A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [24]
After the pigs had gone and I had surveyed the terrain to my satisfaction, I climbed down and continued walking. I wanted to be away from that area before dawn, since I feared that if I stayed I might run into the wild pigs again. I walked all night and continued during the day. At the beginning of night, I saw owls coming from their hiding places, revolving their eyes, and stretching to become familiar with their surroundings and get ready for the night. I was walking very fast but very quietly, until I accidentally stepped on the tail of a snake. It started hissing and scuttling toward me. I ran as fast as I could for a long time. When I was six, my grandfather had inserted a medicine into my skin that protected me from snakebite and enabled me to control snakes. But as soon as I started school, I began to doubt the power of the medicine. After that, I was no longer able to make snakes stop in their tracks until I went by.
When I was very little, my father used to say, “If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die.” I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn’t know where I was going. Those words became the vehicle that drove my spirit forward and made it stay alive.
I had spent more than a month in the forest when I finally ran into people again. The only living things I had met were monkeys, snakes, wild pigs, and deer, none of which I could have a conversation with. Sometimes I watched the little monkeys practice jumping from tree to tree or watched the curious eyes of a deer that sensed my presence. The sounds of branches snapping off trees became my music. There were certain days when the sounds of the branches breaking made a consistent rhythm that I would enjoy very much, and the sonority of it would echo for a while and would gradually fade into the depths of the forest.
I was walking slowly, staggering from hunger, back pain, and fatigue, when I ran into some young people my age at an intersection where two paths merged into one. I was wearing a pair of trousers I had recently found hanging on a pole in an abandoned village. They were extremely big for me, so I had tied them with ropes so they wouldn’t fall off while I walked. We all arrived at the junction at the same time, and upon seeing each other, we became paralyzed with fear. As I stood there, unable to run, I recognized a few of the faces and I smiled to break the tension and uncertainty. There were six boys, and three of them, Alhaji, Musa, and Kanei, had attended Centennial Secondary School with me in Mattru Jong. They weren’t close friends, but the four of us had been flogged once for talking back to the senior prefect. We had nodded at one another after that punishment, which we all agreed was unnecessary. I shook hands with the boys.
I could tell who was from what tribe by the marks on their cheeks and their features. Alhaji and Saidu were Temne, and Kanei, Jumah, Musa, and Moriba were Mende. They told me they were heading for a village called Yele in Bonthe district that they had heard was safe because it was occupied by the Sierra Leone Armed Forces.
Quietly I followed them as I tried to remember all their names, especially the names of the faces I recognized among them. I walked in the back, creating a little distance between us. I began to realize how uncomfortable I felt being around people. Kanei, who was older, perhaps sixteen, asked me where I’d been. I smiled without answering. He tapped me on the shoulder as if he knew what I had experienced. “Circumstances will change and things will be fine, just hold on a little more,” he said, tapping my shoulder again