A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [97]
Later in the night another announcement came over the radio, this one declaring that the rebels (RUF) and the army had collaborated in ousting the civilian government “for the benefit of the nation.” Rebels and soldiers on the front lines started pouring into the city. The entire nation crumbled into a state of lawlessness. I hated what was happening. I couldn’t return to my previous life. I didn’t think I could make it out alive this time.
The AFRC/RUF, “Sobels,” as they were called, had begun blowing up bank vaults using RPGs and other explosives and looting the money. Sometimes the Sobels halted people as they walked by, searched them, and took whatever they could find. They occupied the secondary schools and university campuses. There was nothing to do during the day except sit on the verandah. Uncle decided to finish building a house we had been working on since I came to live with him. In the morning we walked up to the land and worked until the early-afternoon gunshots sent us running back home to take cover under beds. But day by day, it got too dangerous to be in the open, as stray bullets had killed many people. So before long we stopped working on it.
Armed men had forcefully taken most of the food in the city from shops and markets, and imports of food from outside the country and from the provinces to the city had been stopped. What little was left had to be sought in the midst of the madness. Laura Simms had been sending me money and I had saved some of it, so Mohamed and I decided to go to town to try and buy some gari, cans of sardines, rice, anything we could find. I knew that I would risk running into my former military friends, who would kill me if I told them I wasn’t part of the war anymore. But at the same time I couldn’t just stay home. I had to find food.
We had heard of a secret market in town conducted in a yard behind an abandoned house where otherwise unavailable food items were sold to civilians. They sold the items at twice the regular price, but the trip seemed worth the risk and expense. We headed out early in the morning, terrified of seeing someone we knew. We kept our heads down as we hurried past young rebels and soldiers. We arrived as the vendors were just beginning to put their food products out. We bought some rice, some palm oil, salt, and fish; by the time we were done, the market was filling up with people hurriedly trying to buy whatever they could afford.
As we were about to leave, an open Land Rover roared up and armed men jumped off before it came to a halt. They ran into the crowd of civilians, firing a warning shot. Over a megaphone the commander ordered everyone to put down their bags of food, put their hands behind their heads, and lie flat, facing the ground. A woman in the crowd panicked and decided to run. An armed man in a red headband shot her in the head. She screamed and fell, loudly hitting the stony ground. This caused more panic, and everyone scattered in different directions. We grabbed our goods and ran crouching. This was beginning to be too familiar.
While we were running away from the area, another Land Rover full of more armed men arrived, and they began firing and knocking people’s heads with the butts of their guns. We hid behind a wall separating the marketplace and the main street, then kept to a fast but cautious path behind the houses off the bay. Almost at the end of the bay, where the tide slammed a sunken boat, we jumped on the main street with our goods tucked under our arms and began the final walk home. We were approaching the Cotton Tree at the center of town when we saw a group of protesters run by, holding posters that read STOP THE KILLING and the like. They wore white shirts and their heads were tied with white cloths. We tried to ignore them, but as we turned a corner to continue home, a group of armed men, half in civilian and half in military clothing, ran toward