Musa said. “Maybe we shouldn’t eat this bird.”

  “Well now, if the falling of this bird is a sign of a curse or bad luck, we are in both. So I am eating every bit of it. You can do as you please.” Kanei began humming.

  After Kanei stopped humming, the world became eerily silent. The breeze and the clouds had stopped moving, the trees were still, as if they all awaited something unimaginable.

  Sometimes night has a way of speaking to us, but we almost never listen. The night after we ate the bird was too dark. There were no stars in the sky, and as we walked, it seemed as if the darkness was getting thicker. We weren’t on a dense forest path, but we could barely see each other. We held on to one another’s hands. We kept on walking because we couldn’t stop in the middle of nowhere, even though we wanted to. After hours of walking we came upon a bridge made of sticks. The river below was flowing quietly, as if asleep. As we were about to set foot on the bridge, we heard footsteps on the other side, coming toward us. We let go of one another’s hands and hid in the nearby bushes. I was lying with Alhaji, Jumah, and Saidu.

  There were three people. They were wearing white shirts. Two of them were about the same height and the third was shorter. They carried cloths under their arms. They too were holding hands, and when they stepped off the bridge around where we lay, they stopped as if they sensed our presence. They mumbled something. It was difficult to hear what they were saying because their voices sounded like bees, as if something was obstructing their noses. After they were done mumbling, the two taller people began pulling the shorter one. One wanted them to go the way we were going and the other insisted that they continue in the opposite direction. Their quarrel caused my heart to begin beating faster, and I was trying hard to make out their faces, but it was too dark. After about a minute, they decided to continue going in the direction we had come from.

  It took us a few minutes to rise from under the bushes. Everyone was breathing hard and couldn’t speak. Kanei began whispering our names. When he called out Saidu’s name, Saidu didn’t answer. We searched for him among the bushes. He was lying there quietly. We shook him hard, calling out his name, but he was silent. Alhaji and Jumah began to cry. Kanei and I dragged Saidu onto the path and sat by him. He was just lying there. My hands began trembling uncontrollably as we sat there throughout the night in silence. My head became heavy as I thought about what we were going to do. I do not remember who it was among us that whispered, “Maybe it was the bird that we ate.” Most of my travel companions began to cry, but I couldn’t. I just sat there staring into the night as if searching for something.

  There wasn’t a gradual change between night and day. The darkness just swiftly rolled away, letting the sky shine its light on us. We were all sitting in the middle of the path. Saidu was still quiet. His forehead had residues of sweat and his mouth was slightly open. I put my hand by his nose just to see if he was breathing. Everyone stood up, and when I removed my hand, they were all looking at me, as if expecting me to say something.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  They all put their hands on their heads. Their faces looked as if they wanted to hear something else, something that we knew could be possible but were afraid to accept.

  “What are we going to do now?” Moriba asked.

  “We cannot just stand here forever,” Musa remarked.

  “We will have to carry him to the next village, however far that might be,” Kanei said slowly. “Help me stand him up,” he continued.

  We stood Saidu up, and Kanei carried him on his back across the bridge. The quiet river started flowing loudly through rocks and palm kernels. As soon as we had crossed the bridge, Saidu coughed. Kanei set him down and we all gathered around him. He vomited for a few minutes, and wiping his mouth, he said, “Those were ghosts last night. I know it.”

  We all agreed with him.

  “I must have fainted after they started speaking.” He tried to get up, and we all aided him.

  “I am fine. Let’s go.” He pushed us away.

  “You woke from the dead with some attitude,” Musa said.

  We all laughed and started walking. My hands began trembling again, I didn’t know why this time. It was a gloomy day and we kept asking Saidu if he was okay all the way to the next village.

  It was past midday when we arrived at a crowded village. We were shocked by how noisy it was in the middle of the war. It was the biggest village we had been to so far. It sounded like a marketplace. People were playing music and dancing, children were running around, and there was that familiar good smell of cooked cassava leaf in rich palm oil.

  As we walked through the village trying to find a place to sit away from the crowd, we saw some familiar faces. People hesitantly waved to us. We found a log under a mango tree and sat down. A woman whose face wasn’t among the familiar ones came and sat facing us.

  “You.” She pointed at me. “I know you,” she said.

  I did not know her face, but she insisted that she knew my family and me. She told me that Junior had come to the village a few weeks earlier looking for me and that she had also seen my mother, father, and little brother in the next village, which was about two days’ walk. She told us the direction and ended by saying, “In that village there are lots of people from Mattru Jong and the Sierra Rutile mining area. All of you might be able to find your families or news about them.”

  She got up and began dancing to the soukous music that was playing as she left us. We all began laughing. I wanted to leave right away, but we decided to spend the night in the village. Also, we wanted Saidu to rest, even though he kept telling us that he was fine. I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.

  We went to the river for a swim, and there we played hide-and-seek swimming games, running along the river’s edge screaming “Cocoo” to commence the game. Everyone was smiling.

  That night we stole a pot of rice and cassava leaves. We ate it under coffee trees at the edge of the village, washed the pots, and returned them. We had no place to sleep, so we chose a verandah on one of the houses after everyone had gone inside.

  I didn’t sleep that night. My hands began shaking as soon as my friends started snoring. I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. The dogs began to cry and ran from one end of the village to the other.

  Alhaji woke up and sat by me. “The dogs woke me up,” he said.

  “I couldn’t sleep to begin with,” I replied.

  “Maybe you are just anxious about seeing your family.” He chuckled. “I am, too.”

  Alhaji stood up. “Don’t you think it is strange, the way the dogs are crying?”

  One dog had come near the verandah on which we sat and was vigorously crying. A few more dogs joined in. Their crying pierced my heart.

  “Yes. They sound very human,” I said.

  “That is the same thing I was thinking.” Alhaji yawned. “I think dogs see things we do not see. Something must be wrong.” He sat down.

  We became quiet, just staring into the night. The dogs cried all night long, one continuing till the sky was completely clear. Babies then began to take up the cry. People started getting up, so we had to vacate the verandah. Alhaji and I began waking our friends. When he shook Saidu, Saidu was still.

  “Get up, we have to go now.” He shook Saidu harder
as we heard the people on whose verandah we had slept getting ready to come outside.

  “Saidu, Saidu,” Kanei coaxed him. “Maybe he fainted again,” he said.

  A man came out and greeted us. He carried a small bucket of water. He had a smile on his face that told us he had known all along that we were on the verandah.

  “This will do it.” The man sprinkled some of the cold water from his bucket on Saidu.

  But Saidu didn’t move. He just lay on his stomach, his face buried in the dust. His palms were turned upside down and they were pale. The man turned him around and checked his pulse. Saidu’s forehead was sweaty and wrinkled. His mouth was slightly opened and there was a path of dried tears at the corners of his eyes down to his cheeks.

  “Do you boys know anyone in this village?” the man asked.

  We all said no, shaking our heads. He exhaled heavily, put his bucket down, and placed both his hands on his head.

  “Who is the oldest?” he asked, looking at Alhaji.

  Kanei raised his hand. They stepped outside the verandah and the man whispered something in his ear. Kanei began to cry on the man’s shoulder. It was then that we admitted that Saidu had left us. Everyone else was crying, but I couldn’t cry. I felt dizzy and my eyes watered. My hands began shaking again. I felt the warmth inside my stomach, and my heart was beating slowly, but at a heavy rate. The man and Kanei walked away, and when they returned, they brought with them two men, who carried a wooden stretcher. They placed Saidu on it and asked us to follow them.

  Saidu’s body was washed and prepared for burial that same day. He was wrapped in white linen and placed in a wooden coffin that was set on a table in the living room of the man whose verandah we had slept on.

  “Are any of you his family?” a tall, slender, muscular man asked. He was in charge of the burial ceremonies in the village. We all shook our heads no. I felt as if we were denying Saidu, our friend, our traveling companion. He had become our family, but the man wanted a real family member who could authorize his burial.

  “Does any one of you know his family?” The man looked at us.

  “I do.” Kanei raised his hand.

  The man called him over to where he stood on the other side of the coffin. They began talking. I tried to figure out what they were saying by reading the elaborate gestures that the man made with his right hand. His left hand was on Kanei’s shoulder. Kanei’s lips moved for a while, and then he began nodding until the conversation was over.

  Kanei came back and sat with us on the stools that were provided for the funeral service, which only we attended, along with the man on whose verandah Saidu had left us. The rest of the people in the village quietly sat on their verandahs. They stood up as we walked through part of the village to the cemetery.

  I was in disbelief that Saidu had actually left us. I held on to the idea that he had just fainted and would get up soon. It hit me that he wasn’t going to get up only after he was lowered into the hole, just in the shroud, and the diggers started covering him with the earth. What was left of him was only a memory. The glands in my throat began to hurt. I couldn’t breathe well, so I opened my mouth. The man who had asked earlier if any of us were Saidu’s family began to read suras. It was then that I began to weep quietly. I let my tears drip on the earth and the summer dust absorb them. The men who had carried Saidu began placing rocks around the grave to hold the mounds of earth.

  After the burial, we were the only ones left in the cemetery. There were mounds of earth all over. Very few had sticks with something written on them. The rest were anonymous. Saidu had just joined them. We sat in the cemetery for hours, as if expecting something. But we were young—all of us were now thirteen, except for Kanei, who was three years older—and our emotions were in disarray. I couldn’t comprehend what or how I felt. This confusion hurt my head and made my stomach tense. We left the cemetery as night approached. It was quiet in the village. We sat outside on the log we had first sat on when we entered the village. None of us thought of going to sleep on a verandah. Kanei explained to us that Saidu had had to be buried, as the custom in the village was that the dead couldn’t be kept overnight. It was either that or we would have had to take Saidu out of the village. No one responded to Kanei. He stopped talking and the dogs began to cry again. They did all night, until we became restless.

  We walked up and down the village. Most people weren’t asleep; we could hear them whispering when the dogs took breaks or went to cry on opposite ends of the village. I remembered a few weeks back when Saidu had spoken about parts of him slowly dying each passing day, as we carried on with our journey. Perhaps all of him had died that night when he spoke in that strange voice after we had survived that attack by men with machetes, axes, and spears, I thought. My hands and feet began to shake, and they continued to do so throughout the night. I was worried and kept calling out my friends’ names, so that they wouldn’t fall asleep. I was afraid if any did, he was going to leave us. Early in the morning, Kanei told us that we were going to leave after sunrise and head for the next village. “I can’t stand another night listening to these dogs. They terrify me,” he said.

  That morning we thanked the men who had helped bury Saidu. “You will always know where he is laid,” one of the men said. I nodded in agreement, but I knew that the chances of coming back to the village were slim, as we had no control over our future. We knew only how to survive.

  As we left the village, everyone lined up to watch us go. I was scared, as this reminded me of when we had walked through the village with Saidu’s body. We went by the cemetery, which was at the edge of town, by the path that led to where we hoped to reunite with our families. The sun penetrated the graveyard, and as we stood there, a slight breeze blew, causing the trees surrounding the mounds of earth to sway gracefully. I felt a chill at the back of my neck, as if someone were softly blowing on me. A strand of smoke was rising from the village, making its way to the sky. I watched it as it disappeared. We were leaving our friend, or as my grandmother would put it, “His temporary journey in this world had ended.” We, on the other hand, had to continue.

  When we started to walk away, we all began to sob. The cockcrows faded, only to make us aware of our silence, the silence that asked, Who will be next to leave us? The question was in our eyes when we looked at each other. We walked fast as if trying to stay in the daytime, afraid that nightfall would turn over the uncertain pages of our lives.

  11

  WE HAD BEEN WALKING in silence through the night until we stopped to listen to the singing of morning birds shattering the silence of the day. As we sat on the side of the path, Moriba began to sob. He was sitting away from us, something he usually did with Saidu. He played with a piece of branch, trying to distract himself from what he was feeling. Everyone except me started to sob and moved next to Moriba, who was now crying loudly. I sat by myself, covering my face with the palms of my hands to hold back my tears. After a few minutes, my friends stopped crying. We continued on without saying a word to each other. We all knew that we could grieve only for a short while in order to continue staying alive.

  “I look forward to getting to this village. Ah, I will give my mother a very tight hug.” Alhaji smiled and then continued. “She always complains, though, when I give her a tight hug: ‘If you love me, stop squeezing my old bones so I can be alive longer.’ She is funny.”

  We giggled.

  “I have a feeling that we will find our families, or at least news of them.” Kanei stretched his hands as if trying to catch the sun. He looked at Alhaji, who was smiling uncontrollably. “I heard you have a beautiful sister. I am still just your friend, right?” We all started laughing. Alhaji jumped on Kanei’s back, and they began to wrestle in the grass. When they were done, they followed us on the path, singing one of S. E. Rogie’s songs, “Nor look me bad eye, nor weigh me lek dat…” We joined in and sang as if we were having one of life’s most glorious moments. But slowly silence returned and took over.

&n
bsp; One side of the sky was completely blue and the other was filled with stagnant clouds. The quiet breeze caused a branch to snap in the forest. The echo sounded like a cry, a wailing. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it, because my friends stopped briefly and listened attentively. The breeze picked up its pace. The leaves of the trees began to rub against each other, resisting the wind. More branches snapped in the forest and the wailing intensified. The trees looked as if they were in pain. They swayed in all directions and slapped each other with their branches. The clouds rolled over the blue sky and it became dark. A heavy rain followed, with thunder and lightning that lasted for less than fifteen minutes. Afterward, the sky returned to its bluest. I walked, perplexed, in my soaked clothes under the sun. At nighttime it began to rain again. The strands of rain fell brutally from the sky, whipping us. We walked for most of the night, wiping the water off our faces in order to see. It became unbearable to continue, so we sat at the foot of huge trees and waited. Whenever the lightning lit the forest, I could see where everyone was sitting. We all had our faces resting on our knees and our arms were crossed.

  The last hours of the night were long. By the time the rain stopped, it was light. We were all shivering, our fingertips pale and wrinkled.

  “We look like soaked chickens,” Musa said, laughing, as we emerged from under the trees. We found an opening where the sun had begun penetrating, and we squeezed and spread our shirts on the tops of the bushes and sat in the sun to dry ourselves.

  It was almost midday when we put on our damp clothes and continued walking. A few hours later we heard a cockcrow in the distance. Musa jumped in the air and we all began to laugh.

  Finally, we were approaching the village where seeing our families was actually a possibility. I couldn’t stop smiling. Coffee trees began to replace forest, and footprints appeared on the path. We heard rice being pounded and whispers in the breeze. We quickened our pace as these sounds assured us that life was ahead. On the opposite side of the coffee farm was a small banana farm, and there we came across a man cutting down hands of ripe bananas. We couldn’t see his face, as his head was behind the leaves.