The day seemed oddly normal. The sun peacefully sailed through the white clouds, birds sang from treetops, the trees danced to the quiet wind.
One man carried his dead son. He thought the boy was still alive. The father was covered with his son’s blood, and as he ran he kept saying, “I will get you to the hospital, my boy, everything will be fine.” Perhaps it was necessary that he cling to false hopes, since they kept him running from harm.
Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun.
You can only threaten someone with hell if they have never had hell.
That morning we thanked the men who had helped bury Saidu. “You will always know where he is laid,” one of the men said. I nodded in agreement, but I know that the chances of coming back to the village were slim, as we had no control over our future. We know only how to survive.
Most of the staff members were like that; they returned smiling after we hurt them. It was as if they had made a pact not to give up on us.
I only liked talking to her because I felt that she didn’t judge me for what I had been a part of; she looked at me with the same inviting eyes and welcoming smile that said I was a child.
The only thing that consoled him, for a few seconds at least, was when the woman who had embraced him, and now cried with him, told him that at least he would have the chance to bury them. He would always know where they were laid to rest, she said. She seemed to know a little more about war than the rest of us.
There’s a saying in the oral tradition of storytelling that when you tell a story, when you give out a story, it is no longer yours; it belongs to everyone who encounters it and everyone who takes it in.
I put my hands behind my head and lay on my back, trying to hold on to the memories of my family. Their faces seemed to be far off somewhere in my mind, and to get to them I had to bring up painful memories.
Even in the middle of the madness there remained that true and natural beauty, and it took my mind away from my current situation as I marveled at this sight.
Circumstances will change and things will be fine, just hold on a little more.
Bahkan di dalam kegilaan pun masih ada keindahan yang sejati dan alami.
Poverty is worse than nightmares. You can wake up from nightmares.
This wasn’t a place for illusions; the reality here was the genuine happiness that came about from the natural magic of standing next to someone and being consumed by the fortitude in his or her humanity.
For those who have no voice, silence remains the unbroken truth. And every so often, that silence is torn by a roaring.- Mende Proverb, Sierra Leone.
I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies.
They always shared equally, even if all they had was a handful of nuts or a piece of fruit. Today she had brought back fried fish and stewed onions with bread and other things that you would not put together if you had the luxury of considering the pleasure of the mouth.
I will not be alive to see the end of this war. So, to save a place in your memories for other things, I won’t tell you my name. If you survive this war, just remember me as the old man you met. You boys should be on your way.
It was a night filled with dreams of what was to come. Dreams were still possible here even though the paths to attain them weren’t necessarily the best ones. But who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.