Metamorphosis
among weapons
Under the hot September sun, which burned the skin, Abdoulaye played in the dust of a refugee camp in the Darfur region.
A ragged ball rolled across the small clearing between the huts. The children ran and played, unwilling to abandon their impossible desire to return to normal life and reclaim everything they had been forced to leave behind. The sun reddened the horizon, the shadows stretched longer across the arid ground, and Abdoulaye, after a long day spent playing with the other children, sat on a rock.
He felt a movement behind him, turned sharply, and saw a smiling boy. He was wearing a white t-shirt from some European football team, whose golden trim was gleaming in the sun. Abdoulaye hadn’t seen anyone wearing such new and clean clothes in months. All the other children, even those playing, turned to watch the strange figure closely, as if it came from another world.
The boy offered Abdoulaye a packet filled with untouched cigarettes and invited him to take one. He did the same with the other children. Abdoulaye had never smoked, but despite that, the gift filled him with joy and sparked a question and a desire in him:
Who is that strange guy?
I want to be like him!
The well-dressed boy walked away from the area, heading towards the edge of the camp. There, waiting for him, was an old military truck, whose paint was peeling from the hood to the door. Abdoulaye and five or six other children had followed him to that point, uncertain whether to climb aboard with him. One of the children, who would soon regret it, took the first step forward and, with the boy’s help, climbed onto the truck; the others followed his example, and Abdoulaye went with them. As soon as they were all on board, the truck started up, leaving behind the refugee camp in a cloud of dust, a place that neither Abdoulaye nor the others would ever see again.
Abdoulaye got off the truck, the wind was whipping his young face as he gripped his assault rifle. He ran with his companions through the dusty streets of the village, shouting at women and children to stay still. They began to loot, and as he broke down the door of a house, he found himself face to face with a child holding a rag doll. He froze, paralyzed, unable to move, because memories of his time in the refugee camp flooded back, along with his transformation into a guerrilla fighter.
After half a day of travel, passing through other refugee camps, the truck moved slowly due to the large number of children. They arrived by evening at what seemed to be a real military base, where they were taken into a barrack furnished with simple cots.
That night, the children slept until dawn, when they were suddenly woken by the door slamming against the wall. Four men in camouflage entered and forced them to get up. They were taken outside into the courtyard, where they were given torn military shirts, one at a time, and forced to put them on. Each child was handed an old weapon and forced to climb onto trucks. After a short ride, they arrived at a village. They were ordered to raid it. Abdoulaye stood in front of the door of a hut, hesitating to enter. He was noticed by what seemed to be his superior, who threatened him with death and forced him to follow the command. The boy had no choice. He barged violently into the house, forcing the family hiding there to give him everything they had. In a burst of rage, he pulled the trigger and set fire to the house. Abdoulaye was no longer the same: the war had changed him. Now he only wanted to make others feel what he had felt and to obtain what he had never had: the chance to be free, but through violence.
When they returned to camp, the children were rewarded with food and five Chadian francs, an amount Abdoulaye had never seen in his life. In the following years, for his brutality, he gained more and more prestige, eventually becoming a commander himself.
The victim had become the executioner.
THE END
