“We left New York City on November 15, 1996. My sixteenth birthday was eight days away, and throughout the flight back home I still felt as if I was dreaming, a dream that I didn’t want to wake up from” (200). According to this information, November 23, 2009 marks Ishmael Beah’s 29th birthday, and I wonder if he’s made it back to the “dream” he felt in New York City.
I read Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, with a faint idea of what I was getting myself into. I was prepared for the violence, and vaguely knew that the boys were used to fight in the war, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how completely the boys’ childhoods and lives that they knew were stripped so suddenly from them. “That night for the first time in my life I realized that it is the physical presence of people and their spirits that gives a town life” (22)…”One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life” (69). I read The Hunger Games a few weeks ago, which was a science fictional depiction of children fighting children as a survival TV show game, but it pales in comparison to what Beah and countless other Sierra Leonean boys actually experienced.
Right away I appreciated Beah’s use of flashbacks and flash-forwards to tell his story. The fragmented feel to his memoir mirror how he must feel about his experiences, when one considers how patchy most people’s memories are of their childhood, added to the fact that Beah was high on cocaine and marijuana during most of his time as a boy soldier. The fact that the older soldiers gave drugs to the boy soldiers actually was news to me, but it made perfect sense. I doubt many children would be effective killers if they were fully cognizant of their actions in battle.
Over and over again, the boys in rehabilitation were told that “none of these things are your fault.” For a long time, Beah didn’t believe or trust it. It wasn’t until several meetings with Esther that he did start to believe it. “It was the genuine tone in Esther’s voice that made the phrase finally begin to sink into my mind and heart” (165). I found myself wondering on a larger scale, for every person who has ever been self-blaming, what does it take to believe that something is not one’s fault? And, what happens if what is needed never happens? Not every boy soldier in Sierra Leone got the chance to meet with Esther, after all.
I am thankful that Beah focused on happy moments whenever he could, to offset the heartbreaking moments that seemed to occupy so much of his youth. I couldn’t help but giggle at his first experience with an elevator and his first impression of New York City. “There were little white things falling out of the sky, and they seemed to be accumulating on the ground…I remember thinking about the strangeness of this country: it is very cold outside and extremely hot inside” (195). Finally, who cannot feel relaxed and content when hearing Bob Marley’s voice, as Beah did with his cassettes? I actually have been listening to Marley while writing this blog; I just couldn’t resist!
Hard drugs at twelve and thirteen years old. The sheer quantity of drugs they took amazed me. I can't believe he didn't mention kids dying from overdosing. Their little bodies sure withstood a lot of trauma.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about how the "it's not your fault" relates so much to other forms of trauma as well. Children who are victims of physical or sexual abuse are told the same thing when they finally confront their demons. Adult children of alcoholics go through a similar process. I'm not sure you ever work through the guilt and blaming entirely. Perhaps there's always a piece of you that questions... yourself and your memory.
I went back after reading the book to find the part where he wakes up from that nightmare in NYC. I was hungry for more information about where he is now and what he's doing with himself.
Unlike the other group of readers, I really thought he was an intelligent, thoughtful, and talented writer. His descriptions were beautiful and haunting. I wanted to speak up tonight, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.