A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [78]
It happened one night after I had fallen asleep while reading the lyrics of a song. I had not slept well for months now, and so far I had been able to avoid my nightmares by busying myself day and night with listening to and writing the lyrics of Bob Marley’s songs. But that night I had a nightmare that was different from the ones I had been having. It began with my swimming in a river at Mattru Jong with my brother Junior. We dove to the bottom of the river and brought out oysters. We placed them on a rock and plunged to the deep again. We were competing with each other. In the end Junior got more oysters than I did. We ran home for dinner, racing each other. When we got there, the food was sitting in pots, but no one was around. I turned to ask my brother what was happening, but he was gone. I was alone and it was dark. I searched for a lamp and found it, but I was afraid. My forehead was sweating. I took the lamp to the living room, where a box of matches sat on the table. I lit the lamp, and as soon as the room was bright, I saw men standing all around. They had circled me in the dark. I could see their bodies—except for their faces, which were darker, as if they were headless walking beings. Some were barefoot and others wore army boots. All had guns and knives. They began to shoot, stab, and slice each other’s throats. But they would rise and then get killed again. Their blood began to fill the room, its tide quickly rising. They wailed, causing me great anguish. I held my ears to stop hearing them, but I began to feel their pain. Each time a person was stabbed, I felt it worse; I saw the blood dripping from the same part of my body as that of the victim. I began to cry as the blood filled the room. The men disappeared and the door immediately opened, letting the blood out with a rush. I went outside with the blood all over me and saw my mother, father, older and younger brother. They were all smiling as if nothing had happened, as if we had been together all this time.
“Sit down, Mr. Troublesome,” my father said.
“Don’t mind him,” my mother chuckled.
I sat down facing my father, but couldn’t eat with them. My body had gotten numb, and my family didn’t seem to notice that I was covered with blood. It began to rain and my family ran into the house, leaving me outside. I sat in the rain for a while, letting it clean the blood off me. I got up to go into the house, but it wasn’t there. It had disappeared.
I was looking around confused when I woke up from the dream.
I had fallen off my bed.
I got up and went outside and sat on the stoop looking into the night. I was still confused, as I couldn’t tell whether I had had a dream or not. It was the first time I had dreamt of my family since I started running away from the war.
The next afternoon I went to see Esther, and she could tell that something was bothering me. “Do you want to lie down?” she asked, almost whispering.
“I had this dream last night. I don’t know what to make of it,” I said, looking away.
She came and sat next to me and asked, “Would you like to tell me about it?”
I didn’t reply.
“Or just talk about it out loud and pretend I am not here. I won’t say anything. Only if you ask me.” She sat quietly beside me. The quietness lasted for a while, and for some reason I began to tell her my dream.
At first she just listened to me, and then gradually she started asking questions to make me talk about the lives I had lived before and during the war. “None of these things are your fault,” she would always say sternly at the end of every conversation. Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member—and frankly I had always hated it—I began that day to believe