A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [96]
“It sounds like a strange trip,” my uncle would remark. It felt, to me, like something that had all happened in my mind.
Mohamed and I started school again, at St. Edward’s Secondary School. I was excited. I remembered the morning walks to my primary school; the sound of brooms sweeping fallen mango leaves, startling the birds, who would chatter in even higher pitches as if inquiring from each other the meaning of the harsh sound. My school had only a small building, which was made of mud bricks and a tin roof. There were no doors, no cement on the floor inside, and it was too small to hold all the pupils. Most of my classes were conducted outside under mango trees that provided shade.
Mohamed mostly remembered the lack of school materials in our primary and secondary schools, and how we had to help the teachers grow crops in their farms or gardens. It was the only way the teachers, who hadn’t been paid for years, could make a living. The more we talked about it, the more I realized that I had forgotten what it felt like to be a student, to sit in class, to take notes, do homework, make friends, and provoke other students. I was eager to return. But on the first day of school in Freetown, all the students sat apart from us, as if Mohamed and I were going to snap any minute and kill someone. Somehow they had learned that we had been child soldiers. We had not only lost our childhood in the war but our lives had been tainted by the same experiences that still caused us great pain and sadness.
We always walked to school slowly. I liked it because I was able to think about where my life was going. I was confident that nothing could get any worse than it had been, and that thought made me smile a lot. I was still getting used to being part of a family again. I also began telling people that Mohamed was my brother, so that I wouldn’t have to explain anything. I knew I could never forget my past, but I wanted to stop talking about it so that I would be fully present in my new life.
As usual, I had gotten up early in the morning, and I was sitting on the flat stone behind the house waiting for the city to wake up. It was May 25, 1997. But instead of the usual sounds that brought the city to life, it was woken that morning by gunshots erupting around the State House and the House of Parliament. The gunshots woke everyone, and I joined my uncle and neighbors on the verandah. We didn’t know what was going on, but we could see soldiers running along Pademba Road and army trucks speeding up and down in front of the prison area.
The gunshots increased throughout the day, spreading across the city. The city folks stood outside on their verandahs, tensed up, shaking with fear. Mohamed and I looked at each other: “Not again.” By early afternoon the central prison had been opened and the prisoners set free. The new government handed them guns as they got out. Some went straight to the houses of the judges and lawyers who had sentenced them, killing them and their families or burning their houses if they were not around. Others joined the soldiers, who had started looting shops. The smoke from the burning houses filled the air, draping the city in fog.
Someone came on the radio and announced himself as the new president of Sierra Leone. His name, he said, was Johnny Paul Koroma, and he was leader of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which had been formed by a group of Sierra Leone Army (SLA) officers to overthrow the democratically elected President Tejan Kabbah. Koroma’s English was as bad as the reason he gave for the coup. He advised