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By Root 889 0

next to a Fulani fellow by the name of Jalloh, who said he had lived in Freetown. We talked about what the war had done to the country. Afterward, he gave me his phone number and asked me to call him if I needed help getting around the city. I wanted to tell him that I had no place to stay, but he got off before I could summon the nerve to confide in him. I looked about the bus for the Sierra Leonean man I had bumped into but I couldn’t find him. A few minutes later, the bus came to a halt at a huge station, its final destination. I got out and watched everyone go. I sighed and placed my hands on my head, then walked to a bench and sat down. I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t sit here all night,” I kept mumbling to myself.

There were lots of taxis, and all the people who arrived at the bus station took them. I didn’t want to stand out as a lost foreigner, so I took a taxi, too. The driver said something in French. I knew that he was asking where I wanted to go. “Sierra Leone consulate, ahh, embassy,” I told the driver. I looked out the window at the utility poles and the sloppily hung streetlights; their lights seemed brighter than the moonlight. The taxi stopped in front of the embassy and the driver pointed to the green, white, and blue flag to make sure that I was at the right place. I nodded and paid him. When I got out, the guards at the embassy door, speaking Krio, asked me for my passport. I showed it to them and they let me into the compound.

Inside were more than fifty people, probably in the same situation as I. Most were lying on mats in the open compound. Their bundles or bags stood next to them. Others were removing their mats from their luggage. I assumed people only slept here at night and went out during the daytime. I found a spot in the corner, sat on the ground, and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. The sight of all these people reminded me of a few villages I had passed through while running away from the war. I was scared and worried about what turmoil the next day might bring. Nonetheless, I was happy to have made it out of Freetown, to have escaped the possibility of becoming a soldier again. This gave me some comfort. I took out the remaining raw rice from my bag and started chewing on it. There was a woman sitting with her two children, a boy and a girl no more than seven years old, a few paces from me. She was whispering a story to them, as she didn’t want to disturb other people. As I watched the elaborate movements of her hands, the tide of my thoughts took me to a particular telling of a story I had heard many times as a boy.

It was nighttime and we sat by the fire stretching our arms toward the flames as we listened to stories and watched the moon and the stars retire. The red coal from the firewood lit our faces in the dark and wisps of smoke continuously rose toward the sky. Pa Sesay, one of my friends’ grandfather, had told us many stories that night, but before he began telling the last story, he repeatedly said, “This is a very important story.” He then cleared his throat and began:

“There was a hunter who went into the bush to kill a monkey. He had looked for only a few minutes when he saw a monkey sitting comfortably in the branch of a low tree. The monkey didn’t pay him any attention, not even when his footsteps on the dried leaves rose and fell as he neared. When he was close enough and behind a tree where he could clearly see the monkey, he raised his rifle and aimed. Just when he was about to pull the trigger, the monkey spoke: ‘If you shoot me, your mother will die, and if you don’t, your father will die.’ The monkey resumed its position, chewing its food, and every so often scratched its head or the side of its belly.

“What would you do if you were the hunter?”

This was a story told to young people in my village once a year. The storyteller, usually an elder, would pose this unanswerable question at the end of the story in the presence of the children’s parents. Every child who was present at the gathering was asked to give an answer, but no child ever did,