A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [92]
Dr. Tamba took our passports and did all the talking at immigration. We got our bags and headed toward the sliding doors. Maybe we shouldn’t just venture into the streets like that, I thought, but Dr. Tamba was already outside. When Bah and I stepped through the sliding doors, we were greeted by an extremely cold wind. I felt my skin tighten, I couldn’t feel my face, and it seemed my ears had fallen off; my fingers hurt, and my teeth chattered. The wind penetrated through the summer pants and T-shirt I was wearing, and it felt as though I wasn’t wearing anything. I was shivering as I ran back into the terminal. I had never in my life felt this cold. How can anyone survive in this country? I thought, rubbing my hands together and jumping around to generate some heat. Bah stood outside with Dr. Tamba, his hands wrapped around himself and shaking uncontrollably. For some reason, Dr. Tamba had a jacket but Bah and I didn’t. I waited in the terminal while Dr. Tamba hailed a taxi, then I ran outside and jumped in, quickly closing the door behind me. There were little white things falling out of the sky, and they seemed to be accumulating on the ground. What is this white stuff falling from the sky? I thought to myself. Dr. Tamba told the driver our destination, reading it off a piece of paper he held in his hand.
“Is this your first time in the city, and are you guys enjoying the beautiful snowfall?” the taxi driver asked.
“Yes, it is their first time in the city,” Dr. Tamba replied, and busied himself putting away our documents. I had never heard of the word “snow” before. It is not exactly something that we discuss in Sierra Leone. But I had seen movies about Christmas, and this white fluffy stuff was in those movies. It must be Christmas here every day, I thought.
When we entered the city, it seemed as if someone had lit the many tall buildings that shot into the sky. From afar, some of the buildings looked as if they were made of colorful lights. The city glittered, and I was so completely overwhelmed that I couldn’t decide where to look. I thought I had seen tall buildings in Freetown, but these were beyond tall, it seemed they were poking the sky. There were so many cars on the street, and they impatiently honked, even when the light was red. And then I saw people walking on the sidewalks. I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I was really seeing people on the streets of New York City. It wasn’t as dangerous as I had heard it was. Not so far. The lights were brighter than the ones back home, and I kept looking for the utility poles that the electric wires hung on, but I couldn’t see any.
We arrived at the Vanderbilt YMCA hotel on Forty-seventh Street and entered the lobby holding our luggage. We followed Dr. Tamba to the front desk and got our room keys. I had a room to myself for the first time in my life. To top that, I had a television, which I watched all night long. It was really hot in the room, so I took my clothes off and sweated in front of the television. Two days later I learned that the reason the room was so hot was that the radiator was on full blast. I didn’t know what it looked like, least of all how to turn the heat down or off. I remember thinking about the strangeness of this country: it is very cold outside and extremely hot inside.
On the morning following our arrival, I went downstairs to the cafeteria, where fifty-seven children from twenty-three countries were waiting to have breakfast and to begin the United Nations First International Children’s Parliament. There were children from Lebanon, Cambodia, Kosovo, Brazil, Norway, Yemen, Mozambique, Palestine, Guatemala, the U.S. (New York), South Africa, Peru, Northern Ireland, India, Papua New Guinea, Malawi, to name