Uzodinma Iweala - Beasts of No Nation

My feets is paining me. My leg is paining me. My knee is hurting because we are training very hard now. All the time just training training. They are telling us to run up and down so we are running up and down like we are running race when I am schoolboy. They are telling us to be crawling on the grasses and to be running zigzag to be dodging pretend bullet. I am hot and my body is too tired. I am not feeling good at all at all.

I am not liking this field even if Commandant is loving it because he says it is taking away insubordination. I am not liking everything Commandant likes even if I am supposed to be liking it. But I am liking his shiny forehead and his big nose that is covering his whole face and even his top lip. I am liking his mustaches and his big black beard, and I am liking how he is squeezing his chin and all of its hairs in his fist when he is thinking very hard. I am wanting beard so I can be doing that. Maybe then I will be feeling older and I won’t be tireding all the time. If you are seeing Commandant, you will be knowing that he is just very big man even though this war is coming to make most men small like children and children small like baby. He is so tall that looking at him is like climbing tree, so big that if he is standing next to you, then his shadow is blocking the sun. He is so strong that I can be seeing the vein on his arm. It is funny to be watching him moving also because he is walking like his leg is wooden pole that is not bending for anything. Before the war, this how I am seeing soldier moving when they are parading in the town near my village so I am knowing he is real soldier. Even when we are running his leg are moving this way and it is making me to want to laugh at him, but nobody is laughing at him because that is annoying him. He is beating people who annoy him and one time he was even killing one man who just annoyed him too much. We are leaving that man somewhere on the roadside with one big hole in his head and his eye wide open.

As we are standing in this field, Commandant is walking in front of us and shouting, are we soldier? We are saying, yes Sah! Are we army? Are we strong and proud? And we are saying, yes Sah! Yes Sah! and he is smiling, but I am knowing that he is not believing what we are saying because sometimes he is talking to himself that we are hopeless and only good enough to be thrown into battle and die.

I am not knowing why he is so angry with us all of the time for not acting like real soldier. We are not even looking like real soldier. There are almost one hundred and twenty of us standing at attention, but none of us is even wearing the same dress. Some of us is wearing green camouflage like real soldier are doing, but our own is just fulling with hole and having thread just blowing this way and that in the wind. If we are killing soldier or finding it on any dead body, then person is always quarreling and sometimes even fighting to be stealing it. Other soldier is wearing black trouser and black shirt with red stripe on the arm which is the uniform that the police is wearing before the war. This uniform is not as good because it is making you too hot in the sun and it is making you too easy to see in the daytime, but that is not mattering to anybody. People are just wanting to wear anything that is looking like uniform. I am not even having one uniform because I am too small. I am just wearing my short and shirt that I am taking from village we are looting one day. I was really wanting trouser to be stopping the mosquito from biting me on the leg, but I am not finding any small enough for me to be wearing. Anyway, I am really liking my shirt even if it is dirty and I am having to fold the sleeve a whole six time. I am liking it even if it is too big so it is coming down over my short.

Sometimes I am thinking, if army is always having one uniform for its soldier to wear, and we are not all wearing the same uniform, then how can we be army. And if army is made of soldier and we are not army, then how can we be real soldier. This is why I am not knowing why Commandant is always so angry with us.

Commandant is saying we are going to raid one village. Where is the village, I am asking to myself. And what are we to be taking from them? I am not knowing, but I am not going to be asking or he might be beating me. Then he is saying to us if we are hating the enemy and each time we are answering, YES SAH! We are stomping the ground and sometimes even jumping up in the air. He is saying to us if the enemy is killing our mother and our father and burning our house and we are answering softly, yes Sah, because we are all thinking of all the place and person we are leaving behind. I am thinking of my mother and my sister who are running away. I am not knowing if they are dead or alive or if I can even be knowing what they are looking like if I am seeing them today. Every time we are seeing woman or girl, I am looking at them well well to be knowing if they are my mother or my sister.

Commandant is shouting at us to be ready for fourteen hundred hours. I am thinking that this is very funny and I am wanting to laugh. Everybody is knowing that the day is not having fourteen hundred hours and I am looking down the line of soldier to see if Strika is also thinking it is funny. He is leaning forward to look at me, sticking out his tongue and opening his mouth wide. I am wanting to laugh, but instead I am sucking in my belly and holding my breath. Commandant is raising his head high until his face is shining like it is made of metal. DISMISSED! he is shouting at us and then he is walking off to the tree and the path that is leading to the many hut we are living in. Some of the men are following Commandant, swinging their gun onto their back and walking quietly quietly. Some of these soldier, everything he is doing, they are doing. Everything he is saying, they are doing. Some other men is holding their gun by the front and letting the end to be dragging in the ground like plow when the men is going to find shade to be resting in. I am going to find Strika.

I am finding him sitting under tree far away from the other men, holding stick and scratching picture into the dry ground. Over and over again he is drawing the same picture of man and woman with no head because their head is rolling away on the ground. Strika, I am calling to him, and he is looking up at me. No noise from him. He is not saying anything, I am telling myself. Since I am becoming soldier, I am never hearing the sound of his voice, but now, I am knowing what is his problem. His picture is telling me that he is not making one noise since they are killing his parent. I am not believing him the first time he is telling me this, and every time I am trying to get him to say something or at least be making one sound from his mouth. I am feeling sad for him. I am getting used to it; this is how he is behaving from the very beginning. Strika is moving to one side so I can also be sitting in the shade next to him. Because I am tall more than him, I am knowing that I am older, but nobody is really telling how old they are anymore. All we are knowing is that, before the war we are children and now we are not. I am looking at Strika and how his skin is just brown in some place and black in other place, looking just like camouflage dress everybody is wearing. I am laughing when I am seeing him and saying to him, ha ha. Kehi kehi kehi. Strika is looking like shirt.

On the ground he is writing HUNGRY and I am wanting to say to him, I am hungry too. I am hungry too, but the word are not coming out of my mouth. There is no food left for anybody in the camp. Strika is putting his head on my leg and licking his cracking lip. The blood on them is dry and shiny, making his lip to look like he is swallowing red paint. I am touching his forehead with my hand and then I am touching my own to be seeing if he is hotter than me, but we are the same hotness. He is not having fever and I am not having fever. We are just tired. Strika is punching the air above his head. We are not wanting to fight. We are tired of fighting. I am saying to him, one day there will be no more war and we can be living together in a house and eating all of the food we are wanting to eat. Are you hearing me? He is not acting like he is hearing anything I am saying because he knows it is lie. We will always be fighting war, but sometimes it is nice to be thinking that there is something else for our future.