Ishmael Beah remembers hearing rumors of war.
“We couldn’t believe that people were doing the things we heard they were doing,” he said. “We thought that what people were saying was not possible at all.”
That perception, spoken by a former child soldier, echoed wars past, when those persecuted didn’t believe what was happening, because the hearsay was so unbelievable that it couldn’t possibly be true. But it was.
Beah, 26, grew up in Sierra Leone and survived an adolescence few can imagine. Age 12: Parents and two brothers killed. Age 13: Recruited by his government’s military. Age 14 and 15: Killed people regularly, numb to the inhumanity of it all because of the culture he lived in and the drugs he took.
He chronicled his experience in “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” and as a part of his book tour spoke to an audience of about 300 April 4 at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
Beah’s story should resonate with Jews, said Ken Kramarz, who directed Camp Tawonga for 25 years.
Consider that Beah grew up in a loving, nurturing family that instilled in him a respect for humanity and nature, Kramarz said. Then he was pulled into a murderous culture. But he somehow emerged whole, healed. His ethics restored.
“The Jewish view of humanity says we are born as vessels of infinite possibility for greatness or evil,” he said. “… You can take any person, and relatively quickly, lead them into a hellish situation and have them do unspeakable things. It’s not difficult. As Ishmael said, it’s easier to descend into hell than to climb out of it.”
Beah was 12 when his village was set on fire and his family killed. He fled the rebels and wandered the country for a year, sometimes not eating for weeks at a time, changing locations when the rivers he depended on for drinking water became polluted with dead bodies.
“The landscape began to change. The birds were not singing anymore,” he said. “I felt as if nature itself was afraid of what was happening.”
By 13, he was recruited by the government army — which was actually aligned with the rebel forces, and so were not the good guys they appeared to be.
“People assume that maybe I had a choice. But it wasn’t like, ‘Hey man, wanna join us? Why don’t you walk around the block and think about it.’ No. It was like, ‘Join us, or we will kill you.'”
During the lecture, he read from a section of his book. He explained how his lieutenants became like surrogate family, a source of protection for boys who had lost everything. They indoctrinated juvenile soldiers by feeding them drug cocktails of cocaine and gunpowder, forcing them to watch violent films like “Rambo” and telling them that killing would improve their country.
As he described how he once participated in a throat-slitting contest, and won, you could hear a collective gasp from the audience.
UNICEF placed him in a rehabilitation center when he was 16. He then moved to New York, where he lived with an adopted mother and attended high school, experiences for which he is grateful.
He first started to talk and write about his past in college, at Oberlin. A writing professor asked his class to write an essay about things they played with as children.
Beah wrote about AK-47s.
He then felt a responsibility to share his story. So he began the difficult process of reliving his past to craft his memoir, in the hopes that his story could explain a confusing element of war.
“Child soldiers are a global problem,” he said. “My story, how it happened to me, is unique, but the problem itself is not.”
Beah knows readers may be horrified by his story. But his primary goal, and the reason he wrote his book, he explained, is to humanize war, educate people about its realities and perhaps encourage people to be proactive, inspired by the resilience and “strength of the human spirit.”
Beah’s warm smile and eloquent speech belied his cruel adolescence, Kramarz said. Beah’s healing made Kramarz recall his own teenage years, when he learned a teacher at his high school had been part of the Hitler Youth. And so Kramarz never took that instructor’s classes.
“I didn’t care how many years had passed, I couldn’t be with this person,” he said. “But Ishmael’s story got me thinking: People get caught up in evil, brutal dictatorships. Maybe there’s some room for redemption and forgiveness.”