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The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Ishmael Beah

I believe in having a more open mind and including others who don’t share your faith and having dialogue with them. And just having a pure heart and being a good person can bring you closer to God. Because once you believe in one particular religion fully and not others, that requires you to start disliking people who don’t share your views.

Good, Faith, God

As a kid in Africa, you were so connected to nature itself because you went farming, watched the moon out at night, observed how the sky was different, and how the birds chanted different songs in the evening and the morning.

Nature, Sky, Moon

I had a very simple, unremarkable and happy life. And I grew up in a very small town. And so my life was made up of, you know, in the morning going to the river to fetch water – no tap water, and no electricity – and, you know, bathing in the river, and then going to school, and playing soccer afterwards.

Life, Happy, Water

I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.

Children, Age, Father

I am always quiet so that I know what to say when I must speak.

quiet, silence, solitude

Sometimes I closed my eyes hard to avoid thinking, but the eye of the mind refused to be closed and continued to plague me with images.

eyes, images, thinking

I was so happy that my mother, father, and two brothers had somehow found one another. Perhaps my mother and father have gotten back together, I thought.

child-soldiers, innocence, sad, sierra-leone

We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food.

child-soldiers, sad, sierra-leone, war

Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.

fate, free-will, life, truth

I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past.

alive, ishmael-beah, life, memories, past

My squad is my family, my gun is my provider, and protector, and my rule is to kill or be killed.

child-soldiers, military, traumatic-experiences, warfare

The sun’s brightness painted our shadows on the ground.

boy-soldier, shadow, sun