A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [63]
“We are not civilians,” Mambu said angrily, walking toward the boy. “If anyone is a civilian, it is you boys. You are wearing civilian clothes. What kind of army person wears only civilian clothes? Did these sissy civilians who brought you here make you wear those clothes? You must be a weak soldier, then.”
“We fought for the RUF; the army is the enemy. We fought for freedom, and the army killed my family and destroyed my village. I will kill any of those army bastards every time I get a chance to do so.” The boy took off his shirt to fight Mambu, and on his arm was the RUF tattoo.
“They are rebels,” Mambu shouted, and before he could reach for his bayonet, the boy punched him in the face. He fell, and when he got up, his nose was bleeding. The rebel boys drew out the few bayonets they had and rushed toward us. It was war all over again. Perhaps the naïve foreigners thought that removing us from the war would lessen our hatred for the RUF. It hadn’t crossed their minds that a change of environment wouldn’t immediately make us normal boys; we were dangerous, and brainwashed to kill. They had just started this process of rehabilitation, so this was one of the first lessons they had to learn.
As the boys rushed toward us, I threw the grenade among them, but the explosion was delayed. We leaped out from underneath the stoop where we had taken cover and charged into the open yard, where we began to fight. Some of us had bayonets, others didn’t. A boy without a bayonet grabbed my neck from behind. He was squeezing for the kill and I couldn’t use my bayonet effectively, so I elbowed him with all my might until he let go of my neck. He was holding his stomach when I turned around. I stabbed him in his foot. The bayonet stuck, so I pulled it out with force. He fell and I began kicking him in the face. As I went to deliver the final blow with my bayonet, someone came from behind me and sliced my hand with his knife. It was a rebel boy, and he was about to kick me down when he fell on his face. Alhaji had stabbed him in the back. He pulled the knife out, and we continued kicking the boy until he stopped moving. I wasn’t sure whether he was unconscious or dead. I didn’t care. No one screamed or cried during the fight. After all, we had been doing such things for years and were all still on drugs.
The three MPs and the two nationals who had brought us to the center came running into the yard a few minutes into the fight. “Stop, stop,” they yelled, pushed boys apart, and carried the wounded to the side. It was a bad idea. We pounced on the MPs, pulled them to the ground, and took their guns away from them. The army boys, we, got one; the rebel boys had the other. The other MP ran away before either group could catch him.
Mambu had the gun, and before the rebel boy who had the other gun could switch the safety off, Mambu shot him. He fell, dropping the gun. Other rebel boys tried to grab it, but Mambu shot each one who attempted to. He killed a few and wounded some. But the rebel boys were persistent, and finally one of them got the gun and shot two boys on our side. The second boy, who was shot at close range, stabbed the rebel boy in his stomach before he fell. The rebel boy dropped the gun and fell to the ground as well.
More MPs were running through the gate now, toward the fight. We had fought for almost twenty minutes, stabbing and slicing each other and the men who tried to part us. The MPs fired a few rounds into the air to get us to stop, but we were still fighting, so they had to part us by force. They placed some of us at gunpoint and kicked others apart. Six people were killed: two on our side and four on the rebel side; and several were wounded, including two of the men who had brought us. The military ambulances took off, wailing into the still newborn night with the dead and the wounded. Their strobe lights made me dizzy. I had a little wound on my hand. I hid it because I didn’t want to be taken to the hospital and it was just a small cut. I washed the blood off, put some salt on it and tied it with a cloth. During