Radiance of Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

tightly. His swollen jawbone and head had pained him all night, but he couldn’t cry because he wanted to remain strong for his children.
    In the morning, the commander asked a slim little boy with a long, rough, pimpled face—they called him “Sergeant Cutlass”—to chop off the family’s hands.
    “I am in a very good mood, so you will only have your hands cut off. You can keep your lives for today,” the commander had said.
    “I am giving you my best man for the job. He is so good that by the time you think about it, it will be finished.” He laughed and called on the sergeant. The young boy’s sunken face was as cold as the blades he carried. All of them had residues of blood and flesh, and some were dull while others were very sharp. Depending on how much pain the commander wanted his victims to feel, he would ask for either a dull or sharp machete. This young boy had been forced at gunpoint to do his first cutting when he was nine years old. And they were the hands of his mother, father, grandmother, and two uncles. Afterward the commander had killed them because the boy didn’t do the job to his liking; “It wasn’t as clean as I wanted,” he had said before shooting all of them. The commander had then made the boy part of the group to fight as a soldier and with the special task of chopping off hands only.
    “Okay, bring them here.” The commander asked for Sila and his children to be brought to the log near the bushes. “Sergeant Cutlass, go on and we move out after. One last thing: if any of you make any noise, I will have you all shot.”
    He laughed as the hands of the children were first placed on the logs and cut, and then it was Sila’s turn. Sergeant Cutlass had cut many hands, but this was the second time that it tormented him—the first had been his family. He didn’t know what it was, but something about this family got to him. He had also never witnessed such silence from cuts—even when the commander threatened to shoot people, they cried out. Not this family, though, and the silence made him hear the sound that the machete made when it went through the flesh, the bone, and then the flesh again, finally hitting the log.
    The sound echoed in his head from that day on. The commander had told his sergeant to cut with a combination of “long sleeve” and “short sleeve,” which meant a cut above the elbow (short sleeve) and below the wrist (long sleeve). The squad left right after they had chopped Sila’s and his children’s hands. The commander had thought that they would die bleeding, but Sila had lost enough people already. He rolled on the ground to gain some strength, got up, looked for some old cloths, and, using his one hand and mouth, tied the fresh wounds of his children and himself. It ceased their bleeding just a bit. He begged his children to forgive him because he was unable to protect them and also encouraged them to be strong, to stand up and walk with him. They did, all of them weak and staggering from the loss of blood. They continued, though, their father calling, “Hawa, Maada, you are still there. Don’t leave your father alone.”
    “Yes, Papa,” each would say, and sometimes Hawa would reach her right hand to wipe the sweat off her younger brother’s face. They went on in this manner until they hit a main road, where they all fainted on the earth at the side of the road.
    They awoke at a hospital in the capital city on beds next to one another, their wounds bandaged. The nurse explained to Sila that a driver who had said his name was Momodou had kicked all the passengers off his vehicle and loaded Sila and his children inside, forfeiting all the money he could have made, especially at such a difficult time for the country. He had brought them to the hospital and paid for the initial treatment, adding, “This man and his children are brave to have walked all that way,” pointing at their tattered bare feet, “so someone must do something to complete their