A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [45]
We spent the night breathing heavily under bushes soaked with rain. The hunters had given up. Gasemu began to cry like a child. It always made me afraid when such things happened. In my younger years I had learned that grown men cry only when they have no other choice. Gasemu rolled on the ground in pain. When we finally summoned the courage to pick him up, we found out why he was crying. He had been shot sometime as we ran away the previous night. His right leg was bleeding and had begun to swell. He was holding his side and didn’t want to remove his hand. Alhaji lifted Gasemu’s hand; his side was bleeding as well. It was as if his hand had been holding his blood from flowing. It rushed out of him like water breaking banks. He began to sweat. Alhaji asked me to contain the blood by placing my hand on Gasemu’s side. I did, but his blood continued to slip through my fingers. He looked at me, his eyes sadly beginning to sink deeper into their sockets. He managed to raise his weak right hand to hold the wrist of my hand that was on his side. He had stopped sobbing, even though tears still ran down his eyes, but not as much as the blood that he was losing. Musa couldn’t bear the sight of blood any longer. He fainted. Alhaji and I took Gasemu’s shirt off and tied it around his side to contain his blood. The rest of our companions watched with tense faces. Musa woke up and joined them.
In between Gasemu’s gasps, he told us that there was a wahlee* nearby and that if we went back toward the farm, he would show us how to rejoin the path and get to it. We had taken the wrong turn during the night. Gasemu put his arms around my shoulder and Alhaji’s. We lifted him up and began walking slowly through the bushes. We set him down every few minutes and wiped his sweaty forehead.
It was past midday when Gasemu began heaving, his entire body shaking. He asked us to set him down. He held his stomach and began to roll in pain from one side to the other. His heaving increased, and he stopped rolling. He lay flat on his back, staring at the sky. His eyes were fixed on something and his legs vibrated and stopped, his hands did the same, and then finally his fingers, but his eyes remained open, transfixed on the top of the forest.
“Let’s pick him up.” Alhaji’s voice was shaking. I put Gasemu’s arm around my neck. Alhaji did the same, and we walked with him, his feet dragging on the ground. His arms were cold. His body was still sweating and he continued bleeding. We didn’t say a word to each other. We all knew what had happened.
When we finally got to the wahlee, Gasemu’s eyes were still open. Alhaji closed them. I sat by him. His blood was on my palm and my wrist. I regretted hitting him with the pestle. The dry blood was still in his nose. I began to cry softly. I couldn’t cry as much as I wanted to. The sun was getting ready to leave the sky. It had come out to take Gasemu with it. I just sat by him, unable to think. My face began to harden. When the breeze blew against it, I felt how my flesh resisted enjoying the cool wind. All through the night no sleep came to me. My eyes watered and dried over and over again. I did not know what to say. For a few minutes I tried to imagine what it felt like for Gasemu when his fingers vibrated to let the last air out of his body.
12
WE MUST HAVE BEEN walking for days, I do not really remember, when suddenly two men put