A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

10

ONE OF THE UNSETTLING THINGS about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again. I was always on the move, always going somewhere. While we walked, I sometimes lagged behind, thinking about these things. To survive each passing day was my goal in life. At villages where we managed to find some happiness by being treated to food or fresh water, I knew that it was temporary and that we were only passing through. So I couldn’t bring myself to be completely happy. It was much easier to be sad than to go back and forth between emotions, and this gave me the determination I needed to keep moving. I was never disappointed, since I always expected the worst to happen. There were nights when I couldn’t sleep but stared into the darkest night until my eyes could see clearly through it. I thought about where my family was and whether they were alive.

One night while I sat outside in a village square thinking about how far I had come and what might lie ahead, I looked into the sky and saw how the thick clouds kept trying to cover the moon, yet it would reappear again and again to shine all night long. In some way my journey was like that of the moon—although I had even more thick clouds coming my way to make my spirit dull. I remembered something that Saidu had said one evening after we had survived another attack by men with spears and axes. Jumah, Moriba, and Musa were asleep on the verandah we occupied. Alhaji, Kanei, Saidu, and I were awake and quietly listening to the night. Saidu’s heavy breathing made our silence less unbearable. After a few hours had gone by, Saidu spoke in a very deep voice, as if someone were speaking through him. “How many more times do we have to come to terms with death before we find safety?” he asked.

He waited a few minutes, but the three of us didn’t say anything. He continued: “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 with you. It will be quieter than I am.” Saidu blew on the palms of his hands to warm them and lay on the floor. His heavy breathing intensified and I knew he had fallen asleep. Gradually, Kanei and then Alhaji fell asleep. I sat on a wooden bench against the wall and thought about Saidu’s words. Tears formed in my eyes and my forehead became warm, thinking about what Saidu had said. I tried not to believe that I too was dying, slowly, on my way to find safety. The only time I was able to fall asleep that night was when the last morning breeze, the one containing the irresistible urge to sleep, saved me from my wandering mind.

Even though our journey was difficult, every once in a while we were able to do something that was normal and made us happy for a brief moment. One morning we arrived at a village where the men were getting ready to go hunting. They invited us to join them. At the end of the hunt, one of the older men shouted, pointing at us, “We are going to feast tonight, and the strangers are welcome to stay.” The other men clapped and began walking on the path back to the village. We walked behind them. They sang, carrying their nets and the animals—mostly porcupines and deer—that had been caught on their shoulders.

Upon our arrival at the village, the women and children clapped to welcome us. It was past midday. The sky was blue and the wind was beginning to pick up. Some of the men shared the meat among several households, and the rest was given to the women to be cooked for the feast. We hung about in the village and fetched water for the women who were preparing the food. Most of the men had returned to work the farms.

I walked around the village by myself and found a hammock on one of the verandahs. I lay in it, swinging slowly to get my thoughts in motion. I began to think about the times when I visited my grandmother and I would sleep in the hammock at the farm. I would wake up staring into her eyes as she played with my hair. She would tickle me and then hand me a cucumber to eat. Junior and I would sometimes fight for the hammock, and if he got it, I would trick him by loosening its ropes so that he would fall once he sat in it. This would discourage him, and he would go about the farm doing something else. My grandmother knew about my tricks and made fun of me, calling me carseloi, which means spider. In many Mende stories the spider is the character that tricks other animals to get what he wants, but his tricks always backfire on him.

As I was thinking about these things, I fell out of the hammock. I was too lazy to get up, so I sat on the ground and thought about my two brothers, my father, mother, and grandmother. I wished to be with them.

I put my hands behind my head and lay on my back, trying to hold on to the memories of my family. Their faces seemed to be far off somewhere in my mind, and to get to them I had to bring up painful memories. I longed for the gentle, dark, and shiny old hands of my grandmother; my mother’s tight enclosed embrace, during the times I visited her, as if hiding and protecting me from something; my father’s laughter when we played soccer together and when he sometimes chased me in the evening with a bowl of cold water to get me to take a shower; my older brother’s arms around me when we walked to school and when he sometimes elbowed me to stop me from saying things I would regret; and my little brother, who looked exactly like me and would sometimes tell people that his name was Ishmael when he did something wrong. I had trouble conjuring up these thoughts, and when I finally ventured into these memories, I became so sad that the bones in my body started to ache. I went to the river, dove into the water, and sat at the bottom, but my thoughts followed me.

In the evening after everyone had returned to the village, the food was brought outside to the village square. It was divided among plates and seven people ate from each plate. After the meal, the villagers started playing drums, and we all joined hands and danced in circles under the moonlight. During an interval after several songs, one of the men announced that when the dancing had been exhausted, “whenever that will be,” he jokingly said, “the strangers will tell us stories about where they are from.” He lifted his hands and motioned for the drummers to continue. During the festivities I thought about the biggest celebration we used to have in my town at the end of the year. The women would sing about all the gossip, the dramas, the fights, and everything that had happened that year.

Would they be able to sing about all that will happen by the end of this war? I thought.

I also wondered a bit why the villagers were so kind to us, but I didn’t dwell on these thoughts, because I wanted to enjoy myself. The dance never ended that night and we had to leave early the next day, so we left as most of the villagers slept. We carried with us a plastic gallon of water and some smoked meat we had been given, and the old people we passed, sitting on their verandahs, waiting to be warmed by the morning sun, waved and said, “May the spirit of the ancestors be with you, children.”

When we were walking, I turned around to see the village one last time. It was yet to be born for that day. A cock crowed to dispatch the last remains of night and to mute the crickets that couldn’t let go of the darkness of their own accord. The sun was slowly rising but had already begun casting shadows on the huts and houses. I could still hear the drums echoing in my head from the previous night, but I refused to be happy. When I turned away from the village, my traveling companions were dancing in the sand, mimicking some of the dances we had seen.

“Show us what you’ve got,” they said, clapping and circling me. I couldn’t refuse. I started gyrating my hips to their claps, and they joined me. We placed our hands on each other’s shoulders and walked forward, dancing to sounds we made with our mouths. I was carrying the smoked meat in a small bag that I waved in the air to increase the speed at which we kicked our feet from side to side. We danced and laughed into the morning. But gradually we stopped. It was as if we all knew that we could be happy for only a brief moment. We weren’t in a hurry, so we walked slowly and quietly after we stopped dancing. At the end of the day we had finished drinking the water we were carrying.

Around nightfall we arrived at a very peculiar village. I am in fact not sure if it was a village. There was one large house and one kitchen less than a kilometer from the house. The pots were moldy, and there was a small storage house. The place was located in the middle of nowhere.

“Now, this will be an easy village for the rebels to capture,” Jumah said, laughing.

We walked around trying to find a sign of someone’s presence. Some sort of production of palm oil had taken place here; there were the remains of palm nut seeds everywhere. On the river floated a deserted canoe in which spirogyra had grown. Back at the old house, we debated where to sleep. We sat outside on logs at the foot of the verandah and Musa offered to tell a story about Bra Spider.

“No!” we protested—we all knew it too well—but he still continued.

“Bra Spider stories are always good no matter how many times you have heard them,” Musa said.

“My mother told me that whenever a story is told, it is worth listening to. So please listen. I will tell it quickly.” He coughed and began.

“Bra Spider lived in a village that was surrounded by many other villages. At the end of the harvest season, all the villages had a feast in celebration of their successful harvest. Wine and food were in abundance and people ate until they could see their reflections on each other’s stomach.”

“What?” we all said in shock at this extra detail he had added to the story.

“I am telling the story, so I can tell my version. Wait for your turn.” Musa stood up. We listened attentively to see if he was going to embellish the story with more striking details. He sat down and continued:

“Each village specialized in one dish. Bra Spider’s village made okra soup with palm oil and fish. Mmm…mmm…mmm. The other villages made cassava leaves with meat, potato leaves, and so on. Each village boasted about how good their meal was going to be. All the villages had an open invitation to their feasts. But Bra Spider took it to the extreme. He wanted to be present at all the feasts. He had to come up with a plan. He began collecting ropes around his village and weaving them several months before the feast. While people carried bushels of rice, bundles of wood, to the square and women pounded rice in mortars, removing the husk from its seeds, Bra Spider was stretching the ropes on his verandah and measuring their length. When men went hunting, he was busy laying out his ropes by the paths from his village to all the surrounding villages. He gave the ends of his ropes to the chiefs, who tied them to the nearest trees at their village squares. ‘Tell your people to pull the rope when their meal is ready,’ he told every chief in his nasal voice. Bra Spider starved for a week as he readied himself. When the day finally came, Bra Spider rose up earlier than everyone else. He sat on his verandah and securely tied all the ropes at his waist. He was shaking and saliva dripped out of his mouth as the smell of smoked meat, dried fish, and various stews wafted out from the cooking huts.

“Unluckily for Bra Spider, all the feasts started at the same time and the chiefs ordered the ropes to be pulled. He was suspended in the air above his village, pulled from all directions. Bra Spider screamed for help, but the drums and songs from his village square drowned his voice. He could see people gathering around plates of food and licking their hands at the end of the meal. Children walked across the village on their way to the river, munching on pieces of stewed chicken, goat, and deer meat. Each time Bra Spider tried to loosen the ropes, the villages pulled harder, as they thought it was a signal that he was ready to visit their feast. At the end of the celebration in Bra Spider’s village, a boy saw him and called on the elders. They cut the ropes and brought Bra Spider down. In a barely audible voice he demanded some food, but there was nothing left. The feasts had ended everywhere. Bra Spider remained hungry, and because he was pulled so tight for so long, this explains why spiders have a thin waistline.”

“All this food in the story is making me hungry. Good story, though. I have never heard it told like this,” Alhaji said, stretching his back. We all laughed, as we knew he was mocking Musa for adding some details to the tale.

As soon as Musa was done, night took over the village. It was as if the sky had quickly rolled over, changing its bright side to dark, bringing sleep with it for my companions. We placed the smoked meat and the gallon of water by the door of the room we occupied. I stayed in the room with my friends, even though I didn’t fall asleep until the very last hours of the night. I remembered nights I had spent sitting with my grandmother by the fire. “You are growing up so fast. It feels like yesterday when I was at your name-giving ceremony.” She would look at me, her shiny face glowing, before she told me the story of my name-giving ceremony. Growing up, I had been to several of these ceremonies, but Grandmother always told me about mine.

Everyone in the community was present. Before things started, food was prepared in abundance with everyone’s help. Early in the morning, the men slaughtered a sheep, skinned it, and shared the meat among the finest women cooks, so that each would cook her best dish for the ceremony. While the women cooked, the men stood around in the yard welcoming each other with firm handshakes, laughing, each man clearing his throat as loud as he could before he started talking. Boys who hung about and eavesdropped on the men’s conversations would be called upon to perform certain tasks—slaughter chickens behind the cooking huts, chop firewood.

Near the thatched-roof cooking huts, women sang while they pounded rice in mortars. They did tricks with pestles. They flipped them in the air and clapped several times before they caught them, and continued pounding and singing. The women who were older and more experienced not only clapped several times before they caught their pestles but also made elaborate “thank you” gestures, all in harmony with the songs they sang. Inside the huts, girls sat on the ground fanning red charcoals with a bamboo fan or an old plate, or simply by blowing to start the fire under the big pots.

By nine o’clock in the morning the food was ready. Everyone dressed up in his or her finest clothing. The women were especially elegant in their beautiful patterned cotton skirts, dresses, shirts, and lappei—a big cotton cloth that women wrap around their waist—and extravagant head wraps. Everyone was in high spirits and ready to commence the ceremony that was to last until noon.

“The imam arrived late,” said my grandmother. A large metal tray containing leweh (rice paste), kola nuts lined on the side, and water in a calabash was handed over to him, and after settling himself on a stool in the middle of the yard, and rolling up the sleeves of his white gown, he mixed the leweh and separated it into several carefully molded portions, each topped with a kola nut. The imam then proceeded to read several suras from the Quran. After the prayer he sprinkled some water on the ground to invite the spirits of the ancestors.

The imam waved to my mother, motioning her to bring me to him. It was my first time outside in the open. My mother knelt before the imam and presented me to him. He rubbed some of the water from the calabash on my forehead and recited more prayers, followed by the proclamation of my name. “Ishmael he shall be called,” he said, and everyone clapped. Women started singing and dancing. My mother passed me to my father, who raised me high above the crowd before passing me around to be held by everyone present. I had become a member of the community and was now owned and cared for by all.

The food was brought out on humongous plates. The elders started to feast first, all eating from one plate. The men did the same, then the boys, before the women and girls had their share. Singing and dancing followed the feast. While the jubilation was going on, I was placed in the hands and care of older women who couldn’t dance much anymore. They held me, smiled at me, and called me “little husband.” They started telling me stories about the community. Whenever I gave them a smile, they remarked, “He loves stories. Well, you came to the right place.”

I smiled a bit, as I could visualize my grandmother’s happy face at the end of this story. Some of my traveling companions were snoring as the late-night breeze caused my eyes to become heavy.

When we woke up the next morning, all the smoked meat was gone. We started blaming each other. Kanei inspected Musa’s lips. Musa became angry, and they started throwing blows at each other. I was about to part them when Saidu pointed to the tattered bag at the edge of the verandah.

“This is the bag, right?” he said, pointing to its chewed edges. “This was not done by any of us. See, the bag is still tied.” He showed it to us. “Something else ate the meat, and whatever ate this meat is still around somewhere.” He picked up a stick and began walking toward the bushes.

“You see, it wasn’t me.” Musa pushed Kanei out of his way as he joined Saidu.

“It is some kind of animal,” Moriba said, inspecting the prints the creature’s feet had left on the ground. Some of us looked around the village while others followed the tracks of the creature down the path to the river. We were about to give up looking when Saidu shouted from behind the storage house in the village:

“I found the thief and he is angry.”

We ran to see what it was. It was a dog munching on the last bit of the smoked meat. Upon seeing us, it began barking and guarding the meat with its hind legs.

“You bad dog. That is ours.” Alhaji took the stick from Saidu and started chasing the animal. The dog still held on to the last bit of meat as it disappeared among the bushes. With a shake of the head, Saidu picked up the gallon of water and started heading down the path. We all followed him, Alhaji still holding the stick.

That afternoon we began rummaging the bushes for whatever fruit looked edible. We didn’t converse much as we walked.

In the evening we stopped to rest along the path.

“I should have killed that dog,” Alhaji said slowly, as he rolled on his back.

“Why?” I asked.

“Yes. Why? What good would it have done?” Moriba sat up.

“I just wanted to kill it because it ate the only food we had,” Alhaji angrily replied.

“It would have made good meat,” Musa said.

“I don’t think so. Plus, it would have been difficult to prepare it, anyway.” I turned to Musa, who was lying on his back next to me.

“You guys disgust me just thinking about something like that.” Jumah spat.

“Well.” Musa stood up.

“He is going to tell another story.” Alhaji sighed.

Musa turned to Alhaji. “Yes, well, not really a story.” He paused and then continued. “My father used to work for these Malaysians, and he told me that they ate dogs. So if Alhaji had killed that dog, I would have loved to try some. So when I see my father again, I can tell him how it tasted. And he will not be angry with me, because I had a good excuse for eating dog meat,” Musa concluded.

We all became quiet, thinking about our own families. Musa had triggered in all of us what we were afraid of thinking.

Musa was home with his father in Mattru Jong when the attack took place. His mother had gone to the market to buy fish for the evening meal. He and his father had run toward the market and found his mother, but as they ran out of town, his mother had somehow been left behind. They realized that she wasn’t with them only after they stopped for a rest at the first village they reached. His father cried and told Musa to stay there while he went to look for his wife. Musa told his father that he wanted to go back down the path with him. “No, my son, stay here and I’ll bring back your mother.” As soon as his father left, the village was attacked and Musa ran away. He had been running ever since.

Alhaji was at the river fetching water when the rebels attacked. He ran home, only to stand in front of the empty house shouting the names of his parents, two brothers, and sister.

Kanei had escaped with his parents, but lost his two sisters and three brothers in the chaos. He and his parents had jumped in a boat along with many others to cross the Jong River. When the boat reached the middle of the river, the rebels on shore began shooting at the people in the boat, and everyone panicked, causing the boat to capsize. Kanei swam to the other side of the river as fast as he could. When he pulled himself ashore, he could see people drowning in the water, screaming as they fought to stay afloat. The rebels laughed at the dying people. He had wept all night as he followed the survivors, who made their way to a village down the river. There, people had told Kanei that his parents had passed through. The hope of finding his family had kept Kanei moving over the months.

Jumah and Moriba lived next to each other. RPGs had destroyed their houses during the attack. They had run toward the wharf to find their parents, who were traders, but their parents were nowhere to be found. They ran to the forest where their families had earlier hidden, but they weren’t there either.

Saidu’s family was unable to leave town during the attack. Along with his parents and three sisters, who were nineteen, seventeen, and fifteen, he hid under the bed during the night. In the morning the rebels broke into the house and found his parents and three sisters. Saidu had climbed to the attic to bring down the remaining rice for their journey, when the rebels stormed in. Saidu sat in the attic, holding his breath and listening to the wailing of his sisters as the rebels raped them. His father shouted at them to stop, and one of the rebels hit him with the butt of his gun. Saidu’s mother cried and apologized to her daughters for having brought them into this world to be victims of such madness. After the rebels had raped the sisters over and over, they bundled the family’s property and made the father and mother carry it. They took the three girls with them.

“To this day, I carry the pain that my sisters and parents felt. When I climbed down after the rebels were gone, I couldn’t stand and my tears froze in my eyes. I felt like my veins were being harshly pulled out of my body. I still feel like that all the time, as I can’t stop thinking about that day. What did my sisters do to anyone?” Saidu said after he was done telling us the story one night in an abandoned village. My teeth became sour as I listened to his story. It was then that I understood why he was so quiet all the time.

“We should keep walking,” Kanei said sadly as he dusted his pants. We had agreed to walk at night. During the day we would search for food and take turns sleeping. At night it felt as if we were walking with the moon. It followed us under thick clouds and waited for us at the other end of dark forest paths. It would disappear with sunrise but return again, hovering on our path, the next night. Its brightness became dull as nights passed. Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. 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.

During the day the sun refused to rise gradually, as it had before. It became bright from the minute it surfaced from behind the clouds, its golden rays darkening my eyes. The clouds in the blue sky sailed violently, destroying each other’s formation.

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.