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Summary: Chapter 10
A year has passed now since Ishmael and Junior left Mogbwemo. As the boys continue their journey, Ishmael is troubled by uncertainty about the fate of his family and his own future. One night, a boy named Saidu speaks earnestly about their ordeal. Every time people threaten to kill them, part of him dies, he says. Soon only his empty body will be left walking with them. Saidu’s words add to Ishmael’s sense of doom. However, the boys’ days are not completely without happiness. One village welcomes them joyously and throws a celebration. The next day, the boys are sent on their way with water and smoked meat. The boys entertain themselves with dancing and storytelling. Ishmael fondly remembers the party, and the storytelling, that took place at his own name-giving ceremony years ago.
Unfortunately, the smoked meat the boys were given is eaten by a stray dog. A tall boy named Alhaji wishes he had killed the dog. Musa says he would have liked to tell his father what dog tastes like. Musa lost his mother when the family fled Mattru Jong, and he lost his father when the father went back to look for the mother. Several other boys describe what happened to their families that day. Saidu’s family was trapped in their home. Rebels broke in and raped Saidu’s three sisters repeatedly before taking the girls with them.
One afternoon, a crow falls from the sky. Despite their misgivings, the boys eat the crow because they are hungry. Not long after, Saidu becomes ill. The boys take him to the next village, which is bustling with people, where a woman recognizes Ishmael. She tells Ismael that his parents and brothers are all together along with a many other people from the Mattru Jong area in a village about two days away. The boys decide to go to the village the next day, but overnight, Saidu gets sicker, and the next day, he dies. Kanei, the oldest of the boys, acts as Saidu’s family representative for the funeral planning. Moriba, who was close to Saidu, is especially sad. After a respectful ceremony, Saidu is buried in the village cemetery. As the boys leave the village, they wonder which of them will be next to die.
Summary: Chapter 11
The six surviving boys approach the village where Ishmael hopes to find his family, where they meet Gasemu, a man Ishmael knew back in Mogbwemo. As the boys help Gasemu carry bananas to the village, he asks, teasingly, if Ishmael is still a troublesome boy, as he used to be in Mogbwemo. When the group stops for a rest near the top of a hill, Ishmael grows angry because he is impatient to see his family.
Suddenly, from the village below, there come the sounds of gunfire and people screaming. Ishmael breaks free from Gasemu and runs down to the village. The rest of the group follows. A burning house has screaming people locked inside it. The boys are able to help a woman and a child escape, but the two die within minutes. Gasemu finds the bodies of execution victims, lying in a row. Finally, Gasemu points out the burned-out house where Ishmael’s family was staying. There are too many charred corpses in the village for Ishmael to have any chance of knowing which are his parents and brothers.
Ishmael is enraged that the earlier rest stop prevented him from seeing his family, and that they are now dead. He hits Gasemu in the face. A fight breaks out among the boys over whether Gasemu was wrong to call a rest stop, but Gasemu stops the fight. Hearing a group of a dozen or so rebels approach, he and the boys hide. They heard the rebels boast about having killed everyone in the village, with no escapees. Suddenly, Gasemu and the boys are spotted and must flee. As they run, Gasemu is shot twice but doesn’t tell anyone. The group escapes, and that night, the boys discover Gasemu’s wounds. The next afternoon, Gasemu heaves and shakes as he dies. Ishmael regrets having hit Gasemu the day before.
Analysis: Chapters 10–11
Death is heavily foreshadowed at the beginning of this section when Saidu expresses that every time he comes face to face with death, a part of him dies. The foreshadowing continues when the boys eat a crow, a symbol of bad luck, and when Saidu faints as the boys encounter people that they think are ghosts. At Saidu’s funeral, the boys must step in for Saidu’s family, who cannot be found and are likely dead. The people of the village line up when the remaining boys leave the village just as they lined up for Saidu’s funeral, as if they are watching the boys walk to their own funerals. The loss of their new provisions also does not bode well for the boys, and before the boys can make it to a village where some of their family members are said to be living, the village is attacked, and everyone is killed. These horrific scenes of death, along with Ishmael’s anger at Gasemu foreshadow Gasemu’s coming death as well.
Despite their difficult and sometimes impossible journey, Ishmael’s personal interest in storytelling enters the narrative in this section as a motif that will grow stronger as his story unfolds. When the boys are invited to hunt with the men of a village they are passing through, the hunt is followed by a party where storytelling draws Ishmael into a new community. Musa tells the story of Bra Spider, and Ishmael recalls his name-giving ceremony, which also featured storytelling. Stories, for Ishmael, are a way to recall his innocent childhood, which has otherwise been stripped away. At this point in the narrative, stories are a healing balm on the devastating hurt he has gone through. Later on, storytelling will come to mean something very different. Eventually, Beah will be strong enough to tell his own story of his experiences in the form of the memoir itself.
At this point in Ishmael’s journey, thick clouds begin to cover the moon’s light, symbolizing the loss family and an innocent childhood. Though the moon at first perseveres and shines through, it is steadily covered by clouds as Ishmael’s situation worsens. To Ishmael, the moon is trying to hide behind the clouds to “avoid seeing what was happening,” as a scared child might do, and as Ishmael has done already many times, avoiding danger and death. But in Chapter 11, after Ishmael and the boys have learned that their families are likely dead, the moon disappears and “[takes] the stars with it.” This symbolizes the full loss that Ishmael and the boys feel and extinguishes any hope of being reunited with their loved ones. The disappearance of the moon signifies the end of their innocent childhoods.
