The rebels were still invading villages, though not as often as they had in the past. The number of casualties reaching Freetown was diminishing. Still, ECOMOG forces warned Sierra Leoneans not to travel on the main roads or through the western regions of the country in case of sudden attacks.
Mabinty didn’t have much to do at the camp, so she occasionally helped care for Abdul by bathing him in one of the big plastic tubs or rocking him to sleep as she sang Temne songs.
“I will go with Mariatu,” Mabinty said again. “I’ll look after Abdul while she joins her friends. In my village, I cooked, sewed, and helped look after lots of babies. I was a grandmother to many children. Now I do nothing but sit around and watch the younger women cook.”
I ran up to Mabinty and hugged her. “Thank you! Thank you!” I said over and over again.
Marie, Fatmata, and Abibatu threw up their arms at the same time.
“What are we going to do with you, Mariatu?” Marie exclaimed.
The next day, my begging routine started again. Adamsay would wake me in the mornings. If Abdul was still sleeping, I’d rush outside and brush my teeth before waking him. After I’d fed him, we all left the camp together, Adamsay, Ibrahim, Mohamed, Mabinty, Abdul, and me.
Adamsay and I often split off from the boys, as people in Freetown gave more money to girls. We’d ask people for leones all the way down to the clock tower in the middle of Freetown, and then all the way back to the camp. Mabinty, holding Abdul, remained close. When he was hungry, the three of us would go behind a market stall or down an alleyway, away from the other kids. I’d sit on the dirty ground and breast-feed; Mabinty stood in front of me, blocking any onlooker’s view. I’d give Abdul back to Mabinty for another hour or so of begging before he indicated he needed me again, by puckering his lips and softly crying.
Such were my days for a while. One afternoon, quite by chance, I was holding Abdul while Mabinty was off talking to another older woman. I was standing impatiently, pacing back and forth, when a man dropped 40,000 leones (about $12) into my black plastic shopping bag. It was the most money I’d ever earned at one time.
“Poor child,” he said to me. He patted Abdul on the head before walking on.
“He took pity on you,” Mabinty said after I explained excitedly what had happened.
“Why?” I wondered.
“Because you have not only yourself to feed, but Abdul,” she said. “Watch. You start carrying that child and you’ll get more money than anybody.”
Indeed, passersby always singled me out when I held Abdul. From then on, I earned more money each day than all of my cousins combined.
When Abdul was several months old, a camp official came to our tent one night looking for me. He explained to me in Krio, which I now understood from hearing it all the time in Freetown, that some foreign journalists were coming to the camp the next day. They wanted to interview and take pictures of amputees from the war. Would I come the next morning, with Abdul, to the main part of the camp to meet them?
I was puzzled. “What is a journalist?” I asked.
“Someone who will tell your story to people in other countries,” the man replied.
“What do these people want with Mariatu?” Marie asked him. “She’s just a poor village girl.”
“Not anymore,” the official said. “Her village was ruined and the rebels hurt her badly. The world needs to know about the war in Sierra Leone.”
Abibatu pressed him further. “What will Mariatu get out of this?”
“Maybe someone will read about her and send her money, try to help her,” the man replied. Apparently several youth in the camp had people from foreign countries sending them money and supplies. “Some of the children are even going to live in the West, in wealthy countries where there are no wars, all because journalists are telling the world about our problems.”
At first I said no, thinking of all the money I’d be missing by not begging. But Marie and Fatmata encouraged me to go.
“Someone might hear about you, Mariatu, and give you money,” Fatmata said.
The next morning, I marched to the center of the camp with Abdul in my arms, a little angry at letting my cousins go off to Freetown without me. I sat down with a huff on a bench, well back from where I could see the camp official and the journalists talking.
When the official spotted me, he jogged over, smiling. He led me to a big table where four people were seated. For a moment I was speechless. For the first time in my life, I was looking at blue eyes and green eyes, yellow hair and brown hair, and these men and women had the lightest skin I had ever seen.
A woman with short red hair put her hand on my shoulder. “Hello,” she said in Krio. That impressed me, since Marie and Alie had told us that foreign people didn’t speak Temne, Krio, or Mende, the three main languages of Sierra Leone. The woman was pretty, and she made me feel at ease.
“Can you tell them about what happened to you?” the camp representative jumped right in.
I didn’t know where to begin, so I sat quietly, thinking. The lady with the red hair said something to the representative, who turned to me. “She wants to know if you are with your family?”
“Yes,” I replied. That was an easy question.
The representative translated another question from the woman. “Do you need anything?”
“Vegetables, clean water, soap, new clothes, dishes.” I don’t know where my answer came from, but I found myself reciting a long list of everything we didn’t have at the camp that we’d had back at Magborou.
I then broke into my story, or at least a small portion of it: “My name is Mariatu. I am a victim of the rebel attack on Manarma. Child soldiers held me hostage for ten hours and then cut off my hands. I now live at Aberdeen with my cousins Adamsay, Ibrahim, and Mohamed, who were also in the Manarma attack. They don’t have hands either.”
“How old is your baby?” the red-haired woman asked.
“His name is Abdul,” I replied. “He’s five months old.”
My first interview with the media lasted about 15 minutes. The representative then led the journalists on a tour of the camp, asking me to follow behind. At one point he directed me to stand still, with Abdul in my arms, so that the photographers could take pictures of me. I remember it well. My bare feet were caked in mud; a dog barked wildly in the background; behind me was a clothesline.
The camp official slipped a few leones into my arms and said he would call for me again.
It would be many years before I read the articles written about me that day and in the days to come. Every one of them would come back to haunt me. The journalists all said the rebels had raped me and that I had conceived Abdul during the attack on Manarma.
CHAPTER 12
“He’s sick, Mariatu,” Marie said. “He’s very sick. The doctor says Abdul needs a blood transfusion or he might die.”
Abdul was now about 10 months old. Over the past few weeks, his stomach had become swollen, so swollen he looked as if he was carrying a small baby inside. At first I thought he was getting fat from my milk. But he really wasn’t taking in as much milk as he had when he was younger. He’d also started crying more and more.
A nurse at the camp clinic gave Abdul a needle with some vitamins that were supposed to make him healthy. We went to see her every day, but the needle wasn’t helping. Abdul’s stomach got bigger and his face grew puffy. His legs had lost their baby fat. He was so skinny in some places and so fat in others that he looked distorted.
When the nurse first told me that Abdul was suffering from malnutrition, I started eating as much as I could, hoping I could make my milk more nourishing. I ate so many spoonfuls of rice that I felt I’d throw up. I stopped going out to beg with Adamsay and Mabinty, and spent all my time with Abdul at the camp. I’d cradle him in my arms until he fell asleep. I even sang to him—very softly, since I didn’t want anyone else to hear my bad singing voice.
But nothing I did seemed to make a difference. One day,
the nurse said we needed to take Abdul to the hospital.
Abibatu, Marie, and Fatmata came with me. We were back at Connaught, but in a different ward—this one was for babies—than where I stayed when I first arrived in Freetown.
“If Abdul dies, it will be all my fault,” I thought. “I should have loved him more.” In between being angry at myself, I tried to figure out how I could get enough money for the blood transfusion he needed. “I could go out and beg,” I said to myself, “pleading with anyone who walks my way. I could get my cousins to do the same. We could steal the money from the fabric salesman.”
Then a rational thought poked its way in. Father Maurizio, the Italian priest who had given me all of Abdul’s clothes: I would go to see him. Fatmata, Abibatu, and Marie approved of my plan. I kissed Abdul on the forehead and then I was off.
I ran faster than I ever had, out of the hospital, through the packed, market-lined streets of Freetown, down toward the ferry, and straight to the compound where Father Maurizio lived.
“I need your help,” I gasped when I saw him. Father Maurizio looked at me wide-eyed as I blurted out my reason for coming.
“Okay, Mariatu,” the priest said. “Let me see what I can do.”
Father Maurizio provided shelter at his mission for boys and girls who were separated from their families. He had access to wealthy people back in Italy who shipped him clothes and other necessities and wired him money for various programs.
The priest offered me a cup of water, then asked one of his staff to drive me back to the hospital.
“This is all my fault,” I cried out to Father Maurizio just before we pulled away. “If I had loved Abdul more, he would want to live. If he dies, it’s because my lack of love killed him.”
Father Maurizio showed up at the hospital several hours later. He had found the money through an Italian donor. The doctors did the transfusion immediately, but afterwards Abdul was worse than before. He lay weakly in my arms, his big brown eyes gazing off into the air. He didn’t even cry to tell me he was hungry.
Three days later, Abdul’s almost-weightless body fell completely still. His breathing grew shallow. Every so often his eyes would blink as if in slow motion. I sat clutching him tightly.
“I think it’s time,” Marie said gently, taking Abdul from my arms. She motioned for me to go outside and shut the door behind me.
As I walked down the hall, I kept my eyes focused directly forward, blocking out the other babies on the ward. Every time I looked at them, all I could see was Abdul’s face.
Later that day, back at the camp, I went straight to my room. I lay down on the mat I slept on. Whenever anyone tried to talk to me, I’d respond with a gruff “Leave me alone.” For the first few days, I got up only to use one of the urinals in the camp. On my way back, I’d grab a few bites of rice, then return to my room and my mat.
My family held a funeral ceremony for Abdul in the camp’s mosque. The imam recited a prayer, and one by one my family asked for blessings. I sat motionless, listening but not really hearing. Whenever we were supposed to recite a passage from the Quran, I did so under my breath.
“Allah,” I said in my head. “Help make me a better person.”
In the weeks that followed, I spent all my time sleeping. Abibatu, Fatmata, and Marie tried to console me many, many times, bringing me plates of rice and vegetables that I’d push away. Marie told me stories about Magborou. “We’ll go back one day,” she said. “You wait and see. We’ll be back in Magborou very soon.”
Abibatu often scolded me. “You have to pick yourself up, or else what’s the point of living? Those rebels should have killed you right then and there.”
Fatmata, who, along with Abdul, was living part of the time at the camp now, took a different approach. “There are still lots of things to be hopeful for, Mariatu.”
“Like what?” I grumbled. All I could see before me was a life of begging and depending on others for my survival. The best thing I could do for my family would be to move away. But where?
My sleep was haunted by images of Abdul. I’d have conversations with myself in my dreams: “Abdul was a person. He understood I did not love him. He knew I did not want him, so he left the world.”
I’d hear Abdul crying and I’d wake with a start. Relief swept through me, until I realized I’d been dreaming. A frequent dream was feeling Abdul lying on my stomach. I’d awake hugging him, only to find he was not there.
Abibatu and Marie collected all of Abdul’s clothes and toys and gave them back to Father Maurizio. Soon all that was left to remind me of him was the long scar on my stomach. When this knowledge hit me, I cried for nearly half a day. I cried until I had nothing left in me, then fell into one of my fitful sleeps.
In the dream that followed, Salieu came to me a second time. He sat down beside me, as he had in the dream after I first learned I was pregnant.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked him.
“Of course not,” he answered.
“But I killed Abdul.”
“No, you didn’t,” he replied. “You were too young, Mariatu. What I did to you was selfish. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. Abdul is with me.”
Abdul suddenly appeared, sitting on Salieu’s lap. He was wearing such a big smile, I could see his two bottom teeth; they had come in just before he got sick. Abdul looked like he had before the illness, with his fat legs and arms, normal-sized stomach, and round, happy eyes.
“Everything will be fine from now on,” Salieu said, standing up with Abdul in his arms. “Don’t blame yourself again for Abdul’s death.”
It was the last time I ever saw Salieu.
I wish I could have taken comfort from Salieu’s words. But I couldn’t. I hated him for what he had done to me, and I missed Abdul. Nonetheless, the morning after my dream, I did feel a lightness I hadn’t experienced in a while. I woke early, washed my face, changed into a clean T-shirt and wrap skirt, brushed my teeth with a chewing stick, and went down to the clock tower with Adamsay. I didn’t say much to her, though she tried to talk to me. When a businessman dropped some leones into her bag, she ran off immediately to the market to buy me a mango. She held it up, but I shook my head. “You eat it,” I sighed. I didn’t feel I deserved her kindness.
I trudged along the streets, my black plastic shopping bag held low by my side. I didn’t make any money that day. But the next day I lifted my bag a little higher. And by the day after that, I was talking to Adamsay again.
“I got accepted into a program,” she confided as we walked home one afternoon. “I might be going to Germany.”
I was excited for her. I was happy for all the children at the camp who were taking part in programs with foreign nonprofit groups. The camp official had been right when he said that people in the West were becoming interested in Sierra Leone.
“It isn’t an adoption program,” Adamsay continued, sighing a little. “I’ll only be going to Germany for a little while, to go to school.”
“Where is Germany?” I asked her.
“Germany is in Europe,” she replied, pointing north, as if this place called Germany was just beyond Freetown’s mountains. “It’s supposed to be green.”
“Oh,” I said, looking down. I’d suddenly realized what her leaving would mean to me.
“Don’t worry,” Adamsay said. She stopped and wrapped her big arms around me. She was about to let go when I found myself pulling her in tight. I held on to her for a long time, burrowing my face into her soft, fleshy shoulder. She smelled like grass, and that reminded me of Magborou. I wanted to go back there, back to the time when Adamsay, Mariatu, and I would play with stilts and make mud pies that we’d try to get Marie to eat.
The following Saturday, another girl named Mariatu who lived at the camp popped by to see me. Mariatu was the same age as me. She looked like me, too, and she had no hands. Rebels had attacked her when they invaded Freetown.
We didn’t go begging on the weekends, since the businesspeop
le didn’t work then. The people who filled Freetown’s bustling streets on Saturdays and Sundays were mostly poor villagers from the countryside escaping the war. They would ask us for money, so it was pointless to go to the city. Weekends were spent hanging around the camp, cleaning the few clothes we owned, grinding cassava, and hearing about the war from others.
I knew this other Mariatu quite well, because she often joined Adamsay and me for begging. Now she sat down beside me as I finished breakfast.
“Victor thinks it would lift your spirits if you came out to the theater troupe,” she announced.
Mariatu had tried to get me to join the camp’s theater troupe before I gave birth to Abdul. She’d even taken me to one of their rehearsals when I was about eight months pregnant.
The troupe had about 25 members, all of them war amputees. They met every Saturday and Sunday in the center of the camp. Some of the members had lost a foot, others had no hands. Most of the members were around my age, but there were some older men and women too. When I saw them rehearse that first time, they were doing a play about the war. Mariatu played herself, a young girl from a small village in northwestern Sierra Leone who’d come to Freetown with her mother in the hope of avoiding the rebels. Two boys played the parts of the child soldiers who maimed her. Their lines were all too familiar.
“Go to the president,” one boy said.
“Ask him for new hands,” said the other boy.
After the rehearsal, Mariatu had introduced me to Victor, who’d organized the troupe. Victor knew far too well the experiences many of us had endured. While the rebels had not harmed him, many of his friends and some of his family had been killed in the attack that destroyed his village.
The script brought back too many bad memories for me, so I’d politely told Mariatu and Victor that I couldn’t join the troupe. “I will need to look after my baby,” I had said. “But thank you for asking me. Maybe some other time.”
The Bite of the Mango Page 8