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Summary: Chapter 6
As a group, the six boys inspire fear in people who do not know them. At one village, they are captured by armed men. The men bring the boys before the village chief, and just as the chief is about to order the boys drowned, one of the men finds a cassette tape in Ishmael’s pocket. After Ishmael plays the music and explains about the dance act, a villager who has lived in Mattru Jong remembers the boys from seeing them perform. No longer viewed as a threat, the boys are freed, fed, and offered a place to stay. Believing that the rebels will come one day, the boys express their thanks and leave. In an abandoned village, they sit silently, nervous and withdrawn as they try to rest. Ishmael wants to break the silence, but he does not know how.
The next morning, a woman in a group of travelers recognizes Gibrilla, and he learns that his aunt and uncle are now living in the nearby village of Kamator. The boys travel to Kamator, where they are used as watchmen. But after a month, the villagers begin to feel less vigilant. Despite the boys’ insistence that the rebels will eventually come, the villagers stop worrying about the rebels and start their spring planting. Gibrilla’s uncle puts the boys to work, and for three months, they clear unwanted vegetation and plant cassava.
Summary: Chapter 7
When the rebels do come, the attack is completely unexpected. It occurs during the last prayer of the day. As the worshipers in the mosque become aware that the attack is under way, they leave quietly. The imam ignores their whispered warnings that he, too, should leave. When the rebels enter the mosque and the imam refuses to tell them where the worshipers have gone, they bind him with wire and burn him alive. During the attack, Ishmael and Kaloko get separated from the other four boys. Ishmael will never see Junior, his brother, again.
Ishmael and Kaloko hide in the bush by a swamp with a family they know. Eventually, Ishmael feels he must leave the swamp and seek peace and safety elsewhere, but Kaloko is afraid to leave. After Ishmael says goodbye and leaves alone, he wanders for five days without seeing another human being. On the sixth day, he comes across a family swimming in a river and asks for the fastest route to Bonthe, an island that he has heard is one of the safest places to be. The father tells him the direction to the coast, but it is clear that he wants Ishmael to be on his way. Because of the war, Ishmael reflects, even a lone twelve-year-old boy is viewed with mistrust.
Analysis: Chapters 6–7
When village guards capture the boys and bring them back to their chief, a rap cassette in Ishmael’s pocket, symbolic of his innocent childhood, ends up saving the boys’ lives. The chief is prepared to kill the boys, assuming they must be rebels that kill and maim civilians. The rap cassette that Ishmael has carried in his pocket this whole time, even though he didn’t have a cassette player, surprises the chief. After discovering the cassette and subsequently finding someone to vouch for the boys, the chief finally sees that they are not soldiers. Instead of execution, the boys are offered food and a place to stay in the village. The rap cassette, once used in an innocent dance competition, has convinced this chief to spare their lives. The symbolic nature of Ishmael’s rap cassettes will come up again before his story is fully told.
After the boys are spared by the chief, Beah reflects on the relationship he had with his older brother, touching again on the powerful motif of family in the narrative. Beah allows these adult reflections on his early life to interrupt the story of his childhood to highlight specific thoughts and feelings. Beah describes when his brother Junior showed him tenderness by teaching him how to skip stones on a river and helping him when he fell. In contrast, during their precarious stay in the new village, Junior is withdrawn and will not make eye contact with Ishmael. Beah says that at the time, he wanted to ask Junior how he was feeling, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it and he wishes he had. When Junior and Ishmael are separated forever, his last tie to immediate family is cut. Separated from both community and family, Ishmael encounters another family after five days of wandering. But this family holds no refuge for him, not trusting that he is as innocent as he claims to be.
