A Long Way Gone

by Ishmael Beah

“Ah, you are still a boy, you have time to be a little more troublesome,” my uncle said.

Allie laughed throughout the game, and I couldn’t even get myself to smile.

She was wearing her white uniform and was on her way to take on other traumatized children. It must be tough living with so many war stories. I was just living with one, mine, and it was difficult, as the nightmares about what had happened continued to torment me. Why does she do it? Why do they all do it? I thought as we went our separate ways. It was the last time I saw her. I loved her but never told her.

But gradually I adjusted to being around people who were happy all the time.

I was very confused about why the window was set up in such a way that the human connection was lost between the interviewer and the interviewee.

We left New York City on November 15, 1996. My sixteenth birthday was eight days away, and throughout the flight back home I still felt as if I was dreaming, a dream that I didn’t want to wake up from. I was sad to leave, but I was also pleased to have met people outside of Sierra Leone. Because if I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world.

In the morning, families sat on their verandahs and held their children close, staring at the city streets where gunmen roamed in groups, looting, raping, and killing people at will. Mothers wrapped their trembling arms around their children each time the gunshots intensified. People mostly ate soaked raw rice with sugar or plain gari with salt, and listened to the radio, hoping to hear some good news.

My uncle laughed less and less, and sighed more and more. We continued to hope that things would change, but they kept getting worse.

He looked at me with bloodshot eyes and a face that said, “I will kill you if I want to and nothing will come of it.” The look was familiar to me.

It sickened me to see that Sierra Leoneans asked money from those who had come from the war. They were benefiting from people who were running for their lives. Why does one have to pay to leave his own country? I thought, but I couldn’t argue. I had to pay the money. The immigration officers were asking for three hundred leones, almost two months’ pay, to put a departure

When I was seven I had an answer to this question that made sense to me. I never discussed it with anyone, though, for fear of how my mother would feel. I concluded to myself that if I were the hunter, I would shoot the monkey so that it would no longer have the chance to put other hunters in the same predicament.