aWell, what can I say, I am moving up from the AKs,a he replied, and we all laughed.
We told him that we would return to sit with him in a few minutes and went to load our bags with ammunition and food to take back. While we were in the ammunition house, our commander told us that the lieutenant had asked us to stay the night and that dinner was ready. I wasnat hungry, so I returned by myself to see Jumah while Kanei and Alhaji went to eat. We sat quietly for a while before he started talking.
aI am going on a raid tomorrow morning, so I might not see you before you leave.a He paused, fingered the side of the machine gun, and continued: aI killed the owner of this gun in our last raid. He took out a lot of us before I could get him. Since then I have used it to do some damage myself.a He chuckled, and we high-fived each other and laughed. Immediately after that, we were ordered to report for the nightly gathering in the yard at the center of town. It was a social event for commanders to mingle with everyone else. Jumah picked up his gun and put his arm around my shoulder as we walked to the yard. Alhaji and Kanei were there; they had already started smoking. Lieutenant Jabati was present, too, and he was a little jovial that night. Most of his colleagues, Staff Sergeant Mansaray and Corporal Gadafi, had died, but the lieutenant had miraculously managed to stay alive unscarred. He had also been able to replace his dead colleagues with other men who were fierce and disciplined. I wanted to talk to the lieutenant about Shakespeare, but he was busy going about the gathering, shaking everyoneas hand. When he finally stood in front of me, he held my hand tight and said, aMacbeth shall never vanquished be until great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill shall come against him.a He nodded at me and said loudly to everyone, aI shall take leave of you fine gentlemen.a He bowed and waved as he left. We raised our guns in the air and cheered. After the lieutenant had gone, we began singing the national anthem, aHigh we exalt thee, realm of the free, great is the love we have for theeaa and marching, smoking and sniffing the cocaine and brown brown that was in abundance at Bauya. We chatted all night, mostly about how good the drugs were.
Before morning, Jumah and a few others left for their raid. Alhaji, Kanei, and I shook hands with him and promised that we would catch up more on our next visit. Jumah smiled, clutched his machine gun, and went running into the darkness.
A few hours later a truck came to the village. Four men dressed in clean blue jeans and white T-shirts that said UNICEF on them in big blue letters jumped out. One of them was a white man and another was also light-skinned, maybe Lebanese. The other two were nationals, one with tribal marks on his cheeks, the other with marks on his hands just like the one my grandfather gave me to protect me from snakebite. The men were all too clean to have been in the war. They were shown to the lieutenantas house. He had been expecting them. As they sat talking on the verandah, we watched them from under the mango tree, where we sat cleaning our guns. After a while, the lieutenant shook hands with the two foreigners and he called over the private who was guarding the meeting. The private ran toward us and told us to form a line. He went around the town gathering all the boys, exclaiming: aThis is an order from the lieutenant!a We were accustomed to taking orders and did what we were told. We formed a horizontal line and waited.
The lieutenant stood before us and we saluted him, expecting to hear about our next raid on a rebel camp. aStand at ease, boys,a he said. He slowly walked along the line, the visitors a few paces behind him, smiling.
aWhen I point at you, fall out and form a line by the private. Understand.a The lieutenant gave his orders from the far end of the line. aYes, sir,a we shouted, and saluted. The smiles on the visitorsa faces disappeared. aAt ease.a aYou, youaa the lieutenant pointed as he walked down the line. When the lieutenant picked me, I stared at his face, but he ignored me and continued his selection process. Alhaji was also picked, but Kanei was left behind, maybe because he was older. Fifteen of us were chosen. The lieutenant then ordered us, aRemove your magazines, put your weapons on safety, and put them on the ground.a We laid our weapons down, and the visitors, especially the two foreigners, began smiling again. aAttention. Forward march,a a private ordered us, and we followed the lieutenant toward the truck the visitors had arrived in. We stopped when the lieutenant turned around and faced us. aYou have been great soldiers and you all know that you are part of this brotherhood. I am very proud to have served my country with you boys. But your work here is done, and I must send you off. These men will put you in school and find you another life.a That was all he said; then he smiled and walked away, asking the other soldiers to strip us of our military equipment. I hid my bayonet inside my pants and a grenade in my pocket. When one of the soldiers came to search me, I pushed him and told him that if he touched me I would kill him. He walked away and searched a boy standing next to me instead.
What was happening? Our faces followed the lieutenant as he walked to his house. Why had the lieutenant decided to give us up to these civilians? We thought that we were part of the war until the end. The squad had been our family. Now we were being taken away, just like that, without any explanation. A few soldiers gathered our weapons and others guarded us, to make sure that we didnat try to run for our guns. As we were ushered to the truck, I stared back at the verandah where the lieutenant now stood, looking in the other direction, toward the forest, his hands crossed behind his back. I still didnat know what was going on, but I was beginning to get angry, anxious. I hadnat parted with my gun since the day I became a soldier.
In the truck were three MPsa"city soldiers. I could tell by how clean their uniforms and guns were. Their pants were tucked inside their boots and their shirts were tucked into their pants. Their faces werenat hardened, and their guns were so clean I a.s.sumed they hadnat fired a shot. The weapons were on safety. The MPs jumped off the truck and motioned for us to climb in. We divided ourselves onto two long benches in the truck that faced each other, and two of the men, the one with the marks on his cheeks and the Lebanese-looking foreigner, climbed in back with us. Then the three MPs swung up on the back door panel, one foot inside the truck, the other hanging out.
As the truck began to pull away from the base, I started boiling with anger, because I couldnat make sense of what was happening. Alhaji looked at me with a puzzled face. I looked at the guns the MPs carried and envied them. The men who had come to get us smiled as the truck sped along the dirt road, raising light brown dust that covered the bushes on the sides of the road. I had no idea where we were going.
We were on the road for hours. I had gotten used to walking to places and hadnat sat in a truck or been in one place idly for this long in a while. I hated it. I thought about hijacking the truck and driving it back to Bauya. But whenever I was ready to s.n.a.t.c.h a gun from the MPs, the truck slowed down at a checkpoint and the soldiers jumped off. I had forgotten about the grenade in the side pocket of my army shorts. I was restless throughout the journey and actually began to look forward to the checkpoints (there were many of them, too many) so that I could get up from the boredom of the truck. We didnat speak to each other at all. We sat quietly, except at times when I winked at Alhaji as we waited for the right moment to take the guns from the MPs and push them off the truck.
The last checkpoint we pa.s.sed that day was manned by soldiers well dressed in complete army gear. The brown polished wooden panels of their AKs were shiny and new. They were city soldiers who, like the MPs who were in the truck with us, hadnat yet been to war. They had no idea, I thought, what was really happening in the bushes in the entire country.
We drove past the checkpoint, off the dusty road, and onto a busy tar street. Everywhere I looked there were cars going in every direction. I had never seen that many cars, trucks, and buses in my life. Mercedes, Toyotas, Mazdas, Chevrolets were impatiently honking, music blasting. I still didnat know where we were going, but I was sure now that we were in Freetown, Sierra Leoneas capital. But I didnat know why.
It was getting dark outside. As the truck slowly rocked along the busy street, streetlights flickered on. Even the shops and kiosks were lit. I was amazed at how many lights there were without the sound of a generator. I was marveling at the glittering cityscape when the truck turned off the street and began galloping so heavily that we were all shaking as if wead been placed on a vibrating machine. This went on for a few minutes, and then we stopped. The MPs asked us to get out of the truck and follow the four beaming men in the UNICEF shirts.
We entered a fenced compound that had several rows of houses. There were lights on in the houses and boys our age, fifteen and above, sat on the verandahs and stoops. They ignored us, as they, too, looked baffled about why they were there. The Lebanese-looking foreigner motioned for us to follow him into the house, his face glowing. It was an open hall and there were two rows of twin-size beds. He excitedly showed each of us the bed that was going to be ours and lockers that contained soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, a towel, a clean shirt, and T-shirts. The beds had pillows, clean sheets, and blankets. None of us were as interested in the things he showed us as he seemed to be. aWe have a bale of new c.r.a.pes for you. Tomorrow you will pick your size.a He left us in the room and went outside, whistling a melody. We just stood there looking at the beds as if we had never seen anything like them.
aCome with me to the kitchen for some food,a the Sierra Leonean man with the tribal marks said. We followed him past the curious faces of boys who had arrived before us. Their eyes were as red as ours, and even though they wore civilian clothes, they looked dirty and had intense expressions like us. I could smell the forest on them.
In the kitchen we sat on one side of the long dining table. The man went into a little room at the end of the kitchen, where he hummed a familiar song, dished out rice into many bowls, and brought them out on a tray. We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food. He pulled himself together, and as he was about to take his first bite, the two happy-face foreigners walked into the dining room and asked him to come with them. He took his bowl of rice with him and followed the foreigners, who were already walking out of the kitchen. We sat quietly for a minute before Alhaji asked if anyone happened to bring some marijuana or cocaine. One of the boys had some marijuana that we pa.s.sed around, but it wasnat enough. aWhere can we get ourselves some good drugs in this place?a one of the boys asked.
As we pondered this question, the man who had brought us to the kitchen returned, bringing with him another group of boys, over twenty of them. aThese are the new arrivals,a he said to us. Turning to the new boys, he said, aIall bring you some food, and please, take your time. There is no need to eat fast.a The boys sat on the opposite side of the dining table and ate as fast as we had. The man sniffed the air and asked, aWho was smoking marijuana in here?a But no one paid him any attention, so he sat down and kept quiet. We stared at the new boys and they at us.
Alhaji broke the silence. aWhere are you boys from?a he asked. The boys widened their eyes and stared at Alhaji as if he had just asked them the wrong question. One of the boys, who looked a little older and had no hair on his head, stood up, clenching his fist.
aAnd who the f.u.c.k are you? Do we look like we are here to answer questions for bastar pekin lek you?a He leaned across the table and looked down on Alhaji. Alhaji got up and pushed him. The boy fell, and when he got up, he pulled a bayonet and jumped on the table toward Alhaji. All of us stood up, ready to fight. The man screamed, aStop it, boys!a but no one listened to him. I took out my grenade and put my fingers inside the pin.
aDo you boys want this to be your last meal, or do you want to answer his question?a I threatened the other boys.
aWe are from Kono district,a the boy who held the bayonet said.
aAh, the diamond area!a Alhaji said. I was still holding the grenade.
aDid you fight in the army or for the rebels?a I sternly asked.
aDo I look like a rebel to you?a he said. aI fought for the army. The rebels burned my village and killed my parents, and you look like one of them.a aSo we all fought on the same side of the war,a Alhaji said, and we all sat down, still glaring at each other. Upon learning that we had all fought for the so-called army, in different parts of the country, we calmed down and talked about what bases we were from. Neither of us had ever heard of the othersa squad or base or the lieutenants who were in charge of the squads. I explained to the other boys that we had arrived just a few minutes before them. They told me that they had been randomly selected, too, and asked by their commander to follow the men who visited their base. None of us knew why our commanders had let us go. We were excellent fighters and were ready to fight the war till the end. One boy was telling us that he thought the foreigners gave our commanders money in exchange for us. No one said anything to this. I still had the grenade in my hand as we conversed. Sometime during the conversation I turned to the man who had brought us to the kitchen. He was sitting at the edge of the table, shaking. His forehead perspired profusely. aDo you know why our commanders gave us up to you sissy civilians?a I asked the man, pointing the grenade at him. He put his head under the table as if I was going to throw the grenade at him. He was too nervous to answer me.
aHe is a sissy civilian, letas go ask the other boys,a the boy who had pulled his bayonet suggested. His name was Mambu, and I later became friends with him. We left the man, still under the kitchen table, and headed for the verandah. As we walked up the steps, we saw the three MPs sitting at the entrance of the compound, chatting and ignoring us. The two foreigners had left. We walked up to the boys sitting quietly on the verandah.
aDo you boys know why your commanders gave you up to these civilians?a Alhaji asked, and all the quiet boys stood up and turned their angry faces to him, staring silently.
aAre you boys deaf?a Alhaji continued. He turned to me: aThey donat know anything.a aWe do not want to be bothered by anyone,a one of the boys said in a deep voice. aAnd we do not want to answer any questions from a civilian.a aWe are not civilians,a Mambu said angrily, walking toward the boy. aIf anyone is a civilian, it is you boys. You are wearing civilian clothes. What kind of army person wears only civilian clothes? Did these sissy civilians who brought you here make you wear those clothes? You must be a weak soldier, then.a aWe fought for the RUF; the army is the enemy. We fought for freedom, and the army killed my family and destroyed my village. I will kill any of those army b.a.s.t.a.r.ds every time I get a chance to do so.a The boy took off his shirt to fight Mambu, and on his arm was the RUF tattoo.
aThey are rebels,a Mambu shouted, and before he could reach for his bayonet, the boy punched him in the face. He fell, and when he got up, his nose was bleeding. The rebel boys drew out the few bayonets they had and rushed toward us. It was war all over again. Perhaps the nave foreigners thought that removing us from the war would lessen our hatred for the RUF. It hadnat crossed their minds that a change of environment wouldnat immediately make us normal boys; we were dangerous, and brainwashed to kill. They had just started this process of rehabilitation, so this was one of the first lessons they had to learn.
As the boys rushed toward us, I threw the grenade among them, but the explosion was delayed. We leaped out from underneath the stoop where we had taken cover and charged into the open yard, where we began to fight. Some of us had bayonets, others didnat. A boy without a bayonet grabbed my neck from behind. He was squeezing for the kill and I couldnat use my bayonet effectively, so I elbowed him with all my might until he let go of my neck. He was holding his stomach when I turned around. I stabbed him in his foot. The bayonet stuck, so I pulled it out with force. He fell and I began kicking him in the face. As I went to deliver the final blow with my bayonet, someone came from behind me and sliced my hand with his knife. It was a rebel boy, and he was about to kick me down when he fell on his face. Alhaji had stabbed him in the back. He pulled the knife out, and we continued kicking the boy until he stopped moving. I wasnat sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didnat care. No one screamed or cried during the fight. After all, we had been doing such things for years and were all still on drugs.
The three MPs and the two nationals who had brought us to the center came running into the yard a few minutes into the fight. aStop, stop,a they yelled, pushed boys apart, and carried the wounded to the side. It was a bad idea. We pounced on the MPs, pulled them to the ground, and took their guns away from them. The army boys, we, got one; the rebel boys had the other. The other MP ran away before either group could catch him.
Mambu had the gun, and before the rebel boy who had the other gun could switch the safety off, Mambu shot him. He fell, dropping the gun. Other rebel boys tried to grab it, but Mambu shot each one who attempted to. He killed a few and wounded some. But the rebel boys were persistent, and finally one of them got the gun and shot two boys on our side. The second boy, who was shot at close range, stabbed the rebel boy in his stomach before he fell. The rebel boy dropped the gun and fell to the ground as well.
More MPs were running through the gate now, toward the fight. We had fought for almost twenty minutes, stabbing and slicing each other and the men who tried to part us. The MPs fired a few rounds into the air to get us to stop, but we were still fighting, so they had to part us by force. They placed some of us at gunpoint and kicked others apart. Six people were killed: two on our side and four on the rebel side; and several were wounded, including two of the men who had brought us. The military ambulances took off, wailing into the still newborn night with the dead and the wounded. Their strobe lights made me dizzy. I had a little wound on my hand. I hid it because I didnat want to be taken to the hospital and it was just a small cut. I washed the blood off, put some salt on it and tied it with a cloth. During the fight Mambu had blinded one boy by plucking out his eye with a bayonet. We later heard that the boy was taken out of the country for surgery and that his eye was to be replaced by a catas eye or something. Following the night of the fight, we praised Mambu for his lethal behavior. I would have liked him to be in my squad, I thought.
As MPs stood guard to make sure we didnat start another fight, we, the army boys, went to the kitchen to look for food. We ate and chatted about the fight. Mambu told us that when he plucked the boyas eye out, the boy ran to punch him, but he couldnat see him, so he ran into the wall, banging his head hard, and fainted. We laughed and picked up Mambu, raising him in the air. We needed the violence to cheer us after a whole day of boring traveling and contemplation about why our superiors had let us go.
The jubilation was stopped by a group of MPs who walked into the kitchen and asked us to follow them. They had their guns pointed at us, but we laughed at them and walked outside to where military vehicles waited to transport us somewhere. We were so happy to have dealt with the rebel boys that we didnat think of attacking the MPs. Plus there were too many of them. It seemed they had gotten the message that we were not children to play with. Some of the MPs stood by the vehicle holding their guns tightly and carefully eyeing us. aMaybe they are taking us back to the front,a Alhaji said, and for some reason we all started singing the national anthem, marching to the vehicles.
But we were not taken back to the front lines; instead, they took us to Benin Home, another rehabilitation center in Kissy Town at the eastern outskirts of Freetown, away from the rest of the city. Benin Home had once been called Approve School and been a government-run juvenile center. The MPs made sure to search us thoroughly before we entered. The blood of our victims and enemies was fresh on our arms and clothes. The lieutenantas words still echoed in my head: aFrom now on, we kill any rebel we see, no prisoners.a I smiled a bit, happy that we had taken care of the rebel boys, but I also began to wonder again: why had we been brought here? The MPs guarded us that night as we sat on the verandah of our halls staring into the night. All I could think about was what was going to happen with my G3 weapon and what movie my squad was watching that night, what good marijuana and cocaine were at their disposal. aHey, you fellows have any tafe [marijuana] for us?a Mambu asked the MPs, who ignored him. I was beginning to shake. The drugs from the previous nights, before we were brought to the city, had begun to subside in my system. I walked up and down on the verandah, restless in my new environment. My head began to hurt.
16.
IT WAS INFURIATING to be told what to do by civilians. Their voices, even when they called us for breakfast, enraged me so much that I would punch the wall, my locker, or anything that I was standing next to. A few days earlier, we could have decided whether they would live or die. Because of these things, we refused to do anything that we were asked to do, except eat. We had bread and tea for breakfast, rice and soup for both lunch and dinner. The a.s.sortment of soups consisted of ca.s.sava leaves, potato leaves, okra, and so forth. We were unhappy because we needed our guns and drugs.
At the end of every meal, the nurses and staff members came to talk to us about attending the scheduled medical checkups in the mini-hospital at Benin Home and the one-on-one counseling sessions in the psychosocial therapy center that we hated. As soon as they started speaking, we would throw bowls, spoons, food, and benches at them. We would chase them out of the dining hall and beat them up. One afternoon, after we had chased off the nurses and staff members, we placed a bucket over the cookas head and pushed him around the kitchen until he burned his hand on a hot boiling pot and agreed to put more milk in our tea. Because of these things, we were basically left to wander aimlessly about our new environment for the entire first week. During that same week, the drugs were wearing off. I craved cocaine and marijuana so badly that I would roll a plain sheet of paper and smoke it. Sometimes I searched in the pockets of my army shorts, which I still wore, for crumbs of marijuana or cocaine. We broke into the mini-hospital and stole some pain relieversa"white tablets and off whitea"and red and yellow capsules. We emptied the capsules, ground the tablets, and mixed them together. But the mixture didnat give us the effect we wanted. We got more upset day by day and, as a result, resorted to more violence. In the morning, we beat up people from the neighborhood who were on their way to fetch water at a nearby pump. If we couldnat catch them, we threw stones at them. Sometimes they dropped their buckets as they ran away from us. We would laugh as we destroyed their buckets. The neighbors stopped walking near our center, as we had sent a few of them to the hospital. The staff members avoided us all the more. We began to fight each other day and night.
We would fight for hours in between meals, for no reason at all. During these fights, we destroyed most of the furniture and threw the mattresses out in the yard. We would stop to wipe the blood off our lips, arms, and legs only when the bell rang for mealtime. At night, after we had exhausted fighting, we would bring our mattresses outside in the yard and sit on them quietly until morning arrived and it was time for breakfast. Every time we returned from breakfast, the mattresses we had brought outside the previous night were back on our beds. We would angrily bring them out again in the yard, cursing whoever had taken them inside. One night, as we sat outside on the mattresses, it began to rain. We sat in the rain wiping it off our faces and listening to its sound on the tile roof and the gushing of torrents onto the ground. It rained for only about an hour, but even after it had stopped, we continued sitting outside all night on the wet sponges that were once our mattresses.
The following morning, when we returned from breakfast, the mattresses were still outside. It wasnat much of a sunny day, so they didnat dry by nighttime. We became angry and went to look for Poppay, the man in charge of storage. He was an ex-military man with a wandering eye. When we found him, we demanded dry mattresses.
aYou will have to wait for the ones you left outside to dry,a he said.
aWe cannot allow a civilian to talk to us like that,a someone said, and we all shouted in agreement and rushed at Poppay. We unleashed blows on him. One of the boys stabbed his foot and he fell down. He put his hands over his head as we kicked him relentlessly and left him lying on the floor bleeding and unconscious. We shouted in excitement as we walked back to our verandah. Gradually, we became quiet. I was angry, because I missed my squad and needed more violence.
A security guy who watched the center took Poppay to the hospital. Several days later, Poppay returned during lunchtime, limping but with a smile on his face. aIt is not your fault that you did such a thing to me,a he said, as he strolled through the dining hall. This made us angry, because we wanted athe civilians,a as we referred to the staff members, to respect us as soldiers who were capable of severely harming them. Most of the staff members were like that; they returned smiling after we hurt them. It was as if they had made a pact not to give up on us. Their smiles made us hate them all the more.
My hands had begun to shake uncontrollably and my migraines had returned with a vengeance. It was as if a blacksmith had an anvil in my head. I would hear and feel the hammering of metal in my head, and these unbearable sharp sounds made my veins and muscles sour. I cringed and rolled around on the floor by my bed or sometimes on the verandah. No one paid any attention, as everyone was busy going through their own withdrawal stages in different ways. Alhaji, for example, punched the cement pillar of one of the buildings until his knuckles bled and his bone began to show. He was taken to the mini-hospital and put to sleep for several days so that he would stop hurting himself.
One day we decided to break the gla.s.s windows in the cla.s.srooms. I do not remember why, but instead of finding rocks to break the windows like everyone else, I punched the gla.s.s with my fist. I managed to break several panes before my hand got stuck in the gla.s.s. I drew it out and began to bleed uncontrollably. I had to go to the hospital. My plan was to steal a first-aid kit and treat myself, but the nurse was there. She made me sit on the counter as she removed pieces of gla.s.s from my skin. She twisted her face whenever she was removing a piece of gla.s.s that was buried deep in my skin. But when she looked at me, I was still. She searched my face to see if I was in pain. She was confused, but continued to gently remove the pieces of gla.s.s from my bleeding hand. I didnat feel a thing. I just wanted to stop my blood from flowing.
aThis is going to hurt,a the nurse said when she was about to clean the cuts.
aWhat is your name?a she asked as she dressed my hand. I didnat answer her.
aCome back tomorrow so that I can change the bandage. Okay?a She began to rub my head, but I pushed her hand away and walked out.
I didnat go back to the hospital the next day, but on that same day, I fainted from a migraine while I was sitting on the verandah. I woke up in bed in the hospital. The nurse was wiping my forehead with a soaked cloth. I caught her hand, pushed her away, and walked out again. I sat outside in the sun, rocking back and forth. My entire body was aching, my throat was dry, and I felt nauseated. I threw up something green and slimy, then fainted again. When I woke up hours later, the same nurse was there. She handed me a gla.s.s of water. aYou can go if you want to, but I suggest that you stay in bed tonight,a she said, pointing her finger at me, the way a mother would talk to a stubborn child. I took the water from her and drank it, then threw the gla.s.s against the wall. The nurse leapt from her chair. I tried to get up to leave, but was unable to sit up in bed. She smiled and walked over to my bed and injected me. She covered me with a blanket and began sweeping up the broken gla.s.s. I wanted to throw the blanket off, but I couldnat move my hands. I was getting weaker and my eyelids grew heavier.
I woke to the whispers of the nurse and someone else. I was confused, as I wasnat sure what day or time it was. I felt my head pulsating a little. aHow long have I been here?a I asked the nurse, banging my hand on the side of the bed to get her attention.
aLook whoas talking, and be careful with your hand,a she said. When I sat up a bit, I saw that there was a soldier in the room. I thought for a minute that he was there to take me back to the front lines. But when I looked at him again, I knew he was at the hospital for other reasons. He was clearly a city soldier, well dressed and without a gun. He was a lieutenant and supposedly there to check on how we were being treated medically and psychologically, but he seemed more interested in the nurse. I was once a lieutenant, I thought, a ajunior lieutenant,a to be precise.
As a junior lieutenant I had been in charge of a small unit made up of boys to carry out quick missions. The lieutenant and Corporal Gadafi had selected all my remaining friendsa"Alhaji, Kanei, Jumah, and Moribaa"to form the unit, and once again we were back together. Only this time we werenat running away from the war. We were in it and went out scouting potential villages that had food, drugs, ammunition, gasoline, and other things we needed. I would report our findings to the corporal, and then the entire squad would attack the village we had spied on, killing everyone so that we would stay alive.
On one of our scouting expeditions, we accidentally came upon a village. We had thought that the village was more than three days away, but after only a day and a half of walking, we began to smell the scent of cooking palm oil in the air. It was a beautiful day, as summer was giving us its last sunshine. We immediately got off the path and walked in the bushes toward the village. When we began to see the thatched roofs, we crawled until we were closer to the village, to be able to look at what was going on. There were a few gunmen lazily lounging about. Also, there were piles of bundles outside every house. It seemed that the rebels were getting ready to move out of the village. If we had gone back to base to get the rest of the squad, we would have missed capturing their supply of food. So we decided to attack. I gave orders for everyone to deploy around the village at strategic positions from where they could see the entire place. Alhaji and I gave the three other boys a few minutes to take their positions before we started crawling even closer to the village to initiate the attack. The two of us went back to the main path and started crawling on either side of it. We had two RPG tubes and five propelled grenades. We had gotten close enough, and I had aimed my gun at the group that I intended to start with, when Alhaji tapped me on my shoulder. He whispered that he wanted to practice his Rambo moves before we started firing. Before I said a word, Alhaji was already rubbing mud on his face, using a combination of saliva and some of the water from his backpack to wet the mud. He tied his gun to his back and took out his bayonet, rubbing his finger on the flat edge, holding it in front of his face. He began to crawl slowly under the midday sun that illuminated the village one last time before we brought darkness to it.
When Alhaji was out of sight, I aimed the RPG at the village where most of the gunmen sat, to cover him. A few minutes later, I saw him crawling and crouching behind and among houses. He would quickly sit against walls to avoid being seen. He crawled slowly behind a lazy guard basking in the sunlight with his gun on his lap. Alhaji grabbed the guardas mouth and sliced his neck with his bayonet. He did the same to a few more guards. But he had made one mistake: he didnat hide the bodies of those he had successfully killed. I was enjoying his maneuver when one of the guards, upon returning to his post, saw the body of his colleague and began running back to tell the others. I couldnat let him do that, so I shot him with my G3 and quickly released two RPGs among the gunmen.
We began exchanging fire. I didnat know where Alhaji was, but as I was shooting, he crawled toward me. I almost shot him, but recognized his dirty Rambo face. We went to work, killing everyone in sight. We didnat waste a single bullet. We had all gotten better at shooting, and our size gave us an advantage, because we could hide under the tiniest bushes and kill men who wondered where the bullets were coming from. To gain complete control of the village, Alhaji and I shot the remaining RPGs before we descended on it.
We walked around the village and killed everyone who came out of the houses and huts. Afterward, we realized that there was no one to carry the loads. We had killed everyone. So I sent Kanei and Moriba back to base to get help. They left, taking some ammunition from the dead gunmen; some of them still clung to their guns. The three of us remained in the village. Instead of sitting among the dead bodies, the bundles of food, crates of ammunition, and bags of drugs, we took cover in the nearby bushes and guarded the village. Also, we took turns going down to the village to get something to eat and some drugs. We sat quietly under the bushes and waited.
Two days later, Kanei and Moriba returned with the corporal, some soldiers, and civilians who carried the bundles of food, drugs, and ammunition back to base.
aWe have enough of everything to last us for a few months. Good job, soldiers,a the corporal congratulated us. We saluted him and were on our way. Because of this raid, Alhaji acquired the name aLittle Rambo,a and he did all he could in other raids to live up to that name. My nickname was aGreen Snake,a because I would situate myself in the most advantageous and sneaky position and would take out a whole village from under the tiniest shrub without being noticed. The lieutenant gave me the name. He said, aYou donat look dangerous, but you are, and you blend with nature like a green snake, deceptive and deadly when you want to be.a I was happy with my name, and on every raid I made sure I did as my name required.
There was a crack on the white ceiling of the room, and I could faintly hear the deep voice of the city lieutenant and the quick laughs of the nurse. I turned my head to the side and looked in their direction. The nurse had a wide smile on her face and seemed to be interested in the lieutenantas jokes. I got up and started walking out of the hospital.
aDrink a lot of water and you will be fine. Come back tomorrow night for a checkup,a the nurse called after me.
aHow do you like being here?a the lieutenant asked.
I looked at him with disgust and spat on the ground. He shrugged. Just another sissy city soldier, I thought as I walked back to the hall. When I got there, two boys were playing table tennis on the verandah. Everyone seemed to be interested in what was happening. It had been more than a month and some of us had almost gone through the withdrawal stage, even though there were still instances of vomiting and collapsing at unexpected moments. These outbreaks ended, for most of us, at the end of the second month. But we were still traumatized, and now that we had time to think, the fastened mantle of our war memories slowly began to open.
Whenever I turned on the tap water, all I could see was blood gushing out. I would stare at it until it looked like water before drinking or taking a shower. Boys sometimes ran out of the hall screaming, aThe rebels are coming.a Other times, the younger boys sat by rocks weeping and telling us that the rocks were their dead families. Then there were those instances when we would ambush the staff members, tie them up, and interrogate them about the whereabouts of their squad, where they got their supplies of arms and ammunition, drugs, and food. It was also during this time that we were given school suppliesa"books, pens, and pencilsa"and told that we would have cla.s.ses from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on weekdays. We made campfires with them, and the next morning another set of supplies was handed to us. We burned them again. The staff members kept resupplying the school materials. This time they didnat say, aItas not your fault,a as they usually did after we had done things they considered wrong and not childlike.
One afternoon, after the staff members had set some school supplies on the verandah, Mambu suggested that we sell them. aWho will buy them? Everyone is afraid of us,a some of the boys asked. aWe can find a trader who wants to do business,a Mambu a.s.sured the boys. We loaded the supplies in plastic bags, and six of us went to the nearest market, where we sold them to a vendor. The man was excited and told us that he would buy from us anytime. aI donat care whether you stole this; I have the money and you have the goods, we do business,a the man told us as he handed Mambu a wad of cash. Mambu counted the crisp notes with a wide smile on his face. He held the bills to our noses so that we could smell them. aThis is good money. I can tell,a he said. We then ran back to the center to make it in time for lunch. Immediately after we were finished eating, Mambu gave each boy his share of the money. The halls became noisy as everybody talked about what they were going to do with their money. This was definitely more exciting than burning the supplies.
While some of the boys bought Coca-Cola, toffee, and other such things with their money, Mambu, Alhaji, and I planned a trip to Freetown. All we knew was that we had to take public transportation to the city center.
That morning we gulped our breakfast and left the dining hall one at a time. I pretended I was going for a checkup at the mini-hospital, Mambu went into the kitchen as if to get more food and climbed out the window, Alhaji walked toward the latrine. We didnat want the other boys to know, as we were worried that they would all come along and the staff would panic. The three of us met at the junction down by the center and stood in line, waiting for the bus.
aHave you ever been to the city?a Alhaji asked us.
aNo,a I replied.
aI was supposed to come to Freetown for school, but then the war came. I heard it is a beautiful city,a Alhaji said.
aWell, weall find out soon enough. The bus is here,a Mambu announced.
Soukous music was blasting inside the bus, and people were chatting loudly, as if at a marketplace. We sat in the back and watched the houses and kiosks go by. A man standing in the aisle began to dance to the music. Then a few pa.s.sengers, including Mambu, joined in. We laughed and clapped for the dancers.
We got off the bus on Kissy Street, a busy area near the heart of the city. People were hurriedly going about their daily lives as if nothing were happening in the country. There were big shops on both sides of the street, and vendors crowded the tiny sidewalks. Our eyes feasted on everything, and we were quickly overwhelmed.
aI told you it would be great.a Mambu jumped up in the air.
aLook at that tall building.a I pointed at one.
aAnd that one is so tall,a Alhaji called out.
aHow do people get up there?a Mambu asked.
We walked slowly, admiring the number of cars, the Lebanese shops filled with all kinds of foods. My neck was hurting just from looking at the tall buildings. There were mini-markets everywhere, selling clothes, food, ca.s.settes, stereos, and many other things. The city was too noisy, as if people were having arguments everywhere simultaneously. We wandered about all the way to the Cotton Tree, the national symbol of Sierra Leone and the landmark of the capital. We stared openmouthed at the huge tree that we had seen only on the back of currency. We now stood under it at the intersection of Siaka Stevens Street and Pademba Road, the center of the city. Its leaves were green, but the bark looked very old. aNo one will believe us when we tell them this,a Alhaji said as we walked away.
We walked around all day, buying ice cream and Vimto drinks. The ice cream was difficult to enjoy, as it melted too quickly under the hot sun. I spent most of my time licking the sticky residue on my elbows and between my fingers instead of eating it from the cone. As we walked around the city center, the numbers of people and cars increased. We knew no one and everyone seemed to be in a hurry. Mambu and Alhaji walked behind me the whole time and consulted with me about which way to proceed, when to stopaIt seemed as if we were still in the front line and I was their squad leader.
It was almost evening and we had to return to the center in time for dinner. As we walked back to catch the bus, we realized that we didnat have money to pay the fare. aWe should sit in front and when we get to our stop, we can jump off and run away,a Mambu told us. We quietly sat on the bus, eyeing the apprentice (the conductor) who collected the fare before every stop. When the bus was about to reach our destination, the apprentice asked those getting off to raise their hands. He walked down the aisle collecting money. Then the bus stopped and the apprentice stood at the doorway, to make sure that no one got out without paying. I walked toward him, my hand in my pocket, as if I was pulling out the cash. Then I shoved him to the side and we ran away laughing. He chased us for a bit and then gave up. That night we told all the boys about the tall buildings in the city, the noise, the cars, and the markets. Everyone was excited and wanted to go to the city after that. The staff had no choice but to arrange weekend trips to the city center so that we would stop going on our own. But that wasnat enough for some of us, who wanted to visit the city more than once a week.
I do not know what happened, but people stopped buying our school supplies. Even when we offered them for a cheaper price, we were unable to get buyers. Since we didnat have any other means of getting money, we could no longer go into the city center on our own, or as frequently as we wanted. Also, attending cla.s.s became the requirement for the weekend trips to the city. Because of these things, we began going to cla.s.s.
It was an informal school. For mathematics, we learned addition, multiplication, and long division. For English, we read pa.s.sages from books, learned to spell words, and sometimes the teacher read stories out loud and we would write them in our notebooks. It was just a way of arefreshing our memories,a as the teacher put it. We didnat pay attention in cla.s.s. We just wanted to be present so we wouldnat miss the trips to the city. We fought each other during lessons, sometimes stabbed each otheras hands with pencils. The teacher would continue on and we would eventually stop fighting. We would then start talking about the ships we had seen from the banks of Kroo Bay, the helicopter that flew by as we walked on Lightfoot Boston Street, and at the end of cla.s.s the teacher would say, aItas not your fault that you cannot sit still in cla.s.s. You will be able to do so in time.a We would get angry and throw pencils at him as he left the hall.
Afterward, we would have lunch, then busy ourselves playing table tennis or soccer. But at night some of us would wake up from nightmares, sweating, screaming, and punching our own heads to drive out the images that continued to torment us even when we were no longer asleep. Other boys would wake up and start choking whoever was in the bed next to theirs; they would then go running into the night after they had been restrained. The staff members were always on guard to control these sporadic outbursts. Nonetheless, every morning several of us were found hiding in the gra.s.ses by the soccer field. We didnat remember how we had gotten there.
It took several months before I began to relearn how to sleep without the aid of medicine. But even when I was finally able to fall asleep, I would start awake less than an hour later. I would dream that a faceless gunman had tied me up and begun to slit my throat with the zigzag edge of his bayonet. I would feel the pain that the knife inflicted as the man sawed my neck. Iad wake up sweating and throwing punches in the air. I would run outside to the middle of the soccer field and rock back and forth, my arms wrapped around my legs. I would try desperately to think about my childhood, but I couldnat. The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment in my life before the war.
The rainy season in Sierra Leone falls between May and October, with the heaviest rainfalls in July, August, and September. My squad had lost the base where I had trained, and during that gunfight Moriba was killed. We left him sitting against the wall, blood coming out of his mouth, and didnat think much about him after that. Mourning the dead wasnat part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive. After that, we wandered in the forest searching for a new base before the wet season started. But we couldnat find one early enough. Most of the villages we came upon werenat suitable, since we had burned them or another group of fighters had destroyed them at some point. The lieutenant was very upset that we hadnat found a base, so he announced that we would keep walking until we found one.
At first it began to rain on and off. Then it started to rain continuously. We walked into the thickest forest and tried to escape the downpour by standing under big trees, but it rained to the point where the leaves couldnat hold off the water anymore. We walked through damp forests for weeks.
It was raining too hard one morning, and all of a sudden we were under fire. The RPGs we had failed to explode when they were fired. As a result, we retreated. The attackers didnat follow us far enough, so we regrouped again and the lieutenant said we had to counterattack immediately so that we could follow the attackers. aThey will lead us to their base,a he said, and we advanced toward them. We fought all day in the rain. The forest was wet and the rain washed the blood off the leaves as if cleansing the surface of the forest, but the dead bodies remained under the bushes and the blood that poured out of the bodies stayed on top of the soaked soil, as if the soil had refused to absorb any more blood for that day.
At about nightfall, the attackers began to retreat. As they were running back, they left one of their wounded men behind. We came upon him, and the lieutenant asked him where their base was. He didnat answer, so someone dragged him, with a rope around his neck, as we chased the attackers. He didnat survive the drag. At night the attackers stopped retreating. They had come to the outskirts of their base and were fighting fiercely, because they didnat want to give it up. aHit-and-run kalo kalo tactics,a the lieutenant ordered. We made two groups and launched the attack. The first group opened fire and pretended to retreat. The attackers chased after them, running past the ambush formed by the second group. We quietly got up and ran after the rebels, shooting them from behind. We repeated these tactics throughout the night and severely weakened the rebels. In the morning we entered the village and killed the remaining fighters, who didnat want to leave. We captured eight of their men, tied their hands and legs, and left them in the rain.
There were fireplaces in the village and lots of wood and food. The rebels had stocked up for the rainy season, but now we were the beneficiaries of the looted food and provisions. We changed into the dry clothes we could find and sat around the fire, warming ourselves and drying our shoes. I clutched my gun and smiled for a second, happy that we had found shelter. I extended my toes toward the fire to warm them and saw that they were pale and had begun to rot.
We had been in the village for only a few minutes when the rebels attacked again. They didnat want to give up the village easily. We looked at each other sitting around the fire and angrily changed our magazines and went out to get rid of the attackers for good. We fought them throughout the night and the following day. None of us wanted to give up the village to the other, but in the end we killed most of the rebels and captured a few more. The others ran away into the cold and rainy forest. We were so angry with the prisoners that we didnat shoot them but, rather, decided to punish them severely. aIt will be a waste of bullets to shoot them,a the lieutenant said. So we gave them shovels and demanded, at gunpoint, that they dig their own graves. We sat under the huts smoking marijuana and watched them dig in the rain. Each time they slowed down, we would shoot around them and they would resume digging faster. When they were done digging, we tied them and stabbed their legs with bayonets. Some of them screamed, and we laughed and kicked them to shut them up. We then rolled each man into his hole and covered him with the wet mud. All of them were frightened, and they tried to get up and out of the hole as we pushed the dirt back on them, but when they saw the tips of our guns pointed into the hole, they lay back and watched us with their pale sad eyes. They fought under the soil with all their might. I heard them groan underneath as they fought for air. Gradually, they gave up, and we walked away. aAt least they are buried,a one of the soldiers said, and we laughed. I smiled a bit again as we walked back to the fire to warm ourselves.
By the fire, I realized that I had bruises on my arms, back, and foot. Alhaji helped me attend to them with some bandages and medical supplies that the rebels had left behind. It turned out that the bruises were from bullets that had merely torn my flesh as they missed killing me. I was too drugged and traumatized to realize the danger of what had just happened. I laughed as Alhaji pointed out the number of bruises on my body.
In the morning I would feel one of the staff members wrap a blanket around me saying, aThis isnat your fault, you know. It really isnat. Youall get through this.a He would then pull me up and walk me back to the hall.
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. aCome and see me whenever you feel like it,a 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. aShe likes you,a Alhaji teased me. I didnat say anything.