They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children

by Roméo Dallaire

  Far along the path behind them I could see Mosi running toward the school. My heart was pounding and I couldn’t breathe properly. I gulped and swallowed at air full of the children’s shouts and the cries of the goat herder, the sound of their feet kicking him.

  Mosi was coming for me and Kesi. I pulled my head inside and led her to the bench at my desk, where we huddled to wait for him.

  It was quiet inside the schoolhouse now. Breathless. We could hear the crunching of those children’s steps on the ground outside, their shouts to each other. Baingana backed up from the doorway, shooing the children away. “Students, I want you to sit under your desks. NOW.”

  He turned and went back to the doorway, as the shouts outside got closer.

  He aimed his big voice into the schoolyard, at the horrible miniature soldiers with their guns. “My children, God bless y—”

  There was a bang, and Baingana fell back inside the classroom, crashing onto the floor, where he lay still, his head gushing blood.

  Those evil children in their dark-green uniforms burst in, shouting, flailing their guns, jumping over and around Baingana—no, these were not children, not like Jacob, Kesi or me. Scars on their arms and legs stood out shiny, as if they were wet. The veins in their necks were tense and bulging, and their eyes were large, red and wild. One had a black feather fetish like Tinochika’s tied around his forehead. It frightened me more now than it had in that terrible voodoo ceremony. It made the boy look like an evil bird, a black and green woodpecker out to find and swallow the sweet insects hidden under the tree bark.

  Some of the girls were screaming now. BANG! BANG! Then came more crashes. These boys with guns were over-turning the desks, grabbing the smaller children and pulling them outside. Others were pointing their guns at the older students, shouting at them and shoving them toward a corner.

  Our fear was choking the air from the room.

  I covered Kesi with my body and we started crawling toward the window, along the line of desks. I whispered into her ear, “I’ll push you up and out, okay? Then I will jump through and we will find Mosi.”

  Kesi was whimpering, and I could feel her wet tears on my hands as we crawled.

  “Shhh, shhh, don’t worry. I’ll draw the circle, shhh, shhh.” I stopped for a moment, hugging her close, and traced a circle around us.

  “We’re in Kidom, okay? Getting little, tiny. We’re turning into tiny little purple dragonflies, okay?” My voice was shaking. “Now let’s go. Together we can fly out the window—we are practically invisible. Kesi? Come on now, come with me. We’ll fly far away, up up up. We’ll be safe.”

  We made it to the wall and crouched behind an overturned desk, slowly raising ourselves to peer out the window. Behind us was a thrashing mass of horrible monsters. But we were free, flying above, through, away.

  There were more soldier spiders outside, but they weren’t near the school. They were on the path, wriggling in a pile.

  “Mosi!” Kesi cried, spotting our big and brave brother, and we were flying toward him. Mosi was struggling, his giant wings trapped, fighting against an enormous sticky web.

  But before we reached him, Kesi and I were grabbed. She screamed and wriggled, and I kicked out, struggling to wrench free, but the children soon pinned us down. Both of us froze when we felt the guns poking at us. We were so scared that no sounds came out of our mouths, we just watched the destruction through the stench and sting and blur of smoke. These kids were black spiders but also vile green mantises with long metal limbs that smoked out dull explosions.

  Two small trucks drove up and more soldiers, older ones, jumped out. They picked up Mosi, Kesi, me and some others and tied our hands together with twisted plastic rope and threw us into the back. Then they tossed three goats into the truck bed too, and the animals stumbled and righted themselves before cringing away from us.

  Mosi’s face was shining with sweat, and a blob of something thick and red sat over his left eye. Kesi wriggled away from me to snuggle next to him.

  “Mosi, this isn’t Kidom at all,” she whispered.

  “No, little one, no, this is something else. Just be quiet and good and we’ll get home soon.”

  The road was bumpy and we were unable to hold ourselves up as the truck bounced, swinging violently, along the uneven bush road from our village. I was sure I would fall off the truck and lose Kesi and Mosi forever. The rope around my wrists was too tight but the more I struggled to get free, the more the rope rubbed and burned my skin. Kesi was right. This was not Kidom, and it was nothing like our home world either. So there was another world, filled with loud noise, with scary, scary things, with horrible smells and smoke and strange, bad people who carried weapons.

  4.

  Kidom Lost

  6.

  We arrived at a camp with several large lean-tos, more trucks and many more people. We were unloaded and left to stand in the dust, guarded by one of the older children. The sunlight felt hazy and unreal. Everything was strange, like we’d been dropped in a ghost forest, with demons lurking beneath rotting brush. The air was sour, metallic, and there were dragons everywhere, breathing smoke and fire.

  Mosi was watching something intently, squinting against the sun. I followed his eyes to a loud group of dragon soldiers who were shoving each other and laughing. Some were sitting on the ground but most were standing, leaning on sticks, guns and machetes. They were all green except for a blue one in the centre. It was Mashaka, my brother. He was laughing too and never glanced our way no matter how hard we stared. Someone handed him a cigarette and as he held it to his mouth, his skin began to buckle, forming scales. By the time he had exhaled the grey smoke from his nose, he was a dragon too.

  Hours passed and no one brought us anything to eat or drink, but the entire time two or three dragons with guns half-watched us. I became desperate to pee. When I stood up and gestured to the guard to try to show him what I needed, he glared at me and waved with his gun for me to sit down again. I sat. I was afraid and sick to my stomach from lack of food and fear all mixed up inside and in the end I peed where I sat. I could not look at anybody.

  Mosi spent the time trying to soothe Kesi, but he could not talk above a whisper or the dragons would come and kick him. She just cried and cried. There was no hushing her or stopping her even when there were no tears left.

  I shuffled away from where I had wet the ground and slumped over to lie with my cheek in the dust. I watched the ants. Funny how they never seemed to stop working. Sometimes I blew some air at one to force him to change his path. He would tumble over with all his legs waving wildly, then right himself and find his way back to the trail. I fell asleep trying to picture myself following them to their home, slipping into their hole and down, down into their kitchen. Sipping tea with their king and telling him how industrious and determined his subjects were.

  The dragons left us there all night. When I woke the sky was as black as the ink in the little bottle on Baingana’s desk and I could see nothing at all, just feel Kesi still shuddering, hear Mosi still murmuring. I struggled to sit up, and then wiggled close to them, hoping to share our warmth.

  7.

  The next day we were put into a truck and driven back to our village. We were all exhausted from broken sleep and weak from no food or water. My clothes were stiff and smelled sour from my accident. But as bad as I felt, our village looked a thousand times worse, blackened and burned and in places still smoking. Clothes and cooking utensils were strewn everywhere, but I didn’t see any people. They’d hurt Baingana, but maybe they just scared the rest away.

  The soldiers let us out of the truck and didn’t seem to care if we wandered around—our hands were still tied. Mosi, Kesi and I ran awkwardly to our hut, but it had been burned to the ground. Our parents were not there.

  My soul and the souls of my ancestors in me lurched in agony to see the faint pattern of what had been my mother’s garden, the clever design of beans and corn that her grandmother had passed down to
her. This little plot of land—our garden, our hut—on which generations of our family had lived, died, been buried and born, had been alive. Now it was dead, and we had nothing.

  Kesi began to cry again, but I felt as though I was floating away from her and from Mosi. I twisted to snap a twig off my charred avocado tree and tucked it in my waistband.

  Some soldiers appeared and herded us back to the village centre, prodding us along with their guns. A swirl of sound and smells assaulted us there, and I felt like I’d gone blind. My head was spinning and I fell to the ground, a sharp, terrible smell of metal and salt in the air.

  More soldiers were coming from the direction of the schoolhouse, shoving several adults in front of them. A woman fell, and several of the soldiers stopped to kick her, then hauled her up and pushed her toward us.

  BANG! Everyone jumped and screamed, and looked around with the whites of their eyes showing. A tall man, a gun in his hand, was climbing out of the cab of another truck as several children jumped off the back to follow him.

  “You see?” the man shouted at us. “These stupid people thought they would ambush you! Shoot and kill you! These are the enemies of the struggle. They are traitors, they are cockroaches, and they must be exterminated!”

  Most of the adults were weeping, pleading. One woman sobbed and said, “We were protecting and supporting you,” but a young boy soldier pushed her and kicked her in the stomach as she fell, causing the others to laugh.

  Mosi gasped, and we all saw Daddy. He saw us at the same moment and jerked forward, shouting our names.

  The leader flew toward us like a giant wasp, his voice a buzzing drone. “If you are to join us, it is essential that you understand the importance of our fight and prove your loyalty. These traitors, they must be punished for starting this war, for turning against their people. They are nothing but infected dogs, they are dirty insects and must be destroyed before they infect more minds and pollute our cause of freedom.”

  I stared at the ground, shaking, as Mosi raised himself up, his arms still tied behind his back.

  “This is my father,” he said in a loud, clear voice. “These are all our people, and we will not allow them to be harmed.” A hideous scream, a terrible, terrible sound, punctuated Mosi’s words.

  I raised my eyes to the squirming, writhing mass of our elders in front of us and saw flashes of blue, of red. And then my eyes focused on Mashaka, a soldier’s bandana around his head. He was holding a bloody machete in one hand and our father’s head in the other. He was grasping Daddy’s hair, tilting his face to the sky, his exposed neck split open like a goat’s. Mashaka was yelling and dancing and jerking in all directions. His eyes were wide and wild and seemed to pierce everything he looked at.

  Mosi and I lunged forward, screaming, and everything exploded. Some of the soldiers began shooting and hacking at the elders, as others grabbed us children by the necks and pushed us to the ground. In the chaos I lost track of my sister, could not see the flash of pink anywhere.

  Mosi was next to me, with a fat soldier’s knee in his back and a gun in his face.

  “Where’s Kesi?” I choked out, my voice cracking.

  Mosi began kicking, hard.

  Then we heard her scream and both of our heads craned to find her under the mango tree in the schoolyard. The air turned thick between us as her tiny body was torn free of her brilliant pink wrapper. Giant black arms pulled her limbs, pushed her little skinny legs apart. She was screaming out of fear and pain, and Mosi attempted to fight his way up from the ground only to be hit in the head with a rifle butt and collapse face down in the dirt. Everyone around me went quiet then, all of us listening to the noises the soldiers were making over my sister. I did not look up until those noises stopped. The last man was doing up his belt as the rest of them moved away, and Kesi was lying still and quiet. I struggled to my feet and took an unsteady step toward her but then a massive blow to the back of my head knocked me to the ground, and all went black.

  8.

  I woke in a blind panic, my heart pounding. My arms were free. I pushed myself to my feet and found myself in a grassy clearing, with low huts scattered here and there, and rows of lean-tos around it. It hurt to walk, and my head throbbed with every step, but I wanted to find Mosi.

  There were soldiers everywhere, huddled in groups or carrying piles of wood and metal. Some were in army greens, others in blue jeans and long-sleeved shirts, still others were dressed like me, only dirtier.

  Mosi wasn’t anywhere that I could see. The camp itself had a cluttered, messy feel to it. I could smell the uncertainty and chaos, I could feel it on my skin.

  I looked down at my hands, which seemed far away and not a part of me. The wrists were raw and the palms were red. Red. My heart started to pound again and my eyes welled with tears, remembering. I pressed the tail of my shirt against my eyes hard, so colours swirled and flashed. My clothes were dirty and torn. No, I would not think.

  Mosi was nowhere to be seen. I was all alone.

  I felt something poking my back and reached into my waistband to find the charred avocado twig. Crying hard now, I snapped it in half, into quarters, destroying it like the rest of my world. Gone gone gone. Kidom destroyed as much as my home world.

  An older boy walked straight toward me, thin and dressed in green camouflage. He gestured to me to sit down, and then he hunkered next to me and handed me a drink. I took the cup from him and drank the bitter liquid till the cup was empty, feeling both grateful and ashamed for taking anything from these people. But I had not eaten or drunk for two days.

  The boy took the empty cup back without a word and patted me on the shoulder. My mouth was full of the nasty taste of the drink and I longed for some clear water.

  I couldn’t help thinking about Kesi, and tears started to leak from my eyes when suddenly my brain seemed to leap to the side. Whoosh! Then it was normal again. Then whoosh, whoosh. I tried to raise my gaze from the ground but it followed me. Everything was swirling, and I could feel my sadness easing as the world transformed into giant grains of sand and huge monster blades of grass.

  An ant crawled onto my hand and looked me in the eye. He waved his little front leg hello.

  “Welcome,” he said. “You are finally here!”

  I turned my head and body around slowly. I was in Kidom! It wasn’t destroyed and it wasn’t make-believe.

  I was about to reply to the ant, when his pincers began to grow bigger and bigger. His face was growing cruel, and I was getting smaller and smaller.

  More ants were coming toward me, crawling over me, nipping my flesh. I struggled to get away but my body was filled with wet sand. Then wasps and mosquitoes were filling the air around my head, moving in slow motion. Coming to get me. I fell back into the darkness, alone.

  9.

  As the next day passed, I began to notice the comings and goings of these children in uniform. The only adults hung out under a shelter at the far end of the camp, sitting around wooden tables and talking long into the night, sometimes laughing loudly. Older boys led groups of littler children out into the bush around us, and sometimes I could hear the bang of guns. I could walk a little more easily, but my headache was unrelenting and they mostly left me to myself. I wanted to find Mosi and I wanted to get away from this terrible place. I needed a plan. Since I missed my family so much, surely these young soldiers must miss theirs too. Why did they all stay? There were no fences around the camp, but the bush was thick and I just did not know in what direction to go. My village was gone, my father and little sister were dead. I didn’t know what happened to my mother, or where Mosi was, and Mashaka … he was dead to me now.

  The older boy who had given me the awful drink came to find me a couple times and talked to me a bit. One suppertime he brought me a bowl of beans, and as I ate he told me a little about himself.

  “I was selected years ago,” he said, “and became a good fighter. Then one day a fancy white truck drove into our camp and some white people in c
lean shirts took me and the other boys away. We went to a tall building in the city, and were told we were no longer soldiers. I was given money—they called it a trust fund. I took the money and bought jeans and sneakers. Then I had nothing else to do and no one to talk to, and in that city there was no place to sleep except in an alley. So I came back.”

  “Why didn’t you try to find your family?”

  He just looked at me as though I was stupid.

  After that, he offered me more of the bitter drink, and instead of saying no I reached for the cup again.

  10.

  Even though it didn’t seem like anyone was paying attention to me, when my head stopped hurting, they showed me a lean-to built of large branches from banana trees and said that this was where I would sleep. They put me to work collecting firewood with the other new recruits. Tired, thirsty, dirty, discouraged and lost, we were jumpy and raw. When I gathered firewood at home, I would often dawdle, playing in Kidom. Here, I was under guard, trapped in this world, the only release the bitter drink. But rather than making the world brighter and bigger, the drink closed things in so that I could cower inside it. If I asked for it, though, Christian (this was the older boy’s name) would laugh and walk away. For some reason, it had to be offered.

  As we searched for wood and dried roots that would burn, we sometimes roamed as far as a training place cleared in the bush, where very young children and some my age, carrying sticks and knives, were barked at by the older soldiers. These children were not wearing uniforms, but I knew that now they were soldiers too.

  One time when I approached, a group of them was sitting and listening to a commander give instructions. I moved close to a boy about my age at the end of a line and sat down near him, greeting him quietly. He raised his eyes briefly and glanced away from me, toward his commander, who wasn’t looking in our direction. I didn’t know how to ask the questions jumbled in my mind, so I just blurted them out, one by one.