Uzodinma Iweala - Beasts of No Nation

Commandant is saying, form rank. You who are going with me and you who are going with Luftenant. We are forming them but they are not even straight. My leg is shaking shaking. Everybody’s leg is just shaking shaking because nobody is liking to be standing on the main road like that. Even Commandant is fearing because he is turning his head from side to side and looking down the road one way and then up the road the other way. He is looking up to the sky and I am knowing that he is thinking about how government is sometimes flying plane or helicopter to be dropping bomb and fire on everybody. He is speaking very fast when he is shouting, TENSHUN! and we are all shouting back, YES SAH! This village is between these two road, he is shouting, so people with me will be attacking from one end when people with Luftenant is attacking from the other. That way there is not even any place for these dog to be running. We will be killing them like they are killing us and we will be stealing from them what they are stealing from us. We are shouting back to him, YES SAH!

He is taking his people, one of them is Strika, but he is leaving me to be going with Luftenant and Rambo. I am liking Rambo and wanting to be wearing red bandanna like that on my head like he is wearing to be keeping the sweat from pouring into his eye when he is busy killing killing. Nobody is knowing why he is getting the name Rambo, but I am knowing of the movie and how that man is very tough and mean and I am thinking to myself, yes, yes this Rambo is very tough and also mean, but he is also very smart. I am liking the way his eye is so sharp that they are seeing everything each time we are in battle. He is dodging bullet and bomb and all of the thing that are killing people. Sometime I am wondering if he is having his own juju to be making him live without fearing death, but I am not wanting to ask him or he will be laughing at me. I am knowing that if I am staying with him, then at least I am surviving, so it is not making me to feel too so mad that I am having to go with Luftenant this time.

There is not enough gun for each person to be having one and so I am not having gun. Anyway, Commandant is saying that I am too small to be carrying gun because small person is not holding gun well well and just bouncing up and down when they are shooting. Instead he is giving me knife. But everybody is getting gun juice. Everybody is always wanting gun juice because it is drug and making life easy easy. Gun juice is making you to be stronger and braver. It is making your head to hurt and it is tasting like bullet and sugarcane. I am not liking how it is the color of oil and the color of black paint or water in the gutter, but I am struggling to get my own so I can be putting it in my mouth. It is tasting like licking rock and it is tasting like eating pencil, but it is also tasting like licking sweet. My throat is burning like the fire of gun, but it is also sweeting like sugar cane. I am wanting more gun juice.

My belly is growling like hungry dog because the gun juice is making it to be that way. I am feeling hungry and I am not feeling hungry. I am wanting to vomit and I am not wanting to vomit, but I am thinking, let me not be vomiting because I am not even eating very much food so if I am vomiting there is nothing staying inside my stomach to be giving me energy.

Commandant is shouting, but I am hearing him like he is speaking through one big bag of cotton. He is saying, let us pray, let us pray and then he is asking the Lord to be guiding us in everything we are about to be doing. I am thinking that we should not even be asking God for anything because it is like He is forgetting us. I am trying to forget Him anyway even if my mother would not be happying with me. She is always saying to fear God and to always be going to church on Sunday, but now I am not even knowing what day is Sunday. I am saying bye to Strika and watching him walking away with Commandant. I am just waiting for the gun juice to start to working so I am not having to think as much anymore.

We are walking down into the valley and down into the bush so I am feeling like animal going back to his home. My forehead is heating up and my hand is hot and I am finding it hard to be breathing like the air is water, like in the place the cloud is borning before they are bringing rain. I am hearing water and I am thirsty and wanting to drink, but the stream we are coming to is having too much mud. Anyway, it is not mattering. I am putting my head in the water and when I am bringing it out the sky is many different color and I am seeing spirit in the cloud. Everybody is looking like one kind of animal, no more human. Nobody is having nose or lip or mouth or any of the thing that is making you to remember somebody. Everything is just looking like one kind of animal and smelling like chicken or goat, or cow.

Across the stream, I am feeling in my body something like electricity and I am starting to think: Yes it is good to fight. I am liking how the gun is shooting and the knife is chopping. I am liking to see people running from me and people screaming for me when I am killing them and taking their blood. I am liking to kill.

Across the stream, I am feeling like man with big muscle and small head and I am thinking that nothing can be stopping me and nothing can be slowing me down — not even the hill we are climbing. I am like leopard hunting in the bush and I am feeling like I am going home.

All of the leaf is red and dripping and all of the plant is too thick. The bush is chooking me with its branch and it is trying to trip me with its root, but I am running running through all of the color of this world, through all the tree, through all the flower. If I am falling on my knee it is not mattering because I am getting up and running, running, running. Nobody is knowing we are coming here, coming just like cloud when you are not even expecting it.

On the path, I am feeling wet mud between my toe and the grasses like knife on my ankle. I am saying prayer to God but all my word is going to Devil. Help me to be doing the thing You want me to do, I am saying, but I am only hearing laughter all around me in the tree and in the farm we are passing, many farm that is having no more yam or cassava because there is nobody staying to be growing them.

And on the path, we are coming to the edge of this village where there are the poor person house made of mud and tin and wood. There is nobody living inside so we are tearing them down and setting the thatch roof on fire and then we are moving on to more house. Each person is taking house and saying, this is my house and everything that is in it is belonging to me. I am running to the smell of smoke in one house that is having wall of cement with breaking-up glass on top to be keeping away the terrible people like Commandant and Luftenant.

Person in this house is trying to keep safe behind iron gate, but we are pushing it pushing it until it is opening with big scream like it is not wanting to be opening at all at all. There is soft dirt under my feets and tall green tree with orange and mango. Every building here is painting green even if it is fading, but they are rising from the grasses with white window like bone inside them.

Far away, I am hearing screaming and gunfire and my head is growing smaller and my body is growing bigger. I am wanting to kill; I don’t know why. I am just wanting to kill. I am seeing animal and I am wanting to kill it. I am raising my machete and then I am seeing. I am shouting, STRIKA! because I am almost chopping him. He is looking like dog to me, but we are hugging in all of the screaming and the gunfire and I am feeling his head and he is feeling my head and then we are going together through all of the changing color to the main house of this compound.

In the main house, there is no food, nothing to lick, nothing to chop, nothing. Breaking glass is everywhere like someone is coming here before. All of the chair is breaking, but there is still picture on the wall, and there are plastic flower lying on table.