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Once again I was with a group of boys. This time there were seven of us. I knew this was going to be a problem, but I didn’t want to be by myself anymore. Our innocence had been replaced by fear and we had become monsters. There was nothing we could do about it. Sometimes we ran after people shouting that we were not what they thought, but this made them more scared. We hoped to ask people for directions. It was impossible.

We had traveled for more than six days when we came in contact with a very old man who could barely walk. He sat on the verandah of a house in the middle of the village. His face was too wrinkled to still be alive, yet his dark skin was shiny and he spoke slowly, gobbling the words in his jaws before he let them out. As he spoke, the veins on his forehead became visible through his skin.

“Everyone ran when they heard of the ‘seven boys’ on their way here. I couldn’t run at all. So they left me behind. No one was willing to carry me and I didn’t want to be a burden,” he said.

We explained to him where we were from and where we wanted to go. He asked us to stay for a while and keep him company.

“You young fellows must be hungry. There are some yams in that hut over there. Can you boys cook some for me and yourselves?” he politely asked. When we were almost finished eating the yams, he said slowly, “My children, this country has lost its good heart. People don’t trust each other anymore. Years ago, you would have been heartily welcomed in this village. I hope that you boys can find safety before this untrustworthiness and fear cause someone to harm you.”

He drew a map on the ground with his walking stick. “This is how you get to Yele,” he said.

“What is your name?” Kanei asked the old man.

He smiled as if he knew that one of us would ask this question. “There is no need to know my name. Just refer to me as the old man who got left behind when you get to the next village.” He looked at all our faces and spoke softly, with no sadness in his voice.

“I will not be alive to see the end of this war. So, to save a place in your memories for other things, I won’t tell you my name. If you survive this war, just remember me as the old man you met. You boys should be on your way.” He pointed his staff toward the path that lay ahead of us. As we walked away, he erased the map with his foot and waved us off with a raised right hand and a nod. Before the village disappeared from our sight, I turned around to take one last look at the old man. His head was down and he had both hands on his staff. It was clear to me that he knew his days would soon be over, and he didn’t bother to be afraid for himself. But he was for us.

Someone had started a rumor about the “seven boys,” us. Many times during our journey we were surrounded by muscular men with machetes who almost killed us before they realized that we were just children running away from the war. Sometimes I looked at the blades of the machetes and thought about how much it would hurt to be chopped with one. Other times I was so hungry and tired that I didn’t care. At crowded villages where we sometimes stopped to spend the night, the men stayed up to keep an eye on us. When we went to the river to wash our faces, mothers would grab their children and run home.

9

ONE MORNING, immediately after we had passed a deserted village, we started hearing something like the roar of big engines, the rolling of metal drums on a tar road, a thunder exploding, roll after roll. All these sounds reached our ears simultaneously. We hurriedly deviated from the path, running into the bushes and lying on the ground. We searched one another’s faces for an explanation of this strange sound. Even Kanei, who sometimes had answers, couldn’t tell us what we were hearing. We all looked at him and his face contorted with confusion.

“We have to find out what it is or we can’t continue on to Yele,” Kanei whispered, and then began to crawl toward the sound. We followed him, quietly dragging our bodies on rotten leaves. As we got closer,