Uzodinma Iweala - Beasts of No Nation

Commandant is just coughing and rubbing his head and arm and talking to himself before finally he is blowing out the candle one by one by one until all the room is dark. When he is finished, I am looking through the mosquito net to where I can see the fire outside. It is very low now, but still I am wanting to be outside where the other soldier is sleeping, where Griot is talking and Preacher is singing, but I am not saying this to Commandant. He is telling me, take off your clothe.

I do not want to be taking off my clothe, but I am not saying so because Commandant is powerful more than me and he is also sometimes giving me small small favor like more food or protection and other thing like shirt or trouser for doing this thing with him. It is making me to feel a bit better when he is giving me these thing because I am knowing that he can be doing what he is wanting to do with me and not giving me anything after. I am hearing him walk over to me where I am sitting on the cot. He is taking off my clothe for me and then he is sitting down next to me and breathing hard, but not like he is running very hard and trying to catch his breath, a different breathing in my ear that I am not liking to listen to at all at all. Then he is beginning to touch me all over with his finger while he is breathing just even harder. But each time he is doing this to me, he is telling me, it is what commanding officer is supposed to be doing to his troop. Good soldier is following order anyway and it is order for you to let me touch you like this. I don’t want to be good soldier but I am not saying that. I don’t want to be soldier at all. I don’t want his finger creeping all over my body. I don’t want his tongue to be touching me and feeling like slug should be feeling if it is on your body. I don’t want it on my back and even on my leg. And I am thinking it is not good for Commandant to be doing this to me. But I am not saying any of this. I am not saying anything at all. It is making me to angry and it is making me to sad, the thing that he is doing to me. I am knowing that I am not the only one he is doing this to and that is not making me to happy.

Commandant is touching me and bringing my head to where he is standing at attention. As he is doing it, and I am smelling his smell and feeling how much it is making me to want to vomit, I am thinking about the very first time he is doing this and yelling to me, touch his soldier. It is seeming like so long long ago, but this is not mattering because each time it is still feeling like the very first time. This first time I am even lucky because we are not in place like this and there is bed that is not cot. But even so, that time he was telling me to kneel down on the floor and then he is removing his belt and I am fearing so much that I am doing something wrong and that he is going to beat me so hard for what I am doing even if I am not knowing what it is. That time he was saying, relax. I am not punishing you. Then he is saying, remove your clothe.

So I was removing them. And then, after making me be touching his soldier and all of that thing with my hand and with my tongue and lip, he was telling me to kneel and then he was entering inside of me the way the man goat is sometimes mistaking other man goat for woman goat and going inside of them. If you are watching it, then you are knowing it is not natural thing. But me, I was not struggling because I am knowing that he will be killing me if I am struggling and since I am not wanting to die, I just let him to be moving back and forward even though it is hurting me so so much. That first time because we are still having food and thing, he was putting palm oil all over me to make everything easier, he is saying, so it will not be paining me so much. Sometimes if palm oil is not enough, my buttom is burning like it has fire in it.

That first time after he is finishing and I am leaving him, I was going to lie down, but I could not. I was asking Strika whether his own was hurting so much the first time, and he was drawing me picture in the mud of man bending down with his hand on the ground and gun and bullet shooting up his buttom. The picture was very funny but I am not smiling. I was feeling I can never be smiling again. I was deciding that it was time for me to leave because I felt that I was bleeding and I did not want to be bleeding in front of him or the other soldier otherwise they might be laughing at me and calling me woman. So, that time I am leaving him in the darkness of the room where we are sleeping and taking the lantern and going on my way to find the stream. This time I am not even fearing because I am so angry and confusing in my head about what was happening that I am just walking along the path not even thinking that there is any animal or spirit or the Devil to come and get me. And when I am reaching the stream, I am letting myself to fall in backward with my buttom first, and then I am feeling the water rising up to my chest and all around my face. If I was brave boy, then I would have been swallowing water or rock or something that would have made me to stop breathing and sink right to the bottom where I would just be staying forever, but I am not wanting to die this way because the ancestor will not be letting you to come and live with them. Instead your spirit will just be living wherever you are leaving your body. I was staying under and holding my breath and then trying to open my mouth, but each time I was becoming afraid and swinging my arm and scaring the frog to be making too much noise.

That first time, I am walking back to my camp in the darkness with all the ancestor making noise in my head, with my feets going this way and that into the thorn because it was hurting me too much to walk straight. I was tripping and pounding and trying to keep the lamp from falling unless Commandant would beat me because the lamp is very costly. It is taking me so long to be getting back to the building where Strika was sleeping that by the time I am returning, I am finding Strika sleeping on his mat. I was not knowing where my own mat was, so I just started lying down on the concrete beside him. Then I was feeling his arm around me even though he is not opening his eye to be showing that he is awake. I was not sleeping and was watching him the whole night, shifting, sucking his finger, grabbing his thing, and beating the air with his hand. When the morning was just coming around, I began to be feeling tired and sleepy even more than I was feeling the pain in my buttom and also in my head, so I slept. I must have been sleeping for long time because when I am waking, Strika was gone, leaving only scratching in the ground next to me saying, God will punish him.

But now he is doing the same to me over and over and over and I am used to it somehow even though it is also making me to feel as if I am still feeling it for the first time. He likes to be whispering to me as if I am woman and this time when he is finishing, he is running his hand up and down my back to wipe away the sweat, and then he is rubbing my head like I am still little boy. He is quieting when we are finishing, so quiet I can hear him cleaning himself with his handkerchief and then sitting back down on the cot.

When he is finishing this time, the light from the fire is still showing through the mosquito net and Commandant is sitting at the edge of the bed with his hand between his leg. He is rocking back and forwards and I am trying to know what he is thinking. I am holding my own hand against my buttom and pressing it to stop the pain. And I am putting my head down in his pillow which is smelling of sweat and having little splinter of chewing stick sticking out from inside it. This his cot is not even strong enough to be holding both of us and is creaking with every breath he is taking. My tongue is shifting back into my mouth because I am afraid that I will be biting it off to stop the pain. He is taking deep breath and sucking in all of the shadow in the room like they are food to him.