A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [41]
One side of the sky was completely blue and the other was filled with stagnant clouds. The quiet breeze caused a branch to snap in the forest. The echo sounded like a cry, a wailing. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it, because my friends stopped briefly and listened attentively. The breeze picked up its pace. The leaves of the trees began to rub against each other, resisting the wind. More branches snapped in the forest and the wailing intensified. The trees looked as if they were in pain. They swayed in all directions and slapped each other with their branches. The clouds rolled over the blue sky and it became dark. A heavy rain followed, with thunder and lightning that lasted for less than fifteen minutes. Afterward, the sky returned to its bluest. I walked, perplexed, in my soaked clothes under the sun. At nighttime it began to rain again. The strands of rain fell brutally from the sky, whipping us. We walked for most of the night, wiping the water off our faces in order to see. It became unbearable to continue, so we sat at the foot of huge trees and waited. Whenever the lightning lit the forest, I could see where everyone was sitting. We all had our faces resting on our knees and our arms were crossed.
The last hours of the night were long. By the time the rain stopped, it was light. We were all shivering, our fingertips pale and wrinkled.
“We look like soaked chickens,” Musa said, laughing, as we emerged from under the trees. We found an opening where the sun had begun penetrating, and we squeezed and spread our shirts on the tops of the bushes and sat in the sun to dry ourselves.
It was almost midday when we put on our damp clothes and continued walking. A few hours later we heard a cockcrow in the distance. Musa jumped in the air and we all began to laugh.
Finally, we were approaching the village where seeing our families was actually a possibility. I couldn’t stop smiling. Coffee trees began to replace forest, and footprints appeared on the path. We heard rice being pounded and whispers in the breeze. We quickened our pace as these sounds assured us that life was ahead. On the opposite side of the coffee farm was a small banana farm, and there we came across a man cutting down hands of ripe bananas. We couldn’t see his face, as his head was behind the leaves.
“Good afternoon,” Kanei said.
The man peeped at us from behind a banana leaf. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and walked toward us. As he approached, slowly making his way through the noisy dried banana leaves, the sight of his face awakened my memory.
His face was a little wrinkled now and he was much skinnier than when I had last seen him. His name was Gasemu, Ngor* Gasemu. He used to be one of the notorious single men in my town. Back then, everyone talked about him not being married. The older people always remarked, “He is old enough and responsible enough to find himself a good wife, but he likes to be alone, he likes that loose life.” He never said anything back then and didn’t get upset by what they said. He cooked his own food, and when he was too tired to cook, he ate gari* with honey. There was a period of time when he ate gari with honey for over a week. My mother decided to dish him out a plate every evening. “That food is unhealthy for you,” she had said to him, and he smiled, rubbing his head.
When Gasemu was by the path, he stopped and examined our faces. He smiled, and that was when I became sure that he was the Ngor Gasemu I knew, because he was missing a front tooth.
“You boys want to help me carry some bananas to the village?” he asked in that manner that adults usually ask young people, so that we knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“Come on, boys.” He motioned for us to follow him into the banana farm. All of us started walking past him as he continued waving his hand as if he was pulling us with an invisible rope. When I approached him, he put his hand on my shoulder and rubbed my