A Long Way Gone

by Ishmael Beah

I became afraid, since I could no longer tell the difference between dream and reality.

Whenever I get a chance to observe the moon now, I still see those same images I saw when I was six, and it pleases me to know that that part of my childhood is still embedded in me.

These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.

One of the messengers was a young man. They had carved their initials, RUF (Revolutionary United Front), on his body with a hot bayonet and chopped off all his fingers with the exception of his thumbs. The rebels called this mutilation “one love.”

The moon wasn’t in the sky; the air was stiff, as if nature itself was afraid of what was happening.

Young boys were immediately recruited, and the initials RUF were carved wherever it pleased the rebels, with a hot bayonet. This not only meant that you were scarred for life but that you could never escape from them, because escaping with the carving of the rebels’ initials was asking for death, as soldiers would kill you without any questions and militant civilians would do the same.

I couldn’t hear their words, because all I could think about was death. I struggled to avoid fainting.

The back of my head was getting warm, as if expecting a bullet anytime.

“You left because you are against our cause as freedom fighters. Right?” The old man closed his eyes tightly and began to sob.

What cause? I thought. I used the only freedom that I had then, my thought. They couldn’t see it.

This was one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy.

I had passed through burnt villages where dead bodies of men, women, and children of all ages were scattered like leaves on the ground after a storm. Their eyes still showed fear, as if death hadn’t freed them from the madness that continued to unfold.

Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the eye of my mind refused to be closed and continued to plague me with images.

The most difficult part of being in the forest was the loneliness. It became unbearable each day. One thing about being lonesome is that you think too much, especially when there isn’t much else you can do. I didn’t like this and I tried to stop myself from thinking, but nothing seemed to work. I decided to just ignore every thought that came to my head, because it brought too much sadness. Apart from eating and drinking water and once every other day taking a bath, I spent most of my time fighting myself mentally in order to avoid thinking about what I had seen or wondering where my life was going, where my family and friends were. The more I resisted thinking, the longer the days became, and I felt as if my head was becoming heavier each passing day. I became restless and was afraid to sleep for fear that my suppressed thoughts would appear in my dreams.

“If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.”

In truth, realizing that I would eventually be caught, I had stopped running and offered my hands to be tied. The man chasing me was a little taken aback. He approached me with caution and motioned another man walking behind me with a stick and machete to pay attention. As the man tied my hands, we exchanged a glance that lasted a few seconds. I opened my eyes wide, trying to tell him that I was just a twelve-year-old boy. But something in his eyes told me that he didn’t care for my safety but only for his and his village’s.

As we walked, we examined the rope marks on our wrists and laughed about what had happened to avoid crying.

“Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even though I am still alive, I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking

Saidu’s mother cried and apologized to her daughters for having brought them into this world to be victims of such madness.

Under these stars and sky I used to hear stories, but now it seemed as if it was the sky that was telling us a story as its stars fell, violently colliding with each other. The moon hid behind clouds to avoid seeing what was happening.

Over and over in our training he would say that same sentence: Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything that has happened to you.

Ignore the safety pin, they said, it will only slow you down.

A young soldier came by with a plastic bag full of some kind of tablets. They looked like capsules, but they were plain white. He handed them to each of us with a cup of water. “The corporal said it will boost your energy,”

Josiah and Sheku dragged the tip of their guns, as they still weren’t strong enough to carry them and the guns were taller than they were.

My eyes were fixed on him when I heard Josiah scream. He cried for his mother in the most painfully piercing voice that I had ever heard. It vibrated inside my head to the point that I felt my brain had shaken loose from its anchor.

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

I immediately woke up from my dream and began shooting inside the tent, until the thirty rounds in the magazine were finished. The corporal and the lieutenant came in afterward and took me outside. I was sweating, and they threw water on my face and gave me a few more of the white capsules. I stayed up all night and couldn’t sleep for a week. We went out two more times that week and I had no problem shooting my gun.

Use this

We also attacked civilian villages to capture recruits and whatever else we could find.

The idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had not only snapped during the first killing, it had also stopped making remorseful records, or so it seemed.

Whenever I looked at rebels during raids, I got angrier, because they looked like the rebels who played cards in the ruins of the village where I had lost my family. So when the lieutenant gave orders, I shot as many as I could, but I didn’t feel better. After every gunfight we would enter the rebel camp, killing those we had wounded. We would then search the houses and gather gallons of gasoline, enormous amounts of marijuana and cocaine, bales of clothes, crapes, watches, rice, dried fish, salt, gari, and many other things. We rounded up the civilians—men, women, boys, and young girls—hiding in the huts and houses, and made them carry our loot back to the base.

When the young muscular rebel was captured, the lieutenant slit his neck with his bayonet. The rebel ran up and down the village before he fell to the ground and stopped moving.

We set the thatched roofs on fire and left, taking the prisoners with us. The flames on the thatched roofs waved us off as they danced with the afternoon breeze, swaying as if in agony.

The tones of nature an his srroundngs have chnged to more possitive

“Our job is a serious one and we have the most capable soldiers, who will do anything to defend this country. We are not like the rebels, those riffraffs who kill people for no reason. We kill them for the good and betterment of this country. So respect all these men”—he pointed to us again—“for offering their services.”

Sometimes we were asked to leave for war in the middle of a movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission.

THE VILLAGES THAT WE CAPTURED and turned into our bases as we went along and the forests that we slept in became my home. My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed.

The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity.

Why had the lieutenant decided to give us up to these civilians? We thought that we were part of the war until the end. The squad had been our family. Now we were being taken away, just like that, without any explanation.

“We fought for the RUF; the army is the enemy. We fought for freedom, and the army killed my family and destroyed my village. I will kill any of those army bastards every time I get a chance to do so.”

It was war all over again. Perhaps the naïve foreigners thought that removing us from the war would lessen our hatred for the RUF. It hadn’t crossed their minds that a change of environment wouldn’t immediately make us normal boys; we were dangerous, and brainwashed to kill. They had just started this process of rehabilitation, so this was one of the first lessons they had to learn.

We were unhappy because we needed our guns and drugs.

Whenever I turned on the tap water, all I could see was blood gushing out.

Mourning the dead wasn’t part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive.

People like the lieutenant, whom I had obeyed and trusted, had made me question trusting anyone, especially adults.

The sergeant doctor cleaned my wounds and would always say, “You are lucky.” 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.

“These are the men responsible for the bullet holes in your foot. It’s time to make sure they never shoot at you or your comrades.” The lieutenant pointed at the prisoners. I am not sure if one of the captives was the shooter, but any captive would do at that time. So they were all lined up, six of them, with their hands tied. I shot them on their feet and watched them suffer for an entire day before finally shooting them in the head so that they would stop crying. 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 loved the history of Ethiopia and the story of the meeting of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. I related to the long distance they traveled and their determination to reach their chosen destination. I wished that my journey had been as meaningful and as full of merriment as theirs.

The more I spoke about my experiences to Esther, the more I began to cringe at the gruesome details,

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

The visitors from the European Commission, the UN, UNICEF, and several NGOs arrived at the center in a convoy of cars one afternoon. They wore suits and ties and shook hands with each other before they started walking around the center.

“I think my troublesome days are long gone,” I said sadly.