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3 ISHMAEL BEAH  Long ago, when there was no day or night, when the wind was only felt and not heard, there lived a people who walked and flew. They didn’t have sight and it wasn’t out of blindness. They chose to tie their eyelids with soft ropes as soon as their innocence was washed away with age, which happened before a child could talk. This way no one could describe what the others had never seen. They felt that with the departure of innocence, they could no longer see the purity of the world. After their eyes were tied shut, they learned to feel, hear, and smell. They went about their daily activities, hunting and flying to the sea to fish. When they heard an unfamiliar sound, they attacked and destroyed its source, if they felt it was threatening. They lived peacefully as much as they knew without sight. No one knew why or how it happened, but they suddenly couldn’t hear, smell or feel anything. They became frightened, took up their armors and waited in hiding around the village. They waited and waited, and some of the population began to die of hunger or sometimes by walking into the spears of others. One little girl who was the youngest in the village decided to untie the ropes around her eyes. The rays from the sun rushed into her eyes and she immediately closed them, she feared the light, as she had no memory of what it was. Slowly she learned to open her eyes and saw her people dying. She cried as loudly as she could as this new sight of death caused her pain even though she didn’t understand it. She could not hear herself and no one else did so she only watched helplessly as her people died. She cried for days and then started hearing herself, and slowly her people began to hear her as well. She started to sing in her lamentation, calling the names of her people and also describing what she was seeing, the sun, its rays, its setting, the night, the stars. She eventually saved her people and gave them the chance to discover that the departure of innocence didn’t destroy the purity of the world, rather it deepened it; and to understand that depth came the complexities that her people had feared. Weeping Unfamiliar Tears CH001.qxd 7/15/09 7:26 AM Page 3 4 ISMAEL BEAH This was one of the many stories I was told as a child that illustrated risk as discovery, freedom from fear of the unknown, the possibility of living, a provision of hope in otherwise hopeless situations, and the only way life progresses in a meaningful manner. The lessons from this story have become ingrained in my veins because of the experiences that have shaped my life. Since , when the war in my country, Sierra Leone, began affecting my life to the present, the possibility and continuation of my existence has been based on risk. The chances I took to stay alive during the war, the people who opened their hearts and homes to me when my life had no direction, had a profound impact on not only my survival but also in shaping who I have become. When we take risks on others and ourselves, we open the doors to discover our humanity, and our capacity for recovery and goodness. When I was  years old and saw first hand the brutality of the civil war, I didn’t think I would be able to survive it. The dynamics of my culture and of everything about its functionality changed abruptly. A land where once my innocence as a child was celebrated now became a place where that innocence was deeply feared. There was no longer a sense of community and care for all, and the very sacrosanct nature of life was disregarded. It seemed hope itself had died hence living became temporary as one could be killed any minute. My older brother, Junior, friends, and myself could have decided that it wasn’t worth running to escape what seemed to be inevitable death. However, we took a chance to run and hoped that we would stay alive. The strength and determination to at least stay alive if only for a day exposed us to myriad dangers and susceptible to recruitment to fight in the war, death and all the madness that the war brought. That risk also made...

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