Jun 28 2007
A Long Way Gone - Ishmael Beah
To know more about Ishmael Beah - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_Beah
From the Book:
I have never been so afraid to go anywhere in my life as I was that day. Even the scuttle of a lizard frightened my entire being. A slight breeze blew and it went throught my brain with a sharp swoop that made me grit my teeth in pain. Tears had begun to form in my eyes, but I struggled to hide them and gripped my gun for comfort.
We waled into the arms of the forest, holding our guns as if they were the only thing that gave us strength. We exhaled quietly, afraid that our own breathing could cause our death. The lieutenant led the line that I was in. He raised his fist in the air and we stopped moving. Then he slowly brought it down and we sat on one heel, our eyes surveying the forest. I wanted to turn around to see my friend’s faces, but I couldn’t. We began to move swiftly among the bushes until we came to the edge of a swamp, where we formed an ambush, aiming our guns into the swamp. We lay flat on our stomuchs and waited. I was lying next to Josiah. Then there was Sheku and an adult soldier between myself, Jumah and Musa. I looked around to see if I could catch their eyes, but they were concentrated on the invisible target in the swamp. The top of my eyes began to ache and the pain slowly rose up to my bead. My ears became warm and tears were running down my cheeks, even though I wasn’t crying. The veins on my arms stood out and I could feel them pulsating as if they had begun to breathe of their own second. We waited in the quiet, as hunters do, our fingers gently caressing the triggers. The silence tormented me.
The short trees in the swamp began to shake as the rebels made their way through them. They weren’t yet visible, but the lieutenant had passed the word down throught a whisper that was relayed like domino effect: “fire on my command.” As we watched, a group of men dressed in civilian clothes emerged from under the tiny bushes. They waved their hands and more fighters came out. Some were boys, as young as we were. They sat together in line, waving their hands, planning a strategy. The lieutenant ordered an RPG to be fired, but the commander of the rebels heard it as it whooshed its way out of the forest. “Retreat!” he told his men, and the grenade’s blast got only a few men, whose split bodies flew in the air. The explosion was followed by an exchange of fire from both sides. I lay there with my gun pointed in front of me, unable to shoot. My index finger had become numb. The forest had begun to spin. I felt a if the ground had turned upside down and I was going to fall off, so I clutched the base of a tree with one hand. I couldn’t think, but I could hear the sounds of the guns faraway in the distance and the cries of people dying in pain. I had begun to fall into some sort of nightmare. A splash of blood hit my face. In my reverie I had opened mouth a bit, so I tasted some of the blood. As I spat it out and wiped it off my face, I saw the soldier it had come from. Bloor boured out of the bullet holds in him like water rushing through newly-opened tributaries. His eyes were wide open; he still held his gun. My eyes were fixed on him when I heard Josiah scream. He cried for his mother in the most painfully piercing voice that I had ever heard. It vibrated inside my head to the point that I felt my brain had shaken loose from its anchor.
The sun showed flashes of the tips of guns and bullets traveling toward us. Bodies had begun to pile on top of each other near a short palm tree, where fronds dripped blood. I searched for Josiah. An RPG had tossed his tiny body off the ground and he had landed on a tree stump. He wiggled his legs as his cry gradually came to an end. There was blood everywhere. It seemed as if bullets were falling into the forest from all angles. I crawled to Josiah and looked into his eyes. THere were tears in them and his lips were shaking, but he could not speak. As I watched him, the water in his eyes was replaced with blood that quicly turned his brown eyes into red. He reached for my shoulder as if he wanted to hold it and pull himself up. But midway, he stopped moving. THe gunshots faded in my head, and it was as if my heart had stopped and the whole world had come to a standstill. I covered his eyes with my fingers and pulled him from the tree stump. His backbone had been shattered. I placed him flat on the ground and picked up my gun. I did not realise that I had stood up to take Josiah off the tree stump. I felt someone tugging at my foot. It was the corporal; he was saying something that I couldn’t understand. His mouth moved and he looked terrified. He pulled me down, and as I hit the ground, I felt my brain shaking in my skull again and my deafness disappeared. “Get down,” he was screaming. “Shoot,” he said, as he crawled away from me to resume his position. As I looked to where he lay, my eyes cought Musa, whose head was covered with blood. His hands looked too relaxed. I turned toward the swamp, where there were gunmen running trying to cross over. My face, my hands, my shirt and gun were covered with blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them insdie my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into thw swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy.
We took the guns and ammunition off the bodies of my friends and left them there in the forest, which had taken on a life of its own, as if it had trapped the souls that had departed from the dead. The branches of the tree looked as if they were holding hands and bowling their ambush a few meters away from our initial position. Once again, we waitied. It was between evening and nighttime. One lonely cricket tried to start singing, but none of its companions joined in, so it stopped to let silence bring night. I lay next to the corporal, whose eyes were redder than normal. He ignored my stare. We heard footsteps ont he dried grasses and immiediatly took aim. A group of gunmen and boys emerged from under the bushes, crouched, and took quick cover behind trees. As they got closer, we opened fire, dropping those who stood in front. The rest we chased into the swamp, where we lost them. There, crabs had already begun feasting on the eyes of the dead. Limbs and fragmented skulls lay on top of the bog, and the water in the swamp had been replaced by blood. We flipped the bodies over and took their ammunition and guns.
I was not afraid of these lifeless bodies. I despised them and kicked them to flip them. I foud a G3, some ammunition, and a handgun that the corporal kept for himself. I noticed that most of the dead gunmen and boys wore lots of jwellery on their necks and wrists. Some even wore more than five gold watches on one wrist. One boy, whose uncombed hari was now soaked with blood, wore a Tupac Shakur T-shirt that said: “All eyes on me.” We lost a few adult soldiers on our side and my friends Musa and Josiah. Musa, the storyteller, was gone. There was no one around to tell us stories and make us laugh at times when we needed it. And Josiah - if only I had let him continue sleeping the first day of training, perhaps he wouldn’t have gone to the front lines in the first place.
We arrived in the village with nightfall and sat agaist the walls of the army house. It was quiet, and as if we werew afraid of silence, we began cleaning the blood off our guns and the ones we had brought with us, cleaning and oiling their chambers. We shot the weapons into the air to test their effectiveness. I went for supper that night, but was unable to eat. I only drank water and felt nothing. As I walked back to my tent, I stumbled into a cement wall. My knee bled, but I didn’t feel a thing. I lay on my back in the tent with my AK-47 on my chest and the G3 I had brought with me leaning on the peg of the tent. Nothing happened in my head. It was void, and I started at the roof of the tent until I was miraculously able to dose off. I h ad a dream that I was picking up Josiah from teh tree stump and a gunman stood on top of me. He placed his gun on my forehead. I immediately woke up from my dream and began shouting inside the tent, until the thrity rounds in the magazine was finished. The corporal and the lieutenant came in afterward and took me outside. I was sweating, and tehy three water on my face and gave me a few more of the while capsules. I stayed up all night and couln’t sleep for a week. We went out two more times that week and I had no problem shooting my gun.
Links:
In 2000 Ishmael Beah wrote briefly about his experiences here.
When Good Comes From Bad by Ishmael Beah*, August 2000
Ishmael Beah was interviewed by CBC Radio, when he came to Montreal. Excerpts from the audio interview could be read here: Ishmael Beah Interview - CBC
