Read Online One Day the Soldiers Came by Charles London - Free Book Online Page A

would probably be all there was. I wanted to connect with him very much, but I did not want to do him harm with that connection. No research was worth that. My desire for understanding did not outweigh his needs, not by a long shot. I had to tell him something in answer to his question, and it had to be true. You don’t bullshit a child who has seen what he’s seen, survived what he’s survived.
    “How will talking to you about the war help me to get shoes or more food or a blanket?” Keto scratched his chin and waited for an answer.
    “It won’t,” I said.
    The noises of the camp, of the world outside the tent filled the space between us. I heard laughing and loud conversations. The silence was awkward in the dim light between Keto, the translator, and me. The silence was long.
    “It might not help you get shoes or more food or a blanket,” I told him. “Talking to me won’t get you those things.” I paused and thought about what I was there to do, what I hoped would come out of it. He rested his chin in his hand and watched me speak, not understanding what I was saying until it was translated, but listening intently to the sound of my words.
    “But if enough people hear your story, perhaps they can start a larger effort to help all the kids living in this camp. Your storycould help put shoes on the children after you. The people who read it, perhaps they will want to help other children, perhaps you can teach them about what it is like so it can be made better here one day.”
    When I said this, I believed it. I cannot really imagine that Keto did. His face did not betray any reaction as my response was translated for him. It was not his first time being interviewed.
    “I talked once with a mzungu ”—a white man—“from the Methodist church. He interviewed me and he helped me, gave me a blanket. But it got stolen,” he said.
    I told him that I did not have any blankets to give, though he had not actually asked. Savvy Keto knew how to get me to volunteer what he wanted to know. This gift for people, for reading them, for getting adults to open up to him, was a gift that had served Keto well in the past, would serve him well in the future. Maybe it was this that kept him alive when the world around him fell to pieces.
    We were eating granola bars while we talked, and I think he enjoyed that, perhaps saw it as fair barter for his story.
    “I’d like to help other children,” he said. I think he sensed my nervousness and wanted to make me feel more at ease. It was his turn to smile, to reassure me that he would talk, that he liked talking to visitors. It was embarrassing to be comforted by a child, a victim of war. I was supposed to be the expert here, providing the comfort, the support. My nervousness leveled the playing field for him, gave him a role to play. Keto did not want to be patronized; he wanted respect. He got it. He has it still.
    “It’s okay,” he said and settled back in his chair and started talking again. He told his story without interruptions, except to let the translator speak or to nod when I seemed to understand something on my own because he had used a French word that I knew. Both of us liked those few moments of direct connectionas he spoke, but otherwise, he spoke without much emotion and without many pauses…. It amazed me at the time, though I grew used to it over the years, how so many children who had been through unspeakable horrors could talk about the most disturbing things with little emotion. These were the facts of their lives. These were their stories.
    “I came from Baraka,” Keto said. He told his story, how he sat in school with his brother listening to the teacher recite the French lessons for the day: je m’appelle, tu t’appelle, il s’appelle….
    “When I went home, I didn’t find my parents. My brother and I didn’t know where my parents or grandparents were.” They stood for a while in their empty home, calling for anyone they knew. With gunfire