I read this book for the Book Awards Challenge.
From the back of the book:
At the age of twelve, Ishmael Beah fled attacking rebels in Sierra Leone and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity, and, finally, to heal.
Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is one of those books that puts it all in perspective. As I sat mesmerized by his story, I couldn’t help but think about the petty worries that occupy my thoughts and realize how insignificant they are compared to the very real life-and-death struggles that people my age—Beah is just a few years older than I am—face every day in other parts of the world. It is one thing to know that things like this are going on out there in the world; it is entirely another to read a firsthand account that takes you into the heart and mind of a very young boy who overcame incredible trauma.
When the rebels attacked his village, Beah and a group of friends were walking to a town several miles away, where they were supposed to participate in a song-and-dance competition by performing to some of their favorite rap music.
We didn’t know that we were leaving home, never to return.
At first, Beah and his friends manage to stay together. He writes vividly of the boys’ various reactions to the stress and trauma of being separated from their families and thrust into a war they did not understood. One boy tells stories. One is completely silent. One fears that he was dying one piece at a time. Beah can’t sleep. He has horrible headaches. He does everything he can to avoid thinking about his parents and brother, trying not to consider what might have happened to them. And he tries to make sense of the war around him.
I had heard from adults that this was a revolutionary war, a liberation of the people from corrupt government. But what kind of liberation movement shoots innocent civilians, children, that little girl?
After being separated from his group during a rebel attack, Beah flees into the forest, where he survives—completely alone—for more than a month. He remembers being physically and emotionally exhausted and incapable of processing the psychological effects of his experiences. After all, he was only twelve years old.
I couldn’t comprehend what or how I felt.
Eventually, Beah meets up with another group of boys who are running from the attacks, and he travels with them from village to village as they do all they can to prove to the untrusting strangers that they are not a threat.
Then, the soldiers find them and take them away.
The soldiers give the boys guns and put them through intense military training. They force them to watch while they kill innocent villagers, and they praise the boys who step up and begin taking lives themselves. When Beah is initially horrified by what he sees and does, a soldier tells him “You will get used to it, everybody does eventually.”
We don’t want to believe that it’s true, that innocent young boys could be turned into brutal killers. But, as Margaret Atwood says in The Handmaid’s Tale, “Humanity is so adaptable…Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” In the army, the compensations are drugs—cocaine, marijuana, and a mixture of cocaine and gun powder called “brown brown”—and staying alive.
Between the drugs, the exhaustion, and the psychological impact of losing everything and becoming a trained killer, Beah hardly ever sleeps. He no longer feels or thinks. He just does what he has been trained to do. And, eventually, he comes to enjoy it on some level. He recounts sitting around with his fellow soldiers, taking drugs, plotting attacks, and celebrating their latest successes.
The idea of death didn’t cross my mind at all and killing had become as easy as drinking water. My mind had not only snapped during the first killing, it had also stopped making remorseful records, or so it seemed.
And later:
My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed.
Beah’s ability to give voice to what war does to those who are asked or forced to fight is what makes A Long Way Gone so terrifying. He describes in graphic detail the massacres he witnessed and those he participated in. He repeatedly describes watching as his friends and fellow soldiers suffer seemingly irreparable psychological damage, and he recalls experiencing many symptoms of post-traumatic stress himself. The fact that, when he was rescued by UNICEF, he was eventually able to heal from and talk about what he went through is testament to his statement that
Children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.
That message is the heart of A Long Way Gone. This book is written in beautiful language that is sometimes jarringly dissonant with the horrific events being described.
We kept running until the sky swallowed the sun and gave birth to the moon.
And, sometimes, it is so vividly descriptive that one can almost not bear to read it. At one point, Beah tells of walking barefoot in the desert with temperatures over 120 degrees. He describes first the constant pain and burning, followed by numbness, followed by the discovery that shreds of skin are hanging off the bottoms of his feet, which are crusted with bits of blood and sand and dirt, and which hurt so badly that he can’t even cry over them. It is one of those scenes I will never forget reading.
A Long Way Gone is an amazing account of a horrible experience, but it ends on a very hopeful note. We know that Beah survived, that he was able to begin what I’m sure will be a lifelong healing process, and that he is telling his story so that the world will know and will, hopefully, save other boys from having to go through the same thing. Beah successfully takes into the consciousness of a young boy who does not really understand what this war he’s fighting is all about, a boy who can only afford to think about one day at a time and what he needs to do to stay alive, and he writes with great grace and immediacy. His is a difficult story to read, but I cannot recommend it highly enough, and I certainly hope there will be a follow-up. 5 out of 5.
Click here to learn more about the Sierra Leone civil war and here to learn more about Ishmael Beah and A Long Way Gone.
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