#4 post

QUOTE: pf 149"We left him sitting against the wall, blood coming out of his mouth, and didn't' think much about him after that. Mourning the dead wasn't part of the business of killing and trying to stay alive." This quote shows Ismael's life in his home country by showing that he has grown from the cowardly boy into a survivor that would kill to stay alive until the war ended. At some points he found refuge in new villages and even run-down shacks to stay alive. A way I connect to this quote is because when I was younger I would do anything just to not get bullied at my old school. I would try doing things that would entertain the bullies around me and I would do the same thing for my friends by helping them. It was all about survival.

QUESTION: What would you do to stay alive if a war came to America?

QUOTE: pg 190 "I hadn't told my uncle that whenever I went to the bush with my cousins to fetch firewood, my mind would begin to wander to things I had seen and done in the past. Standing next to a tree with red frozen sap on its bark would bring back flashbacks of the many time we executed prisoners." This show Ismael's hardships have not ended because he is still remembering what has happened to him in Sierra Leone. I think it still effects him because he is in a new country where the war hasn't reached its shores but when he entered New York he can still remember all the times he was running from soldiers, hiding in different places, thinking about people he has lost and all the times he has taken a life.

QUESTION: If anything that has happened to Ismael during the war happened to you and you came to a new country, how would you try to forget the past and move on?