A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

19

TWO WEEKS EARLIER, Leslie had told me that I was to be “repatriated” and reinstated into normal society. I was to live with my uncle. Those two weeks felt longer than the eight months I had spent at Benin Home. I was worried about living with a family. I had been on my own for years and had taken care of myself without any guidance from anyone. I was afraid that I might look ungrateful to my uncle, who didn’t have to take me in, if I distanced myself from the family unit. I was worried about what to do when my nightmares and migraines took hold of me. How was I going to explain my sadness, which I am unable to hide as it takes over my face, to my new family, especially the children? I didn’t have answers to these questions, and when I told Esther about them, she told me that everything was going to be fine, but I wanted more than just a reassurance.

I lay in my bed night after night staring at the ceiling and thinking, Why have I survived the war? Why was I the last person in my immediate family to be alive? I didn’t know. I stopped playing soccer and table tennis. I went to see Esther every day, though, and would say hello, ask how she was, and then get lost in my own head thinking about what life was going to be like after the center. Sometimes Esther would have to snap her fingers in front of my face to bring me back. At night, I quietly sat on the verandah with Mohamed, Alhaji, and Mambu. I wouldn’t notice when they left the bench that we all sat on.

When the day of my repatriation finally came, I packed my few belongings in a plastic bag. I had a pair of sneakers, four T-shirts, three shorts, toothpaste, a toothbrush, a bottle of Vaseline lotion, a Walkman and some cassettes, two long-sleeved shirts, and two pairs of pants and a tie—these had been bought for me to wear for my conference talks. I waited, my heart beating faster, the way it had when my mother dropped me off for the first time at a boarding school. The van was heard galloping on the gravel road, making its way to the center. Picking up my plastic bag, I walked to the hospital building where I was to wait. Mohamed, Alhaji, and Mambu were sitting on the front steps, and Esther emerged, smiling. The van made a turn and halted at the side of the road. It was late afternoon, the sky was still blue, but the sun was dull, hiding behind the only cloud. Leslie sat in the front seat and waited for me to board, so he could take me to my new home.

“I have to go,” I said to everyone, my voice shaking. I extended my hand to Mohamed, but instead of shaking it, he leapt up and hugged me. Mambu embraced me while Mohamed was still holding me. He squeezed me hard, as if he knew it was goodbye forever. (After I left the center, Mambu went back to the front lines, because his family refused to take him in.) At the end of the hug, Alhaji shook hands with me. We squeezed each other’s hand and stared into each other’s eyes, remembering all that we had been through. I tapped him on the shoulder and he smiled, as he understood that I was saying we were going to be fine. I never saw him again, since he continually moved from one foster home to another. At the end of our handshake, Alhaji stepped back, saluted me, and whispered, “Goodbye, squad leader.” I tapped him on the shoulder again; I couldn’t salute him in return. Esther stepped forward, her eyes watery. She hugged me tighter than she ever had. I didn’t return her hug very well, as I was busy trying to hold back my tears. After she let go, she gave me a piece of paper. “This is my address. Come by anytime,” she said.

I went to Esther’s home several weeks after that. My timing wasn’t good, as she was on her way to work. She hugged me, and this time I squeezed back; this made her laugh after we stood apart. She looked me straight in the eyes. “Come and see me next weekend so we can have more time to catch up, okay?” she said. 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.

My uncle picked me up in his arms as soon as I got off the van and carried me onto the verandah. “I welcome you today like a chief. Your feet may touch the ground when you lose your chieftaincy, which begins now,” my uncle said, laughing, as he set me down. I smiled but was nervous. My four cousins—Allie and the three girls, Matilda, Kona, and Sombo—took turns hugging me, their faces bright with smiles.

“You must be hungry; I cooked you a welcome home sackie thomboi,” my aunt said. She had made cassava leaves with chicken just to welcome me. To have chicken prepared for anyone was a rarity, and it was considered an honor. People ate chicken only on holidays like Christmas or New Year’s. Auntie Sallay held my hand and made me sit on a bench next to my uncle. She brought the food out, and my uncle and I ate together from the same plate with our hands. It was a good meal and I licked my fingers, enjoying the rich palm oil. My uncle looked at me, laughing, and said to his wife, “Sallay, you have done it again. This one is here to stay.”

After we washed our hands, my cousin Allie, twenty-one years old, was called to the verandah and asked to show me where I was to sleep. I took my plastic bag and followed him to another house that was behind the one with my uncle’s bedroom. The passageway between the houses was like a pathway with stones carefully placed on each side of the walkway.

Allie held the door for me as I entered the clean, organized room. The bed was made, the clothes that hung on a post were ironed, the shoes were properly lined on a rack, and the brown tile floor was shiny. He pulled a mattress from under the bed and explained to me that I would sleep on the floor, as he and his roommate shared the bed. I was to fold the mattress and put it back under the bed every morning. After he was done explaining how I could contribute to keeping the room clean and in order, I went back to the verandah and sat with my uncle. He put his arm around me and pulled on my nose.

“Are you familiar with the city?” Uncle asked.

“Not really.”

“Allie will take you around sometime, if you like. Or you can venture out there yourself, get lost, and find your way. It will be a good way to get to know the city.” He chuckled. We heard a call for prayer that echoed throughout the city.

“I have to go for prayers. If you need anything, ask your cousins,” he said, taking a kettle from the stoop and beginning to perform ablution. After he was done, he walked down the hill to a nearby mosque. My aunt came out of the room, tying her head with a cloth, and followed my uncle.

I sighed, sitting alone on the verandah. I was no longer nervous, but I missed Benin Home. Later that night, when my uncle and aunt returned from prayers, all my new family gathered around a cassette player on the verandah to listen to stories. My uncle rubbed his hands, pressed the play button, and a famous storyteller named Leleh Gbomba began telling a story about a man who had forgotten his heart at home when he went traveling around the world. I had heard the story in my grandmother’s village when I was younger. My new family laughed throughout the telling of the story. I only smiled and was very quiet that night, as I was to be for a while more. But gradually I adjusted to being around people who were happy all the time.

A day or two after I had started living with my uncle, Allie gave me my first pair of dress shoes, a dress belt, and a stylish shirt.

“If you want to be a gentleman, you have to dress like one.” He laughed. I was about to ask him why he had given me these things when he began to explain: “This is a secret. I want to take you to a dance tonight so you can enjoy yourself. We will leave after Uncle goes to bed.”

That night we snuck out and went dancing at a pub. As Allie and I walked, I remembered when I used to go dancing back in secondary school with friends. It seemed so long ago, but I still recalled the different names of the dance nights: “Back to School,” “Pens Down,” “Bob Marley Night,” and many more. We would dance until cockcrow, then take off our sweaty shirts, enjoying the cool morning breeze as we walked back to our dorms. I was truly happy back then.

“We are here,” Allie said, shaking my hand and snapping his fingers. There were lots of young people waiting in line to get into the pub. The boys were well dressed, their pants ironed and shirts tucked in. The girls wore beautiful flowered dresses and high heels that made them taller than some of the boys they were with. Their lips were also painted with bright colors. Allie was excited and he chatted with the people in front of us. I was quiet, looking at the different colored lights that hung at the entrance. There was one big blue light that made people’s white shirts especially beautiful. We finally made it to the entrance and Allie paid for the two of us. The music was extremely loud inside, but then again, I had not been to a pub for many years. I followed Allie to the bar area, where we found a table and sat on two high stools.

“I am going to the dance floor,” Allie announced, screaming so that I could hear him. He disappeared into the crowd. I sat for a while scoping out the place, and slowly began dancing by myself in the corner of the dance floor. Suddenly an extremely dark girl whose smile illuminated the dance floor pulled me and led me to the middle of the floor before I could resist. She started dancing close to me. I looked back at Allie, who was standing at the bar. He gave me a thumbs-up, and I began to move slowly until the rhythm took over. I danced one raggamorphy song with the girl, and then there was a slow jam. She pulled me toward her and I held her hand delicately as we swayed to the music. I could feel her heart beat. She tried to catch my eyes, but I looked away. In the middle of the song, some older boy pulled her away from me. She waved as she was being escorted through the crowd and toward the door.

“You are smooth, man. I saw that.” Allie was now standing next to me. He began walking toward the bar, and I followed him. We leaned against the counter, facing the dance floor. He was still smiling.

“I really didn’t do anything. She just wanted to dance with me and I couldn’t say no,” I said.

“Exactly, you say nothing and the women come to you,” he teased. I didn’t want to talk anymore. A memory of a town we had attacked during a school dance had been triggered. I could hear the terrified cries of teachers and students, could see the blood cover the dance floor. Allie tapped me on the shoulder and brought me back to the present. I smiled at him, but I was deeply sad for the rest of our stay. We danced all night and returned before Uncle woke up.

A few nights later, I returned to the pub alone and saw the same girl. She told me her name was Zainab.

“Sorry about last time,” she said. “My brother wanted to go home and I had to go with him, otherwise my parents would have gotten worried.”

Like me, she was alone this night.

I dated her for three weeks, but then she began to ask too many questions. Where was I from? What was it like growing up upline? Upline is a Krio word mostly used in Freetown to refer to the backwardness of the inner country, its inhabitants, and their mannerisms. I was unwilling to tell her anything, so she broke it off. That was the story of my relationship with girls in Freetown. They wanted to know about me, and I wasn’t ready to tell them. It was okay. I liked being alone.

Leslie came to see me. He asked how I was doing and what I had been up to. I wanted to tell him that I had had one severe migraine wherein the image of a burning village flashed in my mind, followed by wailings of many voices; that I had felt the back of my neck tighten and my head become heavy, as if a huge rock had been placed on it. Instead, I told him only that everything was fine. Leslie pulled out a pad and began writing something on it. When he was done he turned to me and said, “I have a proposition for you. It is important.”

“Always the bearer of news, aren’t you?” I joked.

“This is important.” He studied the pad he held in his hand and continued. “There is an interview for two children to be sent to the United Nations in New York, in America, to talk about the lives of children in Sierra Leone and what can be done about it. Mr. Kamara, the director of your former rehabilitation center, recommended that you go for the interview. Here is the address, if you are interested.” He tore the paper off and handed it to me. As I was looking at it, he went on: “If you want me to go with you, come by the office. Dress up for the interview, okay?” He searched my face for an answer. I didn’t say anything. Afterward, he left with a smile on his face that said he knew I would show up for the interview.

The day of the interview finally arrived, and I dressed casually for it. I wore sneakers, nice black pants, and a green long-sleeved shirt. I tucked my shirt in as I walked down to Siaka Stevens Street to the address that Leslie had given me. I told no one where I was going. I had wanted to talk to Allie about it, but hesitated, because I knew that if I did, I would have to tell him more than he knew about me, more than my uncle had told him.

It was almost midday, but the tar road was already too hot. I watched a flying plastic bag land on the road and immediately begin to melt. Poda podas went by, their apprentices shouting the names of their destinations to attract customers. A few feet ahead a vehicle had stopped on the side of the street and the driver was pouring water from a jerrican into its overheated engine. “This car drinks more water than a cow,” he grumbled. I was walking slowly, but my undershirt got soaked with sweat.

When I arrived at the address, I stood in front of the tall building and marveled at its height before entering. In the lobby there were about twenty boys, all dressed better than I. Their parents were giving them last-minute points for the interview. I studied the big cement columns in the building. I liked thinking about how people had managed to create and erect such large cement pillars. I was busy examining one pillar when a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was there for the interview. I nodded, and he pointed to the open metal box that all the boys now stood in. I hesitantly walked into the congested box and the boys laughed at me, as I stood there unaware that I had to press the button for the box to start moving. I had never been in a box like this before. Where was it taking us? A boy in a blue shirt squeezed his way past me and pressed the number 5 button. It lit up, and the box closed on us. I looked about me and saw that everyone was calm, so I knew that there was no need to worry. The box began to move up, fast. The other boys remained calm, adjusting their ties and shirts. When the doors opened, I was the last to step out into a large open room with brown leather couches. There was a man sitting at the desk at the far wall and he motioned for me to find a place to sit. The other boys had already seated themselves. I sat away from them and looked about the room. Through the window I could see the tops of other buildings, and I decided to get up and look around to see how high up from the ground we were. As I was making my way to the window, my name was called.

A really light-skinned man (I couldn’t tell if he was Sierra Leonean or not) sat in a big black leather chair. “Please have a seat and I will be with you in a moment,” he said in English, and he shuffled through some papers, picked up a phone, and dialed a number. When the person picked up on the other end, the man just said, “It is a go-ahead,” and hung up.

He turned toward me and eyed me for a bit before he began to question me, speaking very slowly, in English.

“What is your name?” he asked, looking at the list of names on his desk.

“Ishmael,” I said, and he checked my name before I could tell him my last name.

“Why do you think you should go to the UN to present the situation affecting children in this country?” He raised his head from the list and looked at me.

“Well, I am from the part of the country where I have not only suffered because of the war but I have also participated in it and undergone rehabilitation. So I have a better understanding, based on my experience of the situation, than any of these city boys who are here for the interview. What are they going to say when they go over there? They don’t know anything about the war except the news of it.” I looked at the man, who was smiling, and it made me a bit angry.

“What else do you have to say?” he asked.

“Nothing, except that I am wondering why you are smiling.” I sat back in the soft leather chair.

“You can go now,” the man said, still smiling.

I got up and left the room, leaving the door open behind me. I walked toward the box and stood by it. I stood there and waited for several minutes, but nothing happened. I didn’t know what to do to make the box come upstairs. The boys who were waiting for the interview began to laugh. Then the man who sat behind the desk walked toward me and pushed a button on the wall. The doors immediately opened and I walked in. The man pressed the number 1 button and waved to me as the doors closed. I tried to find something to hold on to, but the box was already at street level. I walked out of the building and stood outside examining its structure. I have to tell Mohamed about the inside of this marvelous building when I see him, I thought.

I walked home slowly that afternoon, watching the cars go by. I didn’t think much about the interview except that I still wondered why the man who had interviewed me had smiled. I meant what I said and it was not a funny matter. At some point during my walk, a convoy of cars, military vans, and Mercedes-Benzes festooned with national flags passed by. Their windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see who rode in them, and they were too fast, anyway. When I got home, I asked Allie if he knew of a powerful man who parades the city in such a way. He told me that it was Tejan Kabbah, the new president, who had won the election under the banner of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) in March 1996, eight months earlier. I had never heard of this man.

That night my uncle brought home a bag of groundnut. Auntie Sallay boiled the groundnut and put it out on a large tray. All of us, my uncle, his wife, Allie, Kona, Matilda, Sombo, and I, sat around the tray and ate the groundnut, listening to another recording of Leleh Gbomba’s. He was telling a story about how he became friends with another boy before they were born. Their mothers were neighbors and were pregnant at the same time, so the two of them met while they were still in their mothers’ bellies. The storyteller vividly described the landscape of their pre-infant life: the hunting they did, the games they played, how they listened to our world…It was a very funny story that took shockingly impossible twists and turns and left us in awe. My uncle, aunt, and cousins laughed so hard that they couldn’t stop for hours, even after the story had ended. I began to laugh, too, because my uncle was trying to say something and he was so possessed with laughter that he couldn’t say a complete word without launching into another fit of laughter. “We should do this again. Laughing like this is good for the soul,” my uncle said, still laughing a little. We wished one another a good night and went to our different sleeping places.

One morning Mr. Kamara turned up at my uncle’s house in the Children Associated with the War (CAW) van. He had told me I had been chosen to go to the UN a few days before, but I had only told Mohamed about this, as I didn’t actually believe that I was going to travel to New York City. It was before midday when Mr. Kamara arrived and my uncle had left for work. My aunt was in the kitchen; the look on her face told me that my uncle would learn about Mr. Kamara’s visit. I knew then that I would have to tell my uncle about the trip.

“Good morning,” Mr. Kamara said, checking his watch to make sure it was still morning.

“Good morning,” I replied.

“Are you ready to go to town and begin preparation for the trip?” he asked in English. Since Mr. Kamara had found out that I had been chosen to go to the UN, he had spoken only English to me. I said goodbye to my aunt and jumped in the van, and we took off to get me a passport. It seemed as if everyone in the city had decided to get passports that day, perhaps preparing to leave the country. Luckily, Mr. Kamara had made an appointment, so we didn’t have to wait in line. At the counter he presented my photo, the necessary forms, and the fee. A round-faced man carefully examined the documents and asked for my birth certificate. “You have to show me proof that you were born in this country,” the man said. I became really upset and almost slapped the man, who insisted that I must present proof of birth in Sierra Leone even after I had told him that no one had the chance to assemble documents of that nature when the war reached them. He was naïve about the reality I was trying to explain to him. Mr. Kamara pulled me aside and gently asked me to sit on a bench while he chatted with the man. Eventually he demanded to see his boss. After hours of waiting, someone was able to dig up a copy of my birth certificate, and they told Mr. Kamara to come back for the passport in four days.

“The first step is completed. Now we will have to get you the visa,” Mr. Kamara said as we walked out of the passport office. I didn’t reply, because I was still upset, exhausted, and just wanted to go home.

My uncle was home when I was dropped off that evening. When I greeted him, he had a smile on his face that said, “Tell me what is going on.” I did. I told him that I was to go to the United Nations in New York City and talk about the war, as it relates to children. My uncle didn’t believe it. “People are always lying to others with such promises. Don’t let them get your hopes up, my son,” he said.

Every morning before he left for work, he would say jokingly, “So what are we doing today in planning to go to America?”

Mr. Kamara took me shopping. He bought me a suitcase and some clothes, mostly long-sleeved shirts, dress pants, and traditionally waxed, colorful cotton suits with intricate embroidery on the collars, sleeves, and hems of pants. I showed these things to my uncle, but still he didn’t believe that I would be going on the trip.

“Maybe they just want to give you a new look, a more African look, instead of those big pants you always wear,” he joked.

Sometimes my uncle and I went for strolls after work. He would ask how I was doing; I always told him I was fine. He would put his long arms around me and pull me closer. I felt he knew that I wanted to tell him certain things but couldn’t find the right words. I hadn’t told him that whenever I went to the bush with my cousins to fetch firewood, my mind would begin to wander to things I had seen and done in the past. Standing next to a tree with red frozen sap on its bark would bring flashbacks of the many times we executed prisoners by tying them to trees and shooting them. Their blood stained the trees and never washed off, even during the rainy season. I hadn’t told him that often I was reminded of what I had missed by watching the daily activities of families, a child hugging his father, holding his mother’s wrap, or holding two parents’ hands, swinging over gutters. It made me wish I could go back to the beginning and change things.

I had been told to meet a man by the name of Dr. Tamba at the American embassy on Monday morning. As I walked to the embassy, I listened to the gradual wakening of the city. The call for prayer from the central mosque echoed throughout the city, poda podas crowded the streets, their apprentices hanging on the open passenger doors and calling out the names of their destinations: “Lumley, Lumley” or “Congo Town…” It was still too early when I arrived, but there was already a long line of people waiting outside the embassy gates. Their faces were sad and filled with uncertainty, as if they awaited some trial that would determine whether they would die or stay alive. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood in line. After an hour or so, Dr. Tamba arrived with another boy and asked me to follow him. He looked like a dignified man, so I guess we didn’t have to wait in line. The other boy, who was also a former child soldier, introduced himself. “My name is Bah. I am happy to be going on this journey with you,” he said, shaking my hand. I thought about what my uncle’s reply would be to him: “Don’t let them get your hopes up, young man.”

We sat down on one of the few decent benches in a small open area in the embassy and waited for our interview. A white woman stood behind a transparent glass window; her voice came through the speakers underneath it. “What is the purpose of your visit to the United States?” she asked, never looking up from the papers before her.

When it was our turn, the woman behind the glass already had our passports. She didn’t look at me; rather, she flipped through the pages of my new passport. 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.

“Speak into the microphone,” she said, and she continued, “What is the purpose of your visit to the United States?”

“For a conference,” I said.

“What is the conference about?”

“It is generally about issues affecting children around the world,” I explained.

“And where is this conference?”

“At the UN in New York City.”

“Do you have any guarantee that you will come back to your home country?” I was thinking, when she continued, “Do you have any property, a bank account that will guarantee your return?”

I frowned. Do you know anything about people’s lives in this country? I thought of asking her. If she could only look at me directly, perhaps she wouldn’t have asked the last two questions. No one my age in my country has a bank account or even dreams of having one, much less property to declare. Mr. Tamba told her that he was the CAW chaperon going on the trip with us and that he would make sure that we returned to Sierra Leone at the end of the conference.

The woman asked me the final question: “Do you know anyone in the United States?”

“No, I have never been anywhere out of this country, and this is actually my first time in this city,” I told her. She closed my passport and put it aside. “Come back at four-thirty.”

Outside, Dr. Tamba told us that we had gotten the visas and that he would pick up the passports and hold on to them until the day of our departure. It had finally begun to look as if we were going to travel, even though I had seen my passport only at a glance.

I held my suitcase in my right hand and was wearing brown traditional summer pants with zigzag thread patterns at the bottom and a T-shirt. My uncle was sitting on the verandah when I came from Allie’s room.

“I am on my way to the airport,” I said, smiling, as I knew my uncle was going to be sarcastic.

“Sure. Give me a call when you get to America. Well, I don’t have a phone, so call Aminata’s house and she can come and get me.” My uncle giggled.

“Okay, I will,” I said, giggling as well.

“Ah, children, come and say goodbye to your brother. I do not know where he is going, but he needs our blessings,” my uncle said. Matilda, Kona, and Sombo came to the verandah holding buckets in their hands. They were on their way to fetch water. They hugged me and wished me luck on my journey. My aunt came out of the kitchen smelling of smoke and hugged me. “Wherever you are going, you will need to smell like your home. This is my perfume to you.” She giggled and stepped back. My uncle stood up and hugged me, put his arm around my shoulder and said, “My good wishes are with you. So I will see you later for dinner, then.” He went back to sit in his chair on the verandah.