A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

17

I HAD NOT BEEN to the hospital since I had walked out a few months earlier, while the nurse was chatting with the sissy city lieutenant, and she had given up trying to get me to come back for a checkup. But one afternoon, during a table tennis match at which the entire staff was present, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was the nurse. She was wearing a white uniform and a white hat. It was the first time I had looked at her directly. Her white teeth contrasted with her dark, shiny skin, and when she smiled, her face not only increased in beauty, it also glowed with charm. She was tall and had big brown eyes that were kind and inviting. She handed me a bottle of Coca-Cola. “Come and see me whenever you feel like it,” she said, smiling, as she walked away. The Coca-Cola bottle was cold and it shocked me. I left the game hall with Alhaji and we went outside and sat on a rock drinking the soft drink. “She likes you,” Alhaji teased me. I didn’t say anything.

“Well, do you like her?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She is older and she is our nurse,” I said.

“You mean you are afraid of women,” Alhaji replied, nodding.

“I don’t think she likes me the way you are thinking about it.” I looked at Alhaji, who was laughing at what I had said.

After we finished the bottle, Alhaji left and I decided to go to the hospital. When I got to the entrance, I peeked in and saw the nurse on the phone. She motioned for me to come inside and sit. She smiled and made sure that I noticed that it was because of my presence and not her phone conversation. I looked around and saw a chart on the wall with all the names of the boys at the center. In the boxes beside most of the names there was a check indicating that they had been to at least one session. There was nothing in the boxes across from my name. The nurse took the chart down and put it into a drawer as she hung up the phone. She pulled her chair closer to me and I thought she was going to ask me a question about the war, but instead she calmly asked, “What is your name?” I was surprised, since I was certain that she knew my name. “You know my name,” I angrily said.

“Maybe I do, but I want you to tell me your name,” she insisted, widening her eyes.

“Okay, okay. Ishmael,” I said.

“Great name.” She nodded and continued. “My name is Esther and we should be friends.”

“Are you sure you want to be friends with me?” I asked. She thought for a while and said, “Maybe not.”

I was quiet for a bit, as 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.

“I am your nurse and that’s all. If you want to be friends with me, you will have to ask me and I will have to trust you first,” she said. I smiled, because I was thinking the same thing. She was perplexed at first by the sudden smile. But then she said, “You have a great smile, you should smile more.” I stopped immediately and tensed my face.

“Is there anything that you want from the city?” she asked, but I didn’t answer.

“That’s it for today,” she said.

A few days after that first conversation, the nurse gave me a present. I was watching some of the boys roll a volleyball net onto the yard. Alhaji returned from his session at the hospital and told me that nurse Esther said I should go see her. I wanted to watch the volleyball game, but Alhaji began to pull me and didn’t let go until we were at the doorway of the hospital. He then shoved me inside and ran away giggling. Lying on the floor, I looked up to see Esther sitting behind her desk, smiling.

“Alhaji said you want to see me,” I said, getting to my feet.

She threw a package at me. I held it in my hand, wondering what it was and why she had gotten it for me. She was looking at me, waiting for me to open it. When I unwrapped it, I jumped up and hugged her, but immediately held back my happiness. I sternly asked, “Why did you get me this Walkman and cassette if we are not friends? And how did you know that I like rap music?”

“Please sit down,” she said, taking the package from me, putting the battery and cassette in the Walkman, and handing it to me. I put the headphones on and there was Run-D.M.C.: “It’s like that, and that the way it is…” coming through the headphones. I began to shake my head, then Esther lifted the headphones off my ears and said, “I have to examine you while you listen to the music.” I agreed, and took off my shirt, stood on a scale, and she checked my tongue, used a flash-light to look into my eyes…I didn’t care because the song had taken hold of me, and I listened closely to every word. But when she began examining my legs and saw the scars on my left shin, she took my headphones off again and asked, “How did you get these scars?”

“Bullet wounds,” I casually replied.

Her face filled with sorrow and her voice was shaking when she spoke: “You have to tell me what happened so I can prescribe treatment.” At first I was reluctant, but she said she would be able to treat me effectively only if I told her what had happened, especially about how my bullet wounds were treated. So I told her the whole story about how I got shot, not because I really wanted to, but because I thought that if I told her some of the gruesome truth of my war years she would be afraid of me and would cease asking questions. She listened attentively when I began to talk. Her eyes were glued to my face, and I bowed my head as I delved into my recent past.

During the second dry season of my war years, we were low on food and ammunition. So, as usual, we decided to attack another village. First, I went with my squad to spy on a village. We watched the village all day and saw that there were more men than us and that they were well armed and had newer guns. I am not sure if they were rebels, because they had fewer boys than any of the other groups we had attacked. Half wore army uniforms and half civilian clothes. We returned to base and I reported my squad’s findings to the lieutenant. We immediately left for the village, which was about three days’ walk. The plan was to first secure the village, then remain there and form a new base instead of bringing the goods back.

We left our village that night, alternately walking fast and jogging on the path all night. During the three-day journey, we stopped once a day to eat, drink, and take drugs. We carried with us all the ammunition, guns, and semiautomatic machine guns. Each of us had two guns, one strapped to our back, the other held in our hands. We left only two men behind to guard the base. On the morning of the third day, the lieutenant made us rest longer than we had during the previous days. Afterward, we walked all day and into the evening until the village was in sight.

There were many mango, orange, and guava trees in the village, and it looked as if it had been a farm. Surrounding it, we waited for the lieutenant’s command. As we lay in ambush, we began to realize that the place was empty. I was lying next to the lieutenant and he looked at me with a puzzled face. I whispered to him that the village had been full of gunmen a few days ago, even though it now looked deserted. As we continued to watch, a dog strolled across the village, barking as it went down the path. About an hour later, five gunmen entered the village. They took buckets from the verandah of one of the houses and headed toward the river. We were beginning to suspect that something was amiss when a shot was fired from behind us. It was clear now: we were being ambushed. The attackers wanted to push us toward the village so they could have us in the open.

We exchanged fire all night, until morning arrived, at which point we had no choice but to retreat into the village where they wanted us. We had already lost about five men, and the rebels were coming at the rest of us. They were up in the mango, orange, and guava trees, ready to rain bullets down on us. My squad scattered, running from one end of the village to the other, crouching behind houses. We had to get out before it was too late, but first we had to get rid of the attackers in the trees, which we did by spraying bullets into the branches to make the rebels fall off them. Those who didn’t immediately die we shot before they landed on the ground. To avoid the open area and regroup in the nearby forest, we had to make an opening for ourselves; there was too much firepower surrounding us. So we concentrated our firepower on one area of the forest until everyone was dead. As soon as we had time to gather, the lieutenant once again gave us his little talk about how we had to fight fiercely to capture the village, otherwise we would have to roam the forest looking for another base.

Some people were injured, but not so severely as to keep them from fighting; others, like myself, had received many bullet wounds that they ignored. Our first counterattack was carried out in order to secure ammunition from the dead. Then we launched a second fierce attack to gain some control of the village. For more than twenty-four hours we retreated and attacked, using the arms and ammunition from those we had killed. Finally it seemed we had overpowered our rivals. The gunshots had stopped. The bushes behind the mango trees were still. The village, it seemed, was ours.

I was filling my backpack with ammunition from a hut when bullets began to rain on the village again. I was hit three times on my left foot. The first two bullets went in and out, and the last one stayed inside my foot. I couldn’t walk, so I lay on the ground and shot into the bush where the bullets that hit me had come from. I released the entire round of the magazine into that one area. I remember feeling a tingle in my spine, but I was too drugged to really feel the pain, even though my foot had begun to swell. The sergeant doctor in my squad dragged me into one of the houses and tried to remove the bullet. Each time he raised his hands from my wound, I saw my blood all over his fingers. He constantly wiped my forehead with a soaked cloth. My eyes began to grow heavy and I fainted.

I do not know what happened, but when I woke up the next day I felt as if I had had nails hammered into the bones of my foot and my veins were being chiseled. I felt so much pain that I was unable to cry out loud; tears just fell from my eyes. The ceiling of the thatched-roof house where I was lying on a bed was blurry. My eyes struggled to become familiar with my surroundings. The gunfire had ceased and the village was quiet, so I assumed that the attackers had been successfully driven away. I felt a brief relief for that, but the pain in my foot returned, causing the veins in my entire body to tighten. I tucked my lips in, closed my heavy eyelids, and held tight to the edges of the wooden bed. I heard footsteps of people entering the house. They stood by my bed, and as soon as they began to speak, I recognized their voices.

“The boy is suffering and we have no medicine here to lessen his pain. Everything is at our former base.” The sergeant doctor sighed and continued. “It will take six days to send someone to get the medicine and return. He will die from the pain by then.”

“We have to send him to the former base, then. We need those provisions from that base, anyway. Do all you can to make sure that the boy stays alive,” the lieutenant said, and walked out.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant doctor said, and sighed even longer. I slowly opened my eyes, and this time I could see clearly. I looked at his sweaty face and tried to smile a little. After having heard what they said, I swore to myself that I would fight hard and do anything for my squad after my foot was healed.

“We will get you some help. Just be strong, young man,” the sergeant doctor said gently, sitting by my bed and examining my leg.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and tried to raise my hand to salute him, but he tenderly brought my hand down.

Two soldiers came into the house and told the sergeant doctor that the lieutenant had sent them to help take me back to our former base. They took me off the bed, placed me in a hammock, and carried me outside. The sun blinded me at first, and then the treetops of the village began to spin around as they carried me out of the village. The journey felt as if it took a month. I fainted and awoke many times, and each time I opened my eyes, it seemed as if the voices of those who carried me were fading into the distance.

Finally, we got to the base and the sergeant doctor went to work on me. I was injected with something. I had no idea we had needles at the base, but in my condition I couldn’t ask what was happening. I was given cocaine, as I frantically demanded it. The doctor started operating on me before the drugs took effect. The other soldiers held my hands and stuffed a cloth into my mouth. The doctor stuck a crooked-looking scissors inside my wound and fished for the bullet. I could feel the edge of the metal inside me. My entire body was racked with pain. My bones became sour. Just when I thought I had had enough, the doctor abruptly pulled the bullet out. A piercing pain rushed up my spine from my waist to the back of my neck. I fainted.

When I regained consciousness, it was the morning of the next day and the drugs had kicked in. I looked about the room and saw on the table the instruments that had been used for my operation. Next to the instruments was a piece of cloth soaked with blood and I wondered how much blood I had lost during the operation. I reached my hands down to my foot and felt the bandage before I stood up and limped outside, where some soldiers and the sergeant were sitting. “Where is my weapon?” I asked them. The sergeant handed me the G3 that was on top of the mortar, and I began cleaning it. I shot a couple of rounds sitting against a wall, ignoring the bandage on my foot and everyone else. I smoked marijuana, ate, and snorted cocaine and brown brown. That was all I did for three days before we left for the new base we had captured. When we left, we threw kerosene on the thatched-roof houses, lit them with matches, and fired a couple of RPGs into the walls. We always destroyed the bases we abandoned so that other squads wouldn’t be able to use them. Two soldiers carried me in the hammock, but this time I had my gun and I looked left and right as we traveled the forest path.

At the new base, I stayed put for three weeks and appointed Alhaji to be in charge of my expedition squad. I busied myself with drugs and cleaning my gun. 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.

At the end of the three weeks, we had the first batch of attackers; the lieutenant knew they were coming. I tightened the bandage around my foot, picked up my gun, and followed my squad to ambush the attackers before they got anywhere near our village. We killed most of them and captured a few whom we brought back to base. “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.

When I finished telling Esther the story, she had tears in her eyes and she couldn’t decide whether to rub my head or hug me. In the end she did neither, but said, “None of what happened was your fault. You were just a little boy, and anytime you want to tell me anything, I am here to listen.” She stared at me, trying to catch my eye so she could assure me of what she had just said. I became angry and regretted that I had told someone, a civilian, about my experience. I hated the “It is not your fault” line that all the staff members said every time anyone spoke about the war.

I got up, and as I started walking out of the hospital, Esther began to speak. “I will arrange for a full checkup at the Connaught hospital.” She paused and then continued, “Let me keep the Walkman. You don’t want the others to envy you and steal it. I will be here every day, so you can come and listen to it anytime.” I threw the Walkman at her and left, putting my fingers in my ears so I couldn’t hear her say “It is not your fault.”

That night, as I sat on the verandah listening to some of the boys discuss the volleyball game I had missed, I tried to think about my childhood days, but it was impossible, as I began getting flashbacks of the first time I slit a man’s throat. The scene kept surfacing in my memory like lightning on a dark rainy night, and each time it happened, I heard a sharp cry in my head that made my spine hurt. I went inside and sat on my bed facing the wall and tried to stop thinking, but I had a severe migraine that night. I rolled my head on the cold cement floor, but it didn’t stop. I went to the shower room and put my head under the cold water, but that didn’t help either. The headache became so severe that I couldn’t walk. I began to cry out loud. The night nurse was called. She gave me some sleeping tablets, but I still couldn’t fall asleep, even after my migraine stopped. I couldn’t face the nightmares I knew would come.

Esther got me to tell her some of my dreams. She would just listen and sit quietly with me. If she wanted to say anything, she would first ask, “Would you like me to say something about your dream?” Mostly I would say no and ask for the Walkman.

One afternoon Esther wasn’t supposed to work, but she came to the center wearing a jeans skirt instead of her normal white uniform. She came in a white Toyota with two men. One of the men was the driver and the other was a field-worker for Children Associated with the War (CAW). This was a Catholic organization that partnered with UNICEF and NGOs to create centers like ours.

“We are going to the hospital for your examination, and after that we will give you a tour of the city.” Esther was excited. “What do you say?” she asked me.

“Okay,” I agreed. I was always excited to go to the city. “Can my friend Alhaji come?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, as if she knew I would ask.

As we drove into Freetown, the field-worker introduced himself: “My name is Leslie, it is a pleasure to meet you gentlemen.” He turned around from the front seat and shook our hands. He sat back and studied us in the rearview mirror. Esther sat between Alhaji and me in the backseat. She tickled us and sometimes put her arms around us. I resisted this affection, and she would put both her arms around Alhaji. I would look away and she would softly elbow me before putting her arms around me again.

At the center of the city, Esther pointed out the post office, shops, the UN building, and the Cotton Tree. On Wallace Johnson Street, traders played loud music and rang bells to attract customers. Boys and girls carried coolers on their heads, shouting, “Cold ice, cold ice…” “Cold ginger beer…” The city always amazed me, with its busy people hurrying up and down and its traders noisily creating its unique sound. I was watching one ringing a bell and throwing the secondhand clothes he was selling up in the air to attract passersby, when our car stopped at the hospital where I was to be examined.

The doctor kept asking, “You feel anything?” as he touched and squeezed parts of my body where I had been wounded or shot. I was beginning to get upset, when he told me he was finished. I put my clothes on and came into the waiting area where Esther, Leslie, and Alhaji sat. They were smiling, and Esther walked up and pulled on my nose to cheer me up. We strolled over to the market area we had driven past. I spent most of my time studying a rack of cassettes under a kiosk. Esther and Alhaji looked at soccer jerseys, and she bought him one. Leslie bought me a Bob Marley cassette. It was the Exodus album. I grew up on reggae music but had not heard it for a while. As I looked at the cassette, trying to remember the songs, my head began to hurt. Esther must have noticed what was happening to me, because she took the cassette from me and put it in her bag. “Who wants Coca-Cola?” she asked. I was excited and ran ahead to the Coca-Cola stand. She bought us each a bottle. It was cold and it teased my teeth. I savored it as we drove back to the center. I was in high spirits, smiling all the way.

Leslie took this opportunity to tell me that he had been assigned to me and a few other boys. Part of his job was to find a place for me to live after I had completed my rehabilitation. “If you ever need to talk to me at any time, go to Esther’s office and she will call me, okay?” I nodded in agreement, with the Coca-Cola bottle in my mouth.

Before Esther got into the car that evening to go home, she pulled me aside and crouched down to look at me directly. I avoided eye contact, but she wasn’t discouraged. She said, “I will keep the Bob Marley tape and bring it back tomorrow. So come by and listen to it.”

She got in the car and waved as they drove off. Alhaji had already put on his jersey and was running around playing imaginary soccer. When we got back to the verandah, everyone marveled at Alhaji’s new jersey. It was green, white, and blue, the colors of the national flag, and it had number 11 on the back. Alhaji walked up and down the verandah showing off. He finally stopped and announced, “I know the city like the back of my hand. I know where to get the goods.”

He wore the jersey for almost a week without taking it off except to shower, because he knew that someone would try to steal it. He began doing business with his shirt. He would lend it to the boys for a few hours in exchange for toothpaste, soap, lunch, and so on. At the end of the week, he had a lot of toothpaste and other items that he sold at an outdoor market farther away from the center.

The day after we returned from the city, I went to the hospital immediately after class and waited for Esther. She was surprised to find me waiting for her at the doorstep. She rubbed my head and said, “I have good news. Your results from the test came. The doctor said nothing is seriously wrong. I just have to make sure you take certain medicines and in a few months we will do another checkup.” She opened the door and I followed her without saying a word. She knew what I wanted. She gave me the Bob Marley cassette and the Walkman, along with a really nice notebook and pen.

“You can write the lyrics of the songs you like on the album and we can learn to sing them together, if you want.” She began making a call.

How did she know I loved to write song lyrics? I thought, but didn’t ask. Later, after I had been rehabilitated, I learned that Esther knew what I was interested in through the informal schooling at the center. In the short classes that we attended, we had been given questionnaires as a form of exam. The questions were general in the beginning. They didn’t provoke any difficult memories. What kind of music do you like? Do you like reggae music? If so, who do you like? What do you listen to music for? These were the sorts of questions we would either discuss in class or write a short answer to. Our answers were then given to the nurses or whoever was in charge of our individual counseling sessions.

I began to look forward to Esther’s arrival in the afternoons. I sang for her the parts of songs I had memorized that day. Memorizing lyrics left me little time to think about what had happened in the war. As I grew comfortable with Esther, I talked to her mainly about Bob Marley’s lyrics and Run-D.M.C.’s, too. She mostly listened. Twice a week Leslie came and went over the lyrics with me. He loved telling me the history of Rastafarianism. 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.

It happened one night after I had fallen asleep while reading the lyrics of a song. I had not slept well for months now, and so far I had been able to avoid my nightmares by busying myself day and night with listening to and writing the lyrics of Bob Marley’s songs. But that night I had a nightmare that was different from the ones I had been having. It began with my swimming in a river at Mattru Jong with my brother Junior. We dove to the bottom of the river and brought out oysters. We placed them on a rock and plunged to the deep again. We were competing with each other. In the end Junior got more oysters than I did. We ran home for dinner, racing each other. When we got there, the food was sitting in pots, but no one was around. I turned to ask my brother what was happening, but he was gone. I was alone and it was dark. I searched for a lamp and found it, but I was afraid. My forehead was sweating. I took the lamp to the living room, where a box of matches sat on the table. I lit the lamp, and as soon as the room was bright, I saw men standing all around. They had circled me in the dark. I could see their bodies—except for their faces, which were darker, as if they were headless walking beings. Some were barefoot and others wore army boots. All had guns and knives. They began to shoot, stab, and slice each other’s throats. But they would rise and then get killed again. Their blood began to fill the room, its tide quickly rising. They wailed, causing me great anguish. I held my ears to stop hearing them, but I began to feel their pain. Each time a person was stabbed, I felt it worse; I saw the blood dripping from the same part of my body as that of the victim. I began to cry as the blood filled the room. The men disappeared and the door immediately opened, letting the blood out with a rush. I went outside with the blood all over me and saw my mother, father, older and younger brother. They were all smiling as if nothing had happened, as if we had been together all this time.

“Sit down, Mr. Troublesome,” my father said.

“Don’t mind him,” my mother chuckled.

I sat down facing my father, but couldn’t eat with them. My body had gotten numb, and my family didn’t seem to notice that I was covered with blood. It began to rain and my family ran into the house, leaving me outside. I sat in the rain for a while, letting it clean the blood off me. I got up to go into the house, but it wasn’t there. It had disappeared.

I was looking around confused when I woke up from the dream.

I had fallen off my bed.

I got up and went outside and sat on the stoop looking into the night. I was still confused, as I couldn’t tell whether I had had a dream or not. It was the first time I had dreamt of my family since I started running away from the war.

The next afternoon I went to see Esther, and she could tell that something was bothering me. “Do you want to lie down?” she asked, almost whispering.

“I had this dream last night. I don’t know what to make of it,” I said, looking away.

She came and sat next to me and asked, “Would you like to tell me about it?”

I didn’t reply.

“Or just talk about it out loud and pretend I am not here. I won’t say anything. Only if you ask me.” She sat quietly beside me. The quietness lasted for a while, and for some reason I began to tell her my dream.

At first she just listened to me, and then gradually she started asking questions to make me talk about the lives I had lived before and during the war. “None of these things are your fault,” she would always say sternly at the end of every conversation. Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member—and frankly I had always hated it—I began that day to believe it. It was the genuine tone in Esther’s voice that made the phrase finally begin to sink into my mind and heart. That didn’t make me immune from the guilt that I felt for what I had done. Nonetheless, it lightened my burdensome memories and gave me strength to think about things. The more I spoke about my experiences to Esther, the more I began to cringe at the gruesome details, even though I didn’t let her know that. I didn’t completely trust Esther. I only liked talking to her because I felt that she didn’t judge me for what I had been a part of; she looked at me with the same inviting eyes and welcoming smile that said I was a child.

One evening Esther took me to her house and made me dinner. After dinner we went for a walk in the city. We went to the wharf at the end of Rawdon Street. The moon was out that night and we sat at the jetty and watched it. I told Esther about the shapes I used to see in the moon when I was much younger. She was fascinated. We looked at the moon and described the shapes we saw to each other. I saw the woman cradling the baby in her arms, just as I used to. On our way back to her house, I didn’t look at the city lights any longer. I looked into the sky and felt as if the moon was following us.

When I was a child, my grandmother told me that the sky speaks to those who look and listen to it. She said, “In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy, and confusion.” That night I wanted the sky to talk to me.