A Long Way Gone

by Ishmael Beah

The veins on my arms stood out and I could feel them pulsating as if they had

begun to breathe of their own accord.

It seems he is detaching himself from the traumatic experience.

The silence torme...

It vibrated inside my head to the point that I felt my brain had shaken loose from its anchor.

Is he going to become something else entirely? Completely lose himself after this?

I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man.

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.

I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them.

I only drank water and felt nothing.

The idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water.

How has he changed so drastically? He is numb. Does he want to die? Or is he just too high to realize what he is doing?

“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.

We cheered again, raising our guns in the air, shouting and whistling.

He became like the people he despised.

It was as if nothing else existed outside our reality.

My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed.

My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.

But we were still traumatized, and now that we had time to think, the fastened mantle of our war memories slowly began to open.

I would try desperately to think about my childhood, but I couldn’t.

The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment in my life before the war.

He was in survival mode.

The forest was wet and the rain washed the blood off the leaves as if cleansing the surface of the forest, but the dead bodies remained under the bushes and the blood that poured out of the bodies stayed on top of the soaked soil, as if the soil had refused to absorb any more blood for that day.

I didn’t know what to say and also didn’t trust anyone at this point in my life. I had learned to survive and take care of myself. I had done just that for most of my short life, with no one to trust, and frankly, I liked being alone, since it made surviving easier. People like the lieutenant, whom I had obeyed and trusted, had made me question trusting anyone, especially adults. I was very suspicious of people’s intentions. I had come to believe that people befriended only to exploit one another. So I ignored the nurse and began to stare out the window.

At that time I didn’t think I was lucky, I thought I was brave and knew how to fight. Little did I know that surviving the war that I was in, or any other kind of war, was not a matter of feeling trained or brave. These were just things that made me feel I was immune from death.

Before I shot each man, I looked at him and saw how his eyes gave up hope and steadied before I pulled the trigger. I found their somber eyes irritating.

I couldn’t face the nightmares I knew would come.

At the end of each laugh there was always some feeling of sadness that I couldn’t escape.

children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.

I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.

I liked being alone.

It seemed we were transforming our sufferings as we talked about ways to solve their causes and let them be known to the world.

I knew I could never forget my past, but I wanted to stop talking about it so that I would be fully present in my new life.

I was always losing everything that meant something to me.