Read these two books if you want to see how the other half lives. I don’t mean the other half that lives on the “other side of the tracks” in your developed-world town. I mean the other half that lives on the other side of the world and on the other side of the global poverty chasm. They live in conditions that we would consider medieval, eking out subsistence lives on one dollar a day or outside the money economy altogether. To make their lives worse — much worse — they often live in the midst of war.
The books each tell the story of a boy who survived horrific experiences in war-torn countries as refugees and child-soldiers — one in Sierra Leone and one in Sudan.
Both are highly recommended.
A Long Way Gone
My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“Did you witness some of the fighting?”
“Everyone in the country did.”
“You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometime.”
That is how the book begins. The rest of it is the fulfillment of the promise.
The story starts when Beah is twelve years old. That’s when the civil war first came to the rural village in Sierra Leone where his family lived. Beah and some of his friends were away in a neighboring village, and heard from others that rebels had attacked his village and killed many people, possibly including his family.
From that moment on, Beah is a refugee, wanting to find out if his family is still alive but warned not to return home. With other boys, he wanders the countryside, looking for food and avoiding danger. Eventually, he is forcibly inducted into the Government Army as a child soldier, where under threat of death if he tries to escape he is kept drugged and made to fight the rebels and to commit atrocities against civilians. After several years, just as he is getting used to the soldier’s life, he is “rescued” by the United Nations against his will and taken to a rehabilitation camp. Eventually, he comes to the US and is adopted into an American family.
Beah recounts his experiences clearly and matter-of-factly. Given what he experienced, there is no need for florid writing; the story itself is florid enough. At times I almost felt like I could get post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) just from reading his story.
One wonders how Beah could remember so much of his experiences without having kept any notes. He says that he had to retell parts of the story many times before he wrote it down, keeping it fresh in his mind. Some have accused him of fabricating and combining events or describing experiences of other boys as his own. If that’s true, I don’t care. Most of the story is clearly Beah’s authentic experience, and that’s good enough for me.
What is the What
The first mystery of this biographical “novel” about the experiences of one of Sudan’s “Lost Boys”, who escaped the war there and eventually came to the US, is the title. The mystery is not revealed until well into the book. I won’t spoil it for you. In fact, not being Sudanese, I probably couldn’t explain it very well even if I wanted to. To find out what it means, you’ll have to read the book.
Even though Valentino Achek Deng is a very smart, articulate fellow (see videos listed below), he chose to engage writer Dave Eggers rather than write his own story. He and Eggers faced issues similar to what Beah faced: how to weave a captivating story from Deng’s memories — some vivid, some not so vivid, and some intertwined with stories Deng heard from others. Their solution was to declare the book a “novel”, even though it reads like a biography.
Eggers and Deng tell the story in an unusual way. As the story begins, Deng is already living in the US in an apartment in Atlanta with another Sudanese “lost boy”. In the first few pages, robbers invade Deng’s apartment, beat him up, tie him up, and steal his and his housemate’s few possessions.
While tied up helpless on the floor, he wants to tell the robbers about the hellish conditions he lived through before coming to America, and that begins a series of flashbacks about how he became a refugee in the Sudanese civil war. His attempts to escape the robbery and seek aid from the Atlanta police and the medical system are intertwined with stories about how the Sudanese civil war came to his home village when he was seven years old and quickly turned him into a refugee. After living — and often nearly dying — in the desserts of Sudan and Ethiopia, he landed in a series of refugee camps, where he spent many years of his life.
One thing that struck me — and Deng mentions this also — is how he and his fellow Sudanese quickly adjust their expectations from life after coming to the US. One might think that after their experiences in Africa, nothing the US could throw at them would seem bad. But within months of arriving Deng finds himself complaining about the same setbacks and problems that we who have lived in the developed world all our lives complain about. He says he thinks he has grown “soft”.
Unlike Beah, Deng managed to escape becoming a child soldier. That is fortunate, because when the US agreed to accept “Lost Boys” from Sudan, they rejected those who had been soldiers. And then we probably would never have heard his story.
Further information about the books and Ismael Beah and Valentino Achak Deng:
- Official “A Long Way Gone” website
- Author Ismael Beah reads from A Long Way Gone
- Ismael Beah interviewed
- Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
- Valentino Achak Deng speaks at Google
- The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation Story
