A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (20 page)

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.

20

M
Y CONCEPTION OF
N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY
came from rap music. I envisioned it as a place where people shot each other on the street and got away with it; no one walked on the streets, rather people drove in their sports cars looking for nightclubs and for violence. I really wasn’t looking forward to being somewhere this crazy. I had had enough of that back home.

It was dark when the plane landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was 4:30 p.m. I asked Dr. Tamba why it was dark so early in this country. “Because it is winter,” he said. “Oh!” I nodded, but the early darkness still didn’t make sense to me. I knew the word “winter” from Shakespeare’s texts and I thought I should look up its meaning again.

Dr. Tamba took our passports and did all the talking at immigration. We got our bags and headed toward the sliding doors. Maybe we shouldn’t just venture into the streets like that, I thought, but Dr. Tamba was already outside. When Bah and I stepped through the sliding doors, we were greeted by an extremely cold wind. I felt my skin tighten, I couldn’t feel my face, and it seemed my ears had fallen off; my fingers hurt, and my teeth chattered. The wind penetrated through the summer pants and T-shirt I was wearing, and it felt as though I wasn’t wearing anything. I was shivering as I ran back into the terminal. I had never in my life felt this cold. How can anyone survive in this country? I thought, rubbing my hands together and jumping around to generate some heat. Bah stood outside with Dr. Tamba, his hands wrapped around himself and shaking uncontrollably. For some reason, Dr. Tamba had a jacket but Bah and I didn’t. I waited in the terminal while Dr. Tamba hailed a taxi, then I ran outside and jumped in, quickly closing the door behind me. There were little white things falling out of the sky, and they seemed to be accumulating on the ground. What is this white stuff falling from the sky? I thought to myself. Dr. Tamba told the driver our destination, reading it off a piece of paper he held in his hand.

“Is this your first time in the city, and are you guys enjoying the beautiful snowfall?” the taxi driver asked.

“Yes, it is their first time in the city,” Dr. Tamba replied, and busied himself putting away our documents. I had never heard of the word “snow” before. It is not exactly something that we discuss in Sierra Leone. But I had seen movies about Christmas, and this white fluffy stuff was in those movies. It must be Christmas here every day, I thought.

When we entered the city, it seemed as if someone had lit the many tall buildings that shot into the sky. From afar, some of the buildings looked as if they were made of colorful lights. The city glittered, and I was so completely overwhelmed that I couldn’t decide where to look. I thought I had seen tall buildings in Freetown, but these were beyond tall, it seemed they were poking the sky. There were so many cars on the street, and they impatiently honked, even when the light was red. And then I saw people walking on the sidewalks. I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I was really seeing people on the streets of New York City. It wasn’t as dangerous as I had heard it was. Not so far. The lights were brighter than the ones back home, and I kept looking for the utility poles that the electric wires hung on, but I couldn’t see any.

We arrived at the Vanderbilt YMCA hotel on Forty-seventh Street and entered the lobby holding our luggage. We followed Dr. Tamba to the front desk and got our room keys. I had a room to myself for the first time in my life. To top that, I had a television, which I watched all night long. It was really hot in the room, so I took my clothes off and sweated in front of the television. Two days later I learned that the reason the room was so hot was that the radiator was on full blast. I didn’t know what it looked like, least of all how to turn the heat down or off. I remember thinking about the strangeness of this country: it is very cold outside and extremely hot inside.

On the morning following our arrival, I went downstairs to the cafeteria, where fifty-seven children from twenty-three countries were waiting to have breakfast and to begin the United Nations First International Children’s Parliament. There were children from Lebanon, Cambodia, Kosovo, Brazil, Norway, Yemen, Mozambique, Palestine, Guatemala, the U.S. (New York), South Africa, Peru, Northern Ireland, India, Papua New Guinea, Malawi, to name a few. While I was looking around for Bah and Dr. Tamba, a white woman pulled me to the side and introduced herself.

“My name is Kristen. I am from Norway.” She extended her hand.

“I am Ishmael from Sierra Leone.” I shook her hand, and she opened an envelope of name tags and placed one on my shirt. She smiled and motioned for me to join the breakfast line as she walked away, looking for other children without name tags. I followed behind two boys who were speaking a strange language. They knew what they wanted, but I had no idea what to get or what the names of the foods were that the cooks were making. Throughout my stay, I was baffled by the food. I would simply order “the same thing,” or put on my plate whatever I’d seen others put on theirs. Sometimes I was lucky to like what landed there. That was usually not the case. I asked Dr. Tamba if he knew where we could get some rice and fish stew in palm oil, some cassava leaves or okra soup. He smiled and said, “When you are in Rome, you do as the Romans do.”

I should have brought my own food from home to hold me until I learn about the food in this country, I thought as I drank my glass of orange juice.

After breakfast we walked two blocks in the freezing weather down to a building where most of the meetings took place. It was still snowing outside, and I was wearing summer dress pants and a long-sleeved shirt. I told myself that I wouldn’t want to live in such an unpleasantly cold country, where I would always have to worry about my nose, ears, and face falling off.

That first morning in New York City, we learned about each other’s lives for hours. Some of the children had risked their life to attend the conference. Others had walked hundreds of miles to neighboring countries to be able to get on a plane. Within minutes of talking to each other, we knew that the room was filled with young people who had had a very difficult childhood, and some were going to return to these lives at the end of the conference. After the introductions, we sat in a circle so that the different facilitators could tell us about themselves.

Most of the facilitators worked for NGOs, but there was a short white woman with long dark hair and bright eyes who said, “I am a storyteller.” I was surprised at this and gave her all my attention. She used elaborate gestures and spoke very clearly, enunciating every word. She said her name was Laura Simms. She introduced her co-facilitator, Therese Plair, who was light-skinned, had African features, and held a drum. Before Laura finished talking, I had already decided that I would take her workshop. She said she would teach us how to tell our stories in a more compelling way. I was curious to find out how this white woman, born in New York City, had become a storyteller.

That same morning Laura kept looking at Bah and me. I didn’t know that she had noticed we were wearing only our light African shirts and pants and sat closer to the radiators, our hands wrapped around our tiny bodies, and every now and then shaking from the cold that seemed to have settled in our bones. In the afternoon before lunch, she approached us. “Do you have winter jackets?” she asked. We shook our heads. A painful concern passed over her face, making her smile look forced. That evening she returned with winter jackets, hats, and gloves for us. I felt I was wearing a heavy green costume that made my body bigger than it looked. But I was happy, because now I could venture outside to see the city after the daily workshops. Years later, when Laura offered me one of her winter jackets, I refused to accept it because it was a woman’s jacket. She joked with me about the fact that when she had first met me I was so cold that I didn’t care that I was wearing a woman’s winter jacket.

Bah and I became a little close with Laura and Therese over the course of the conference. Sometimes Laura would talk to us about stories I had heard as a child. I was in awe of the fact that a white woman from across the Atlantic Ocean, who had never been to my country, knew stories so specific to my tribe and upbringing. When she became my mother years later, she and I would always talk about whether it was destined or coincidental that I came from a very storytelling-oriented culture to live with a mother in New York who is a storyteller.

I called my uncle in Freetown during my second day. Aminata answered the phone.

“Hi. This is Ishmael. Could I please speak to Uncle?” I asked.

“I will go get him. Call back in two minutes.” Aminata hung up the phone. When I called back, my uncle picked up.

“I am in New York City,” I told him.

“Well,” he said, “I guess I believe you, because I haven’t seen you in a few days.” He giggled. I opened the hotel window to let him hear the sounds of New York.

“That doesn’t sound like Freetown,” he said, and was silent for a bit before he continued. “So what is it like?”

“It is excruciatingly cold,” I said, and he began to laugh.

“Ah! Maybe it is your initiation to the white people’s world. Well, tell me all about it when you return. Stay inside if you have to.” As he spoke, I pictured the dusty gravel road by his house. I could smell my aunt’s groundnut soup.

Every morning we would quickly walk through the snow to a conference room down the street. There we would cast our sufferings aside and intelligently discuss solutions to the problems facing children in our various countries. At the end of these long discussions, our faces and eyes glittered with hope and the promise of happiness. It seemed we were transforming our sufferings as we talked about ways to solve their causes and let them be known to the world.

On the night of the second day, Madoka from Malawi and I walked west along Forty-seventh Street without realizing we were heading straight into the heart of Times Square. We were busy looking at the buildings and all the people hurrying by when we suddenly saw lights all over the place and shows playing on huge screens. We looked at each other in awe of how absolutely amazing and crowded the place was. One of the screens had a woman and a man in their underwear; I guess they were showing it off. Madoka pointed at the screen and laughed. Others had music videos or numbers going across. Everything flashed and changed very quickly. We stood at the corner for a while, mesmerized by the displays. After we were able to tear our eyes away from them, we walked up and down Broadway for hours, staring at the store windows. I didn’t feel cold, as the number of people, the glittering buildings, and the sounds of cars overwhelmed and intrigued me. I thought I was dreaming. When we returned to the hotel later that night, we told the other children about what we had seen. After that, we all went out to Times Square every evening.

Madoka and I had wandered off to a few places in the city before our scheduled sightseeing days. We had been to Rockefeller Plaza, where we saw a huge decorated Christmas tree, statues of angels, and the people ice-skating. They kept going around and around, and Madoka and I couldn’t understand why they enjoyed this. We had also gone to the World Trade Center with Mr. Wright, a Canadian man we had met at the hotel. One evening, when the fifty-seven of us got on the subway on our way to the South Street Seaport, I asked Madoka, “How come everyone is so quiet?” He looked around the train and replied, “It is not the same as public transportation back home.” Shantha, the cameraperson for the event, who later became my aunt when I returned to live in New York, pointed the camera at us, and Madoka and I posed for her. On every trip I would make mental notes on things I needed to tell my uncle, cousins, and Mohamed. I didn’t think they would believe any of it.

On the last day of the conference, a child from each country spoke briefly at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) chamber about their country and experiences. There were diplomats and all sorts of influential people. They wore suits and ties and sat upright listening to us. I proudly sat behind the Sierra Leone name plaque, listening and waiting for my turn to speak. I had a speech that had been written for me in Freetown, but I decided to speak from my heart, instead. I talked briefly about my experience and my hope that the war would end—it was the only way that adults would stop recruiting children. I began by saying, “I am from Sierra Leone, and the problem that is affecting us children is the war that forces us to run away from our homes, lose our families, and aimlessly roam the forests. As a result, we get involved in the conflict as soldiers, carriers of loads, and in many other difficult tasks. All this is because of starvation, the loss of our families, and the need to feel safe and be part of something when all else has broken down. I joined the army really because of the loss of my family and starvation. I wanted to avenge the deaths of my family. I also had to get some food to survive, and the only way to do that was to be part of the army. It was not easy being a soldier, but we just had to do it. I have been rehabilitated now, so don’t be afraid of me. I am not a soldier anymore; I am a child. We are all brothers and sisters. What I have learned from my experiences is that revenge is not good. I joined the army to avenge the deaths of my family and to survive, but I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end…”

After all our presentations, we sang a chant we had come up with. Then we began to sing other songs; we cried, we laughed, and we danced. It was an exceptionally moving afternoon. We were all sad to leave each other, as we had learned that we were not returning to peaceful places. Madoka and I put our arms around each other and jumped around to the music. Bah was dancing with another group of boys. Dr. Tamba sat in the audience smiling for the first time since we had arrived in New York City. After the dance, Laura pulled me aside and told me that she was moved by what I had said.