Uzodinma Iweala - Beasts of No Nation

We are all lying down to sleep, but I am not sleeping. I cannot be sleeping. I can never be sleeping. I am just listening listening. No noise. Then I am hearing one boy talking talking. We are calling him Griot because he is always telling story when we are falling asleep. This is story he is telling:

I was just with my mother when the war is coming, he is saying. This is how he is starting every night when we are trying to be sleeping. We are just in the market to get some food because we are having no food to eat, not even the skin of cassava. I was just in the market when I am hearing GBWEM! I am just hearing one blast and the whole ground began to shaking shaking. And then those government pilot, they are just coming in low with their screaming plane and I was covering my ear, but the drum were just beating BOTU BOTU BOTU because the pilot was shooting TAKA TAKA TAKA and everybody is running this way and that way. This one is hiding under wheelbarrow. That one is hiding in church. This one is jumping in gutter. I am not knowing where to be hiding so I am just running running up and down the road. I am hearing another GBWEM landing right next to me. And then I was feeling fire on my body but I wasn’t burning. When I am looking up, I am seeing people hanging from tree like piece of meat. Head just hanging like coconut before it is falling off. Ah ah. Nah wah oh!

No noise.

But not for too long because he is starting again. He is saying, my mother. My mother. Heyeye now. My mother is dead. All of her meats just hanging from tree. Then he is coughing and beginning to shake — I am hearing him moving on the ground where he is lying.

And then there is boy we are calling Preacher who is not coming from village. He is coming from the bush. He is twisting around in his sleeping and singing song I am never hearing before. Thou art worthy. Thou art worthy oh Lord, he is singing in his deep voice that is making me to fear because it is sounding like it is coming from nowhere, from spirit. Preacher is having Bible that he is using as pillow sometimes. That is why we are calling him Preacher. His Bible is so tattered that it is not even staying together by itself anymore and he is having to hold it together with piece of old shirt. He is keeping it in his pocket with his knife and his extra bullet.

But he is asleep and singing, thou art worthy. Thou art worthy oh Lord, over and over again. I am not asleep, and I am now singing with him even if I am not knowing all the word. For thou has created. All thing and for thy pleasure. They a-a-are and were created. Thou art worthy, because the song keeps going round and round and round again and again.

But then there is light shining in my face and when I am opening my eye it is blinding me. I am stopping to breathing because I am seeing Strika’s face looking like spirit or demon. His skin is looking somehow like burned-up wood or charcoal and it is sticking tight to his face so his whole cheek is sticking out sharp sharp. I am saying, leave me. Leave me alone. But then I am looking in his eye and the way that he is trying to tell me that I should not be lying here and that I should be hurrying up — Commandant is wanting to see me right now. I am not liking it when Commandant is wanting to see me, but I am having to go otherwise it will be making him to angry. I am getting up, but it is not easy to do this. And when I am standing up I am stretching my body and watching as Strika is going back quickly to his own place where he is sleeping which is under one of the truck with all of the truck driver. Then I am picking up my knife that I am having with me because I am never leaving my knife just in case the enemy is coming and I am stepping over people’s head and feets to be getting to where Commandant is staying. The way I am walking through the darkness, I am like animal in the night. Tonight it is all so quiet and I am thinking it is because of the killing we are doing. I am walking this way and just stepping over people and stepping around them and their gun and knife trying not to be waking them up so that there will not be any kind of trouble.

Then I am walking past the other soldier to Commandant’s own quarter and just watching him through his mosquito net as he is moving back and forwards. He is the only one with mosquito net. I am seeing the shadow that he is making as he is moving around his room and I am thinking that only big man can be making such big shadow.

When I am reaching the shack, I am looking through the net and seeing Commandant. They are calling him the man who is driving the enemy to madness. He is fighting in many battle even if he is only young man, so he is always telling story of people who are treating death like lover and child who can kill before they can even speak. And he is always saying that he is seeing thing that are making even the Devil fall to his knee and be begging for mercy. He is always saying that he is eating people, but it is not tasting too good. And he is saying he is seeing people eat people like they are real meats.

I am waiting outside in the darkness making myself ready for when I go in. So I am thinking as many good thing I can think because if you are thinking good thing, nothing bad is happening to you.

Each time I am going to Commandant, I am feeling that I should not go in because I am knowing what he is wanting to do to me. I am thinking that each time I should be telling him that I do not want to fight anymore and that he should let me go and become refugee so that at least I will not be having to kill people. But I know that if I am saying this to him, he will be doing the same thing he is doing when he is not happy which is smiling and licking his teeths with his tongue. Then he will just laugh, but it will be angry laugh that he is doing when he is thinking somebody is becoming spy.

Commandant is sitting on the floor with all of his map lying next to him. Even though I am standing at the doorway for long time, he is not looking up at me. I am coughing to be letting him know that I am here, but he is still not looking at me and instead he is looking so tired, just like the rest of us because he is not wearing his dress uniform. He is having only one rappa tied around his waist and between his leg and dirty shirt on. And he is kneeling down on the ground wiping sweat from his head with that same dirty white handkerchief that I am always seeing him using for everything he is doing. It is even looking like he is talking to himself because of all of the thing that he is trying to look at though the light is not bright enough for me to even be seeing my hand if I am holding them up in front of me. When he is on the ground, he is not looking so good because he is having all his finger in his mouth and is rubbing the top of his bald head with the other hand.

What is taking you so long, he is saying to me before I am coming in. Then he is saying, sit down, pointing to cot in the corner of the room. He is Commandant so he is always getting cot to sleep on while the rest of us is sleeping on whatever there is to be sleeping on — if you are lucky it is mat, but mostly it is the ground. Even so, it is not changing anything of what I am thinking while I am standing at the door because I am not liking at all at all how his room is smelling — like animal house after animal is passing the food he is eating — or how this smell is making my nostril to sting like I am breathing in something very sharp like metal. I am also not wanting to move because I am fearing that I am in trouble even if I am not doing anything wrong today. I am moving myself slowly slowly around the edge of the hut, feeling the branch of the thatch chooking into my buttom as I am sliding along to the cot. By the time I am reaching the cot and sitting down, he is still looking at the map and taking Biro to be drawing out thing even if it is so dark he is hardly seeing. I am also thinking as I am rubbing the mud off my feets and then folding my arm up in my lap how it is strange that all of these men are always looking at this whole country on map and acting as if it is piece of meat they can just be dividing by cutting it with knife.