Ishmael Beah - The Sounds of My Village

 

The evening always began with several commotions. One of them was the arrival of people from their various places of work, from their farms, from whatever form of employment they had. They all came, greeted each other and went into their houses. The second commotion was by children. Boys and girls being sent to knock on the doors of these very people who had just arrived to invite them to dinner, to have this grand meal of the day. During this meal, all the young boys and men ate from the same plate and all the girls and the women ate from the same plate as well. 

 

When the eating started, which I was part of, the eldest or the oldest person at that gathering of the male, particularly the one that I ate with, would stop eating first. And then, the second oldest would stop. As it went down the line, then the boy and the youngest person would be left at the plate with enough food for them to eat. This was how the evening began in my small village in the south of Sierra Leone, West Africa, where I'm from. 

 

After we finished eating, the fire had already been set with firewood, and the darkness had come in very quickly, that the only source of light were the flames of the fire that leapt into the air. We sat around and waited for stories to be told to us. This was how we learned how to understand our history, the history of our families, of ourselves, our roles in the community, how we would function as children, but also as adults. These stories, also this oral tradition, started many, many years ago, before I was born and this was a way that brought to us a way of listening actively, so that we can hear not only with our ears, but also with our heart, with our eyes, and we can hear beyond the words that were being told to us. 

 

At one of these gatherings, I must have been about nine years old, my grandmother sat next to me and she whispered into my ears. She said, “I want to let you know that each person's mind is their own personal library. And as life breathes its moment through you, those moments become memories, and those memories become narratives, and those narratives become chapters and books that you put on that shelf of your personal library. And this is the only library that you have access to whenever you like. You can open and close it whenever you like. You can decide to nourish it. You can decide to use the information properly or improperly as it suits you.” 

 

After my grandmother told me this, I began on a quest to decide, well, if I'm in charge of this personal library of mine, I want to make sure that I stack on those shelves in my mind the best possible images, sounds of my background, of my upbringing, of this place that I grew up. Where I grew up was so remote that most of the things that reminded me of what time of the day it was with the sounds of nature. I could tell what time of the day it was by the position of my shadow. I didn't have a watch or any of these kinds of things. 

 

So, the next morning, after my grandmother told me this on my way to school-- My school was about 30 minutes’ walk, but I would get up very early to go to school because going to school was very unpredictable. You left about an hour and a half to two hours, because you didn't know what you encountered on the way. As a young boy in the place where I grew up and every adult was responsible for you, every adult was your aunt, uncle, or could even be your mother and father. 

 

And so, on the way to school, you greeted people elaborately. Not the New York greeting, hello, goodbye. [audience laughter] It was more of you ask, “How are you? How is your family? How is school?” and you went on and on. And it was rude to just say, “I have to be in school, I'm going to be late,” and I'll be flogged because of that you had to participate in the greeting fully. In addition to this greeting, an older person would randomly ask you to perform a task which could be, “Could you fetch firewood for me? Could you go to the river and bring water for me?” 

 

So young people had to get up very, very early [audience laughter] to make sure that they can actually-- for this 30 minutes’ ride, they could think about two hours. And sometimes it took that much. On my way to school, I had a plastic bag that had the [unintelligible 00:38:38] notebook that I had in it. And also, my shoes were wrapped in this bag, so that it wouldn't be coated by the dust. It was very dusty, so I walked barefoot. I allowed my mind to partake in the beautiful sounds that welcomed the morning. 

 

First, there was a call for prayer that was very loud, azan that went deep into your heart. And then in addition to that, there were various birds singing. The vigorous ones were the sparrows and the doves. My grandmother also told me that they sang vigorously, because they wanted to wave goodbye to the night and welcome the day. They did that every morning very vigorously. 

 

As I walked on, there were also sounds of brooms as people swept their yards. So, the sound of the brooms meeting the dried leaves filled the air as well. There are also the sounds of buckets that clattered in the arms of children as they went to the river to fetch water. There are older people sitting outside clearing their throat to remind young people who were still sleeping that it was time to wake up. There were people who were sharpening their cutlasses and stones, and that sound actually made your teeth sour as you walked by. There was the sound of bells being rung. These were iron bells hung in the arms of mango trees. They were being rung as a call for school. 

 

When I got closer to my school, which was near a stream, I would wash my feet and then I would put on my shoes, so that I would arrive looking very clean. We stood in line. There was cleanliness checkup. Check your hair if it was combed. I wouldn't survive at this point. [audience laughter] And then, we went into the classroom, which was the very one building that we had. It was a mud brick house with no roof. We would take out a few benches, and some of us would sit outside under the mango tree and there was a blackboard and the teacher would start teaching. 

 

Now, we didn't have very many books. So, if we had one book, it was only the teachers. So, for example, when we read Shakespeare, many occasions, the teacher would come, and he or she would recite to us, “We are reading today so and so play,” Julius Caesar, for example. And the teacher would read, “Friends, Roman countrymen.” We would repeat, all the children, “Friends, Roman countrymen,” “Lend me your ears, have come to bury Caesar.” “Lend me your ears, have come to bury Caesar.” This is how we learned. You made notes. 

 

In order to gain access to these books, you became friends with the teacher. So, after school, you could go to the teacher's house, so that you'll be able to read the book. Now, based on how you behaved in the community, how you took care of the book, the teacher will slowly trust you to allow you more time to read, but also lend you the book to take away and bring back. Now, if the book was dirty, then you lost that privilege. So, we became very close to our teachers. The teachers also were part of the community where they would actually come to your house in the evening to make sure that everyone was doing their homework. I didn't like this very much when I was a kid [audience laughter] But in retrospect it helped me. 

 

So, in order to gain access to this book, you had to become part of the life of this teacher. I remember when we read Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the teacher made a good deal of making us react the story in the classroom. And every young boy wanted to be Jim Hawkins. So, we walked around our community pretending that we’re Jim Hawkins of our very small village. 

 

Now, all of this sound and all of this nurture and this knowledge began to change few years later, when I was 11 years old. When people began to come through my town, these are people who had been affected by the war that had started in my country and they spoke about what had happened to them, how their houses have been burnt, their families have been killed, how they've been walking for days, weeks, months. There was a gloomy feeling that came about. 

 

And later on, when I was 12 years old, the war reached my part of the country. The sounds that I heard in the morning that woke me changed and they were replaced by gunshots. I was separated from my family during the first attack. I started running from this war and I didn't know where they were. The belief that they could be alive was what kept me moving. I was with a group of boys, seven of us. We constantly started walking in the countryside, trying to look for our family. The sounds were no longer the same. The very sounds that woke me up as a boy, the birds singing, the call for prayer, people going to the river to fetch water were no longer there. Nature itself was afraid of what had come about. The only sounds that greeted night or day or the wind that sailed was the sounds of guns or grenades exploding in the distance. This was what filled my life completely, and I began to slowly forget and distance myself from the very sounds that I'd heard as a kid. 

 

Now, I began running from this world for about close to a year, I was constantly running. Everything had changed tremendously. I came across somebody who told me that my family was in a small village that I would be able to find them. So, we started running to this place and we began to hear the sounds of the village. These were sounds that were familiar from when things were peaceful. There were women singing as they pounded rice in mortar, we could hear that. We began to rush. We could hear sounds that promised that life was possible somewhere. 

 

When we got closer to the village, under the bushes in a banana farm, we heard somebody chopping up the bananas. It was a man that I knew as a boy named Gasimov. He came from under the bushes and he said to us, “Oh, can you boys help me carry the trunks of banana into the village?” [audience laughter] And of course, even though we’re in a rush then, we could not refuse to do this, so we helped Gasimov to take the bananas to the village. As we were going with the banana, he told me, “Oh, your parents are going to be very happy to see you. Your brother is there. Everyone is there and everyone's been waiting to see you. They've been worried that you may not be alive.” So, I was very excited. 

 

As we started hurriedly going down into the village, we began to hear gunshots. We began to see smoke and fire coming from the village. We began to hear men screaming at the top of their lungs, their screeches covering the sounds of women and babies that were crying. And there would be gunshots and bullets flying in the air. So, we ran from the hillside and try to lay in the bushes so that we wouldn't be struck by stray bullets. After everything died down, we arrived into this village and we realized that everybody who had been in this village had been killed. People had been put down, face down and shot in the back of their heads. And their blood was the only thing coming out of their bodies, was the only thing connecting them. 

 

As we walked around the village, trying to hope that somebody would have been alive in this village, we heard in one of the buildings that were consumed with fire. Nails popping, tin roofs flying into thatch roofs and creating more fire, we heard this noise coming from this building. People were banging on the doors and the fire was consuming the house. And when the door broke open, the two people that came running was a woman and a little boy. Everything happened so fast that we became rooted where we were standing. We couldn't move at all. They ran back and forth. They would hit a tree and they would run the other way again and they would hit another building or another tree and they would run the other way. Finally, the woman stopped moving, and the boy sat on the mango tree and put his head down and stopped moving. 

 

As we walked around, we began to see other bodies as well. People in different postures of pain, some holding their head as life departed them in that particular position. We saw different kinds of things. Ashes of people, burnt remains. As we were seeing these kinds of things, I became quite angry because I blamed Gasimov for making it possible for me not to see my family again. I attacked him. I wanted to hurt him tremendously. Because at this point, the pain of knowing what had happened was so great that I wished I had seen my family one last time before this happened. I didn't understand that he had actually saved my life, so I actually wanted to kill him. 

 

My friends removed me from him. And between ourselves, we started fighting because we blamed each other for maybe somebody was walking slow, so and so forth. As we were fighting amongst ourselves, we heard a noise of people coming to the village. So, we ran and hid into the nearby bushes. We saw young people coming to the village. Two of them particularly were about my age. At this point, I was 12 years old. And they wore military outfits and guns. One had a gallon of petrol or kerosene with matches. The other had weapons. They were laughing about how they got this village really good, how they were able to get everyone and kill them and nobody escaped. 

 

As we lay in this bush under the shrubs without being seen looking at these young people, I did not realize that a year later, I would be one of these same people, one of the same young men that I was seeing that I'll be one of those people going around and stacking a different kind of narrative in the library of my own mind. But not only that, I grew up in a place where I also believed that when an older person dies, a library is destroyed or burns. And now, we were going around destroying the very same knowledge, the source of knowledge, that could add to our own narratives. We didn't know what kind of library were creating. And worst of all, we’re destroying the source of knowledge that perhaps could help us understand how our narratives would actually pan out. Thank you.