Newspaper Page Text
CHILD OF WAR
Last year, film critic David Denby gushed in the New Yorker
about Edward Zwick's Blood Diamonds. Set in Sierra Leone dur
ing its horrific civil war, the film is a romantic drama about an
American journalist and a South African diamond smuggler. Despite
a great performance by Djimon Hounsou, every African character,
including Hounsou's, is little more than a backdrop of human
depravity used to highlight the white protagonists—Jennifer
Connelly and Leonardo DiCaprio—as they ascend to new heights of
angst. That might sound reductive or mind-numbingly PC, but one
doesn't need a degree in oostcolonial theory to understand what
a problematic cliche it all is. African characters bleed, white folks
have existential crises. The setting could be Sierra Leone in 1994
or Tatooine in 2,000,007; what's the difference? So while Denby's
critical acumen has gone down in this critic's estimation, it's a
welcome relief to read Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone (Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, New York, 2007), a memoir of the same conflict
Zwick so thoughtlessly ransacked written by someone who experi
enced it first-hand.
Unless you've endured a civil war, it's probably impossible to
understand what Beah went through. From the age of 12 to 15, he
was as a fugitive from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which
attacked his village and would later kill his family. At age 13, he
was recruited into the army of the Sierra Leone government. He
was hardly an anomaly as a child solider. Beah recounts his experi
ence in prose that's deceptively simple. Reading of killing and flee
ing looted villages, rapes and murders right in broad daylight, it's
so far beyond the pale of First World unpleasantness that ingesting
it is like logging in to a dead URL. It just won't load. However,
sprinkled between the atrocities are moments that underline the
madness of being young, desperate and unprotected.
Witness a short list of what
can be considered the "lighter
side" of his pre-soldier wander
ings:
• Being chased into trees by
packs of wild boars.
• Sleeping in trees for safety.
• Being rounded up (and
bound up) with a half-dozen
refugee children in a coastal
village. There, the chief de
manded to hear Beah's hip-
hop tape and while Naughty
By Nature's "O.P.P." failed to
impress the chief, Beah was
spared execution.
Strange, then, that these
adventures are sometimes more
frightening than the war; per
haps because being alone in the jungle fleeing feral pigs is easier
to envision than a brigade of middle schoolers shooting up a rural
village. As Beah said, he quickly lost compassion for anyone and
could shoot a person as easily as one might recycle a can of Coke.
Like most other young conscripts, Beah became addicted to
"brown brown," a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder popular
among his comrades. An interesting parallel between Beah's war
experience and that of Anthony Swofford, whose Gulf War memoir
Jarhead was also made into a somewhat forgettable film, is the
reliance on another sort of narcotic, war movies. In both cases,
soldiers watched Hollywood war films like porn, to get psyched for
a good day's killing. Unlike Swofford, who saw combat but didn't
kill anyone, Beah shot people and celebrated with his friends.
A Long Way Gone doesn't delve into the politics of the civil war,
as it's not a polemic. In Beah's wartime view, the rebels either
destroyed your village or they're about to. It's not hard to under
stand Beah's decision to fight, though, as it wasn't much of a deci
sion. Without a family, much less a definite meal plan, the army is
a place where you can, if nothing else, stop running. From a safer
perspective, the enemy is anyone who turns children into killing
machines. As he'd later learn, both factions peddled the same logic
to their child soldiers: "Over and over in our training he would say
the same sentence: Visualize the enemy, the rebels who killed your
parents, your family, and those who are responsible for everything
that has happened to you." It's an unenviable contradiction: being
revved up for killing by channeling your suffering and then getting
loaded on numbing agents to forget it.
There is a happy ending. Beah was chosen to be part of a UN
panel on child soldiers. He traveled to New York City and years lat
er was adopted by a woman he met there. He went on to graduate
from Oberlin, an elite private college in Ohio. How does he make
sense of these two starkly different realities? Maybe we'll find out
in another book. Beah doesn't wrap up his life in a neat bow, as
well he shouldn't: It's far from over.
John Dicker
a long
s way gone
of- a
Sty £cUev I
ishmael
beah
::
POSITION
AVAILABLE
®z
era ,
2 I
3 2
Starting in May I g
Advertising or Marketing Majors Preferred. • •
Must have car and be available Wednesday. Thursday and Friday afternoons
This is a non-paid position.
SINGLE SPACE LIVING
NEW YORK STYLE STUDIOS
M 0 D E R N. .-A M E N ITI E S
■ NOW ■
ACCEPTING
CREDIT
CARDS 1
ON CAMPUS A-
LUXURY LIVING
ON UGA BUSLINE
NO SECURITY DEPOSIT
OR APPLICATION FEE
SHORT TERM LEASES
AVAILABLE
RENT INCLUDES
TRASH, WATER &
LAUNDRY FACILITY
WWW.STUDI051CONDOS.COM
AFFORDABLE
OFF CAMPUS LIVING
• LARGE 4BR / 3BA TOWNHOUSES
• PRELEASE HOW,
PAY LATER
• PET FRIENDLY
• SHORT TERM LEASES AVAILABLE
• POOL, SECURITY SYSTEM,
WASHER & DRYER, LARGE GREENSPACE
706-540-2829
EMAIL: RIVERPARKTOWNHOUSE@YAHOO.COM
Athens' Sandal Center Since 1975
A
REEF • RAINBOW • CROCS • KEEN • BIRKS
Gyro, ^fe<7\V,
ChicWe* or Veggie
THETfe^flfntRICflnSflnDUJICH
HUNGER CAN BE A BEAST
Calm The Mighty Beast!
TAKE OUT AVAILABLE
706-543-9071
Across from UGA Arch
On East Broad Street
Open at 11am Mon-Sat • 12pm on Sim
See Our Full Menu At
www.gyrowrap.com v
uvta Live
Share a room with your friend or
special someone and save $10 off
any of our Couple’s Massages.
/, UI
Choice of SiVedish,
Therapeutic or Hot Stone
293 E. DOUGHKRTY ST.
706.125.9700
w ww. foundry pai'kimi.com
sfSSESI Texas *^99 i
MARGARITAS ■
MARGARITAS
PITCHER
’2. 00 OFF
M«rc«ritk piTcuEKfi
i Frjitxs For Two *
& a pitcher
OF MARGARITAS
1376 Prince Avenue • 706-543-1500
TAQUERIA & MEXICAN
NEWS & FEATURES I ARTS & EVENTS I MOVIES I MUSIC I COMICS & ADVICE I CLASSIFIEDS
MARCH 21,2007 FLAGPOLE.COM 7