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After the other students in Freetown find out about Mohammed and Ishmael’s lives as boy soldiers and avoid them, Ishmael starts calling Mohammed his brother to avoid explaining any part of their past. As a result of the alliance between the RUF and the Sobels, citizens of the capital are stuck by stray bullets when the collaboration between the two start up. The day Ishmael and Mohammed visit the town to buy food, they’re collected in the swarm of a mod protest. When the gunmen start firing in the crowds, the two take their chance to hide in a ditch until evening. Hours until nightfall, Ishmael writes that “it felt like waiting for Judgment Day” (Beah 206). Ishmael knows that he needs to make a decision that he later ends up following, which is to leave before he gets involved with the war once again. He leaves the country by illegal means on his way to stay with Laura in New York. Finally, he reaches his destination, the Sierra Leone embassy in Guinea where he’s considered a war refugee and given a place to stay.

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Ishmael is surprised by NYC, finding it brutally cold and much safer than the idea of it that he had developed from rap music. During his days in New York, Ishmael meets Laura Simms, a white storyteller who will later become his adoptive mother. On the last day of the concert, a child from each country spoke about their experiences at the UN Economic and Social Council chamber. Ishmael speaks from his heart, saying, “I’ve come to learn that if I am going to take revenge, in that process I will kill another person whose family will want revenge; then revenge and revenge and revenge will never come to an end. . .” (Beah 199). The kids then all went to Laura’s house and back home the next day, crying at their departure.

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Ishmael moves in with Uncle Tommy and has a hard time adjusting to the stability and happiness of family life. His cousin Allie sneaks Ishmael out one night to go dancing, which is how Ishmael starts dating a girl for three weeks until she becomes more curious about his past than he’s comfortable with. Leslie persuades Ishmael to attend an interview to be part of a delegation of children traveling to the UN in New York to discuss issues affecting kids throughout various countries. Ishmael is chosen to visit the U.S., but Uncle Tommy doesn’t believe him and says, “My good wishes are with you. So I will see you later for dinner, then.” (Beah 192).

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Esther and Ishmael decide to be temporary siblings. Observers from the UN, UNICEF, and several NGOs visit Benin Home and are so impressed by Ishmael’s dancing, rapping, and Shakespeare monologue of Julius Caesar that they ask him to be the rehabilitation center’s spokesperson. Ishmael began speaking at Gatherings in Freetown, writing that, “I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance.” (Beah 169).  After six months at Benin Home, Ishmael meets his uncle Tommy, who regularly visits him and eventually takes Ishmael to meet his family in the city.

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Ishmael begins opening up to Esther after she gives him a Walkman and rap cassettes. He tells her the story of how he was shot in the foot, had the bullet removed without anesthesia, and took his revenge by shooting a group of captives in their feet. Esther cries in sympathy for Ishmael and tells him that his past as a soldier isn’t his fault. Despite his anger at this, he shares more memories with her and begins writing lyrics again. Esther continues telling Ishmael that he’s not at fault, to which Ishmael writes, “Even though I had heard that phrase from every staff member -- and frankly I had always hated it -- I began that day to believe it.” (Beah 165).

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Ishmael and the other boys attack and throw things at the Benin Home employees and other civilians, fight with each other constantly, and demand the same respect shown to dangerous soldiers. One day Ishmael wounds his hand by punching a window and, after being treated by the nurse, stays in the hospital for days due to drug withdrawal. Ishmael recites the memory of how he earned the nickname, “Green Snake” and how he and the other boys, “were still traumatized, and now that we had time to think, the fastened mantle of our war memories slowly began to open.” (Beah 145). The boys sell their school supplies and the staff plan weekend trips to the city that require the former soldiers to attend school which they dislike.

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Ishmael’s squad has become his family, and he has lost track of time to the point that he no longer knows what day it is. In January 1996, when Ishmael is fifteen, he and Alhaji are taken to a fenced compound in Freetown by UNICEF men with hardly any explanation from the lieutenant. Here, Ishmael and the other former soldiers break out into a fight with the former rebel boys and are happy to have “dealt with the rebel boys,” (Beah 137) before being transported to the rehabilitation center Benin Home. Separated from their drugs, the boys begin to experience withdrawal symptoms; Ishmael writes, “I was beginning to shake. . . I walked up and down on the verandah, restless in my new environment. Me head began to hurt.” (Beah 137).

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Ishmael becomes addicted to marijuana, brown brown and the white energy capsules along with the other soldiers, and when they run out of supplies they raid rebel camps and civilian villages for drugs, ammunition, etc., and for new recruits. The lieutenant gives a speech to the civilians in which he boosts the soldiers’ morale and establishes that their actions are for the better, and Ishmael writes that, “We were always either at the front lines, watching a war movie or doing drugs. . . It was as if nothing else existed outside our reality.” (Beah 124). Ishmael wins a contest of slitting a prisoner’s throat, celebrates with more drugs and war movies, and is given his own tent and the rank of junior lieutenant.

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The boys are given a Sunday morning off from training and are called back the same day to be given guns and ammunition for the first time before heading out of the village to fight. Ishmael is terrified at first, but gets over his fear, writing of how he killed people and took the weapons and ammunition from dead friends and enemies alike. Ishmael has a nightmare that night after sleeping with a sense of numbness, but says that, “We went out two more times that week and I had no problem shooting my gun.” (Beah 120).

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The boys are captured by soldiers after days of walking and taken to Yele, and even though the village seems peaceful aside from the many orphans occupying it, Ishmael suffers migraines and nightmares and becomes distant from village life. One day, the boys of the village are told that the rebels are surrounding the village and they must either join the soldiers or leave. Ishmael and his friends join the army and are trained by soldiers that give them drugs and guns and tell them to “Visualize the banana tree as. . . those who killed your parents. . . who are responsible for everything that has happened to you.” (Beah 112).

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Ishmael and his six friends are walking when they run into Gasemu, someone they knew from Mattru Jong, who leads them to the village where they’ve heard their families are. Just as they’re arriving at the village, the rebels are starting to burn it. Ishmael never sees his family and blames Gasemu for it, thinking, “If we hadn’t run into Gasemu, I would have seen my family.” (Beah 95). Gasemu dies that night after being shot.

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After the boys leave the village, all the following villages they come across have already been abandoned. When they arrive at one village, they allow the boys to take part in their festival and give them dried meat to take with them when they set off the morning after. When they rested for the night, following daylight, they notice that the meat is gone. They all start blaming each other when the find out that a stray dog was the culprit. As their journey goes on, the boys start opening up to each other, starting with their background on how the war has affected them. After eating a crow that falls from the sky, which is considered a bad omen, Saidu constantly faints and eventually is declared ill. There were hints of Saidu’s inevitable demise through the foreshadowing techniques when “the dogs cried all night long, one continuing till the sky was completely clear. Babies then began to take up the cry” (Beah 85).

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When the newly formed group with an added member, Ishmael, reaches the Atlantic Ocean, they find a nearby village that’s supposedly abandoned. The boys are surprisingly attacked by the citizens of that village and brought to the chief. Instead of killing them, they use a technique that the boys would wish they were dead rather than being barefoot in the scorching hot sand. After walking for about a day, they find shelter in a hut and the man who owns the hut tends to their needs such as medical care and food. After staying with the man for about four days, Ishmael asks the man for his name, which the man responded with, “It is not necessary. This way we will all be safe” (Beah 62). Once again, they are brought to the chief and rap music has saved the boys once more.

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Ishmael has been walking for so long, he’s already been to the abandoned villages and scavenged for anything edible. A few more steps later, he’s in the thick forest, testing the fruit whether or not they’re poisonous. After being tested as safe to eat, Ishmael begins to feel “as if the birds gave [him] angry looks for eating so much of their food” (Beah 52). The loneliness is unbearable, and after he meets a herd of aggressive wild pigs, he decides to leave the forest. Luckily, Ishmael spots a few male schoolmates and joins their group.

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The significance of the attack in this chapter is that the long-time travel mates are separated for the first time in their journey. Also, the raid took place during the village’s evening prayer. Ishmael and Kaloko find each other after the rebels’ strike and they hide out with a family for two weeks. Sadly, Ishmael “became frustrated with living in fear,” he writes, “I felt as if I was always waiting for death to come to me,” (Beah 46), so he sets foot in solitary toward the sea for five days, but all the nearby villages have already been forgotten about and burned.

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Traveling in groups is most likely preferred in times like these, but in Ishmael’s situation, the group of 6 are feared around the nearby villages, so much that they have to stay in the shadows for the most of their journey. Suddenly, they are captured by a group of volunteer guards for their village and are brought to the chief in their council. Before going through with their fate of drowning, the chief discovered Ishmael’s rap cassette. When asked to be played, a boy who went to the same school as the boys steps up and shares his testimony of their innocence. Although they were given a chance for food and shelter, they decline and keep moving because in the back of their minds, the boys knew that that village would be attacked soon enough. When they’re informed of Gibrilla’s aunt living in Kamator, they decide to settle down there and hopefully make a living. Within three months, they went from being “lazy town boys” (Beah 41) to Gibrilla’s uncle to the farmers for that village, until the rebels sudden attack. In the midst of the chaos, the six get separated and that’s the last of the brothers’ interaction.

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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and that’s exactly the situation Ishmael and his brother and friends were in when they followed through with their temptation from hunger and snatched corn ears from a little boy. Although, Ishmael goes on to write that the boy’s mother gives them more corn and that they didn’t even feel sorry for it. Later on, they’re forced by their hunger once more to return to Mattru Jong, despite how dangerous the trek is. They were inevitably captured by rebels and brought to gunpoint. Miraculously, the 6 escaped once again, but the horrific memories never leave them and each boy was unable to communicate for “everyone seemed to be in a different world or seemed to be pondering something” (Beah 36).

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Ishmael was introduced to war in the slightest way by the refugees walking around his town, bringing the flashbacks of war along with them. Ishmael also discovered rap music along with his friends. They soon became familiar with rapping and dancing, so they joined a talent show taking place in Mattru Jong. That was only the beginning until war flashbacks turned into real war when the rebels attacked the village they traveled to for the contest. Although, in the midst of all the chaos around him, he remembers the old village story of the moon when he was a child, so whenever he does “get a chance to observe the moon now,” (Beah 17) according to Ishmael, “I still see those same images when I was six, and it pleases me to know that that part of my childhood is still embedded in me” (Beah 17).

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In this short chapter, Ishmael starts it off with a vivid nightmare. In his bad dream, he was carrying war-affected, dead bodies in a wheelbarrow. He clearly describes the gory scenery of “arm and legs missing; their instestines [spilling] out through the bullet holes in their stomachs; brain matter [coming] out oftheir noses and ears” (Beah 18). The most horrid part of the dream is when Ishmael began to “lift the cloth from the body’s face,” (Beah 19) he was looking at his own.

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Ishmael and his friends decide to stay in Mattru Jong when they don’t hear from their families post-attack on their home village. They “didn’t know what else to do except wait and hope that they were well” (Beah 21). When a messenger from the most recently attacked village, Sumbuya, arrives, the letters RUF, which stands for Revolutionary United Front, is carved on his body by a hot bayonet. The messenger recites a report on the rebels’ status and that they’ll be coming to Mattru Jong soon. He specifically mentions that they’re to be welcomed since they’re supposedly fighting for the people. As expected, the rebels, instead, attack the village after 15 days of peace. Fortunately, the group of 6 were able to successfully escape.

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Despite their fairly sized group of 6, each boy was in solitude whilst walking hungry and terrified by the sights they witnessed. Their hunger overtook them, so this leads them back to Khalilou’s house for money. After risking their lives for the money and barely escaping death or recruitment from rebel guards that caught their attention, unfortunately, vendors in the nearby villages refuse to sell them anything in hopes for their own families’ survival. War really changes people, since the group of boys did things that they never thought they would ever do out of hunger. They “stole people’s food while they slept. It was the only way to get through the night” (Beah 29).