by Ishmael Beah
It was almost midday, but the tar road was already too hot. I watched a flying plastic bag land on the road and immediately begin to melt. Poda podas went by, their apprentices shouting the names of their destinations to attract customers. A few feet ahead a vehicle had stopped on the side of the street and the driver was pouring water from a jerrican into its overheated engine. “This car drinks more water than a cow,” he grumbled. I was walking slowly, but my undershirt got soaked with sweat.
When I arrived at the address, I stood in front of the tall building and marveled at its height before entering. In the lobby there were about twenty boys, all dressed better than I. Their parents were giving them last-minute points for the interview. I studied the big cement columns in the building. I liked thinking about how people had managed to create and erect such large cement pillars. I was busy examining one pillar when a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was there for the interview. I nodded, and he pointed to the open metal box that all the boys now stood in. I hesitantly walked into the congested box and the boys laughed at me, as I stood there unaware that I had to press the button for the box to start moving. I had never been in a box like this before. Where was it taking us? A boy in a blue shirt squeezed his way past me and pressed the number 5 button. It lit up, and the box closed on us. I looked about me and saw that everyone was calm, so I knew that there was no need to worry. The box began to move up, fast. The other boys remained calm, adjusting their ties and shirts. When the doors opened, I was the last to step out into a large open room with brown leather couches. There was a man sitting at the desk at the far wall and he motioned for me to find a place to sit. The other boys had already seated themselves. I sat away from them and looked about the room. Through the window I could see the tops of other buildings, and I decided to get up and look around to see how high up from the ground we were. As I was making my way to the window, my name was called.
A really light-skinned man (I couldn’t tell if he was Sierra Leonean or not) sat in a big black leather chair. “Please have a seat and I will be with you in a moment,” he said in English, and he shuffled through some papers, picked up a phone, and dialed a number. When the person picked up on the other end, the man just said, “It is a go-ahead,” and hung up.
He turned toward me and eyed me for a bit before he began to question me, speaking very slowly, in English.
“What is your name?” he asked, looking at the list of names on his desk.
“Ishmael,” I said, and he checked my name before I could tell him my last name.
“Why do you think you should go to the UN to present the situation affecting children in this country?” He raised his head from the list and looked at me.
“Well, I am from the part of the country where I have not only suffered because of the war but I have also participated in it and undergone rehabilitation. So I have a better understanding, based on my experience of the situation, than any of these city boys who are here for the interview. What are they going to say when they go over there? They don’t know anything about the war except the news of it.” I looked at the man, who was smiling, and it made me a bit angry.
“What else do you have to say?” he asked.
“Nothing, except that I am wondering why you are smiling.” I sat back in the soft leather chair.
“You can go now,” the man said, still smiling.
I got up and left the room, leaving the door open behind me. I walked toward the box and stood by it. I stood there and waited for several minutes, but nothing happened. I didn’t know what to do to make the box come upstairs. The boys who were waiting for the interview began to laugh. Then the man who sat behind the desk walked toward me and pushed a button on the wall. The doors immediately opened and I walked in. The man pressed the number 1 button and waved to me as the doors closed. I tried to find something to hold on to, but the box was already at street level. I walked out of the building and stood outside examining its structure. I have to tell Mohamed about the inside of this marvelous building when I see him, I thought.
I walked home slowly that afternoon, watching the cars go by. I didn’t think much about the interview except that I still wondered why the man who had interviewed me had smiled. I meant what I said and it was not a funny matter. At some point during my walk, a convoy of cars, military vans, and Mercedes-Benzes festooned with national flags passed by. Their windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see who rode in them, and they were too fast, anyway. When I got home, I asked Allie if he knew of a powerful man who parades the city in such a way. He told me that it was Tejan Kabbah, the new president, who had won the election under the banner of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) in March 1996, eight months earlier. I had never heard of this man.
That night my uncle brought home a bag of groundnut. Auntie Sallay boiled the groundnut and put it out on a large tray. All of us, my uncle, his wife, Allie, Kona, Matilda, Sombo, and I, sat around the tray and ate the groundnut, listening to another recording of Leleh Gbomba’s. He was telling a story about how he became friends with another boy before they were born. Their mothers were neighbors and were pregnant at the same time, so the two of them met while they were still in their mothers’ bellies. The storyteller vividly described the landscape of their pre-infant life: the hunting they did, the games they played, how they listened to our world…It was a very funny story that took shockingly impossible twists and turns and left us in awe. My uncle, aunt, and cousins laughed so hard that they couldn’t stop for hours, even after the story had ended. I began to laugh, too, because my uncle was trying to say something and he was so possessed with laughter that he couldn’t say a complete word without launching into another fit of laughter. “We should do this again. Laughing like this is good for the soul,” my uncle said, still laughing a little. We wished one another a good night and went to our different sleeping places.
One morning Mr. Kamara turned up at my uncle’s house in the Children Associated with the War (CAW) van. He had told me I had been chosen to go to the UN a few days before, but I had only told Mohamed about this, as I didn’t actually believe that I was going to travel to New York City. It was before midday when Mr. Kamara arrived and my uncle had left for work. My aunt was in the kitchen; the look on her face told me that my uncle would learn about Mr. Kamara’s visit. I knew then that I would have to tell my uncle about the trip.
“Good morning,” Mr. Kamara said, checking his watch to make sure it was still morning.
“Good morning,” I replied.
“Are you ready to go to town and begin preparation for the trip?” he asked in English. Since Mr. Kamara had found out that I had been chosen to go to the UN, he had spoken only English to me. I said goodbye to my aunt and jumped in the van, and we took off to get me a passport. It seemed as if everyone in the city had decided to get passports that day, perhaps preparing to leave the country. Luckily, Mr. Kamara had made an appointment, so we didn’t have to wait in line. At the counter he presented my photo, the necessary forms, and the fee. A round-faced man carefully examined the documents and asked for my birth certificate. “You have to show me proof that you were born in this country,” the man said. I became really upset and almost slapped the man, who insisted that I must present proof of birth in Sierra Leone even after I had told him that no one had the chance to assemble documents of that nature when the war reached them. He was naïve about the reality I was trying to explain to him. Mr. Kamara pulled me aside and gently asked me to sit on a bench while he chatted with the man. Eventually he demanded to see his boss. After hours of waiting, someone was able to dig up a copy of my birth certificate, and they told Mr. Kamara to come back for the passport in four days.
“The first step is completed. Now we will have to get you the visa,” Mr. Kamara said as we walked out of the passport office. I didn’t reply, because I was still upset, exhausted, and just wanted to go home.
My uncle was home when I was dropped off that evening. When I greeted him, he had a smile on hi
s face that said, “Tell me what is going on.” I did. I told him that I was to go to the United Nations in New York City and talk about the war, as it relates to children. My uncle didn’t believe it. “People are always lying to others with such promises. Don’t let them get your hopes up, my son,” he said.
Every morning before he left for work, he would say jokingly, “So what are we doing today in planning to go to America?”
Mr. Kamara took me shopping. He bought me a suitcase and some clothes, mostly long-sleeved shirts, dress pants, and traditionally waxed, colorful cotton suits with intricate embroidery on the collars, sleeves, and hems of pants. I showed these things to my uncle, but still he didn’t believe that I would be going on the trip.
“Maybe they just want to give you a new look, a more African look, instead of those big pants you always wear,” he joked.
Sometimes my uncle and I went for strolls after work. He would ask how I was doing; I always told him I was fine. He would put his long arms around me and pull me closer. I felt he knew that I wanted to tell him certain things but couldn’t find the right words. I hadn’t told him that whenever I went to the bush with my cousins to fetch firewood, my mind would begin to wander to things I had seen and done in the past. Standing next to a tree with red frozen sap on its bark would bring flashbacks of the many times we executed prisoners by tying them to trees and shooting them. Their blood stained the trees and never washed off, even during the rainy season. I hadn’t told him that often I was reminded of what I had missed by watching the daily activities of families, a child hugging his father, holding his mother’s wrap, or holding two parents’ hands, swinging over gutters. It made me wish I could go back to the beginning and change things.
I had been told to meet a man by the name of Dr. Tamba at the American embassy on Monday morning. As I walked to the embassy, I listened to the gradual wakening of the city. The call for prayer from the central mosque echoed throughout the city, poda podas crowded the streets, their apprentices hanging on the open passenger doors and calling out the names of their destinations: “Lumley, Lumley” or “Congo Town…” It was still too early when I arrived, but there was already a long line of people waiting outside the embassy gates. Their faces were sad and filled with uncertainty, as if they awaited some trial that would determine whether they would die or stay alive. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood in line. After an hour or so, Dr. Tamba arrived with another boy and asked me to follow him. He looked like a dignified man, so I guess we didn’t have to wait in line. The other boy, who was also a former child soldier, introduced himself. “My name is Bah. I am happy to be going on this journey with you,” he said, shaking my hand. I thought about what my uncle’s reply would be to him: “Don’t let them get your hopes up, young man.”
We sat down on one of the few decent benches in a small open area in the embassy and waited for our interview. A white woman stood behind a transparent glass window; her voice came through the speakers underneath it. “What is the purpose of your visit to the United States?” she asked, never looking up from the papers before her.
When it was our turn, the woman behind the glass already had our passports. She didn’t look at me; rather, she flipped through the pages of my new passport. I was very confused about why the window was set up in such a way that the human connection was lost between the interviewer and the interviewee.
“Speak into the microphone,” she said, and she continued, “What is the purpose of your visit to the United States?”
“For a conference,” I said.
“What is the conference about?”
“It is generally about issues affecting children around the world,” I explained.
“And where is this conference?”
“At the UN in New York City.”
“Do you have any guarantee that you will come back to your home country?” I was thinking, when she continued, “Do you have any property, a bank account that will guarantee your return?”
I frowned. Do you know anything about people’s lives in this country? I thought of asking her. If she could only look at me directly, perhaps she wouldn’t have asked the last two questions. No one my age in my country has a bank account or even dreams of having one, much less property to declare. Mr. Tamba told her that he was the CAW chaperon going on the trip with us and that he would make sure that we returned to Sierra Leone at the end of the conference.
The woman asked me the final question: “Do you know anyone in the United States?”
“No, I have never been anywhere out of this country, and this is actually my first time in this city,” I told her. She closed my passport and put it aside. “Come back at four-thirty.”
Outside, Dr. Tamba told us that we had gotten the visas and that he would pick up the passports and hold on to them until the day of our departure. It had finally begun to look as if we were going to travel, even though I had seen my passport only at a glance.
I held my suitcase in my right hand and was wearing brown traditional summer pants with zigzag thread patterns at the bottom and a T-shirt. My uncle was sitting on the verandah when I came from Allie’s room.
“I am on my way to the airport,” I said, smiling, as I knew my uncle was going to be sarcastic.
“Sure. Give me a call when you get to America. Well, I don’t have a phone, so call Aminata’s house and she can come and get me.” My uncle giggled.
“Okay, I will,” I said, giggling as well.
“Ah, children, come and say goodbye to your brother. I do not know where he is going, but he needs our blessings,” my uncle said. Matilda, Kona, and Sombo came to the verandah holding buckets in their hands. They were on their way to fetch water. They hugged me and wished me luck on my journey. My aunt came out of the kitchen smelling of smoke and hugged me. “Wherever you are going, you will need to smell like your home. This is my perfume to you.” She giggled and stepped back. My uncle stood up and hugged me, put his arm around my shoulder and said, “My good wishes are with you. So I will see you later for dinner, then.” He went back to sit in his chair on the verandah.
20
MY CONCEPTION OF NEW YORK CITY came from rap music. I envisioned it as a place where people shot each other on the street and got away with it; no one walked on the streets, rather people drove in their sports cars looking for nightclubs and for violence. I really wasn’t looking forward to being somewhere this crazy. I had had enough of that back home.
It was dark when the plane landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was 4:30 p.m. I asked Dr. Tamba why it was dark so early in this country. “Because it is winter,” he said. “Oh!” I nodded, but the early darkness still didn’t make sense to me. I knew the word “winter” from Shakespeare’s texts and I thought I should look up its meaning again.
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.