Utopia according to the Sierra Leonean novelist Ishmaël Beah [Rediffusion]

“ Where I come from everything has been destroyed. It was by becoming aware of the restorative power of words that I started writing. Writing my books, particularly the autobiographical account of my years as a child soldier, allowed me to reconnect with my humanity and overcome the impact of the tragedies I experienced. Writing allowed me to come back to life and imagine freedom. Every morning, when I sit at my desk to blacken the pages, I practice freedom so that I can no longer be chained. On the wings of my imagination, I fly to destinations that call me. »

For the writer of Sierra Leonean origin, Ishmaël Beah, which we have just heard, writing has been a school of freedom and survival. This former child soldier likes to repeat how the practice of the poetry of words allowed him to escape the traumas of war.

Power of evocation

Ishmaël Beah became known in February 2007 by publishing his autobiographical story The Path Traveled in which he recounts with rare evocative power his years as a child soldier against the backdrop of the terrible Sierra Leonean civil war. In 1991, when the war broke out, the teenager was just 11 years old. Forced into the government army, recruited, trained to take revenge on the rebels who had killed his parents, he had become a killing machine under the influence of powerful drugs, amphetamines and particularly effective brainwashing.

Ishmaël Beah owes his salvation to the Unicef ​​teams who rescued him from the hell of the civil war, before entrusting him to a rehabilitation center so that he can rebuild himself. His rebirth to life, his adoption by an American woman, his subsequent life in the United States where he reconnected with adolescence, studies and normality, the writer recounted them in his testimonial story which was a success global. The work has been translated into forty languages ​​and sold nearly a million copies.

Now in his forties, the man has matured and returned to his native continent where he settled with his wife and children. He is also the ambassador for Unicef ​​and gives lectures around the world to draw attention to the cause of child victims of war. Above all, he continued to write, moving from testimony to historical and social fiction which, he explains, “ gives greater room to play with words, language, structure. […] The testimony was more painful to write because I knew the ending, whereas in novels there is room for invention and imagination », he adds.

Ishmaël Beah is today the author of two novels. His second novel, The little familywas recently published in French translation, published by Albin Michel.

Lush nature

“ If you walk towards a field on the edge of the small town of Foloiya after the sun rises in the sky, you will hear the breeze whistling over the tall grass, parting their dry, green blades as it moves. Unless you think that it is the rustling of a person hidden in the vast thickets. At the end of this field, your eyes suddenly land on the face of a boy in the middle of the grass, who is immersed in observing something. You try to find out what, to follow his gaze, but you don’t notice anything…”

So begins The little family. The extract is representative of Ishmaël Beah’s poetic and precise writing. The passage is part of the prologue which is an invitation to readers to enter the preserved universe of the protagonists of the novel, far from the noise and dust of big cities. We are somewhere in an unnamed African country, in the heart of lush nature. The latter is signified in the story by “ tall grass ” And “ the clearings surrounded by palm trees and baobabs “. The site is no less marked by the social violence and brutality symbolized by the plane wreck that the author imagined to serve as a home for his protagonists.

The plane really exists, as Ishmaël Beah explains: “ If it is still daylight when you land at Lungi Airport, Freetown, and you look out of the left windows of the plane, in the direction of landing, you will see, in the bush, the carcass of a a plane, with the Sierra Leonean flag drawn on the cabin. I feel like he’s always been there. I am so inhabited by this abandoned plane that when I wanted to write my novel The Little Family, the idea came to me spontaneously to make it the home of my adolescent characters brought together by their misfortunes. Since the publication of the novel two years ago, travelers disembarking at Lungi, who have read my book, do not fail to glance towards the sides of the runway to see if the device is still there . Before, no one paid attention to him… »

A Dickensian novel

The plot of the novel is built around five boys and girls who have taken up residence in the abandoned plane. Orphans, they were all victims of the vagaries of life, even if the author chose to define them by their here and now rather than by their history. Elimane, the eldest of the group, is a passionate reader of Shakespeare, described as “ Mr. Head » by his comrades. Khoudiemata is rebellious and maternal, Ndevuei and Kpinda are fighters and sportsmen, and the very young Namsa, freshly arrived, is fragile.

Together, they created an alternative, almost utopian society, based on a subsistence economy and governed by the values ​​of solidarity. However, will this alter world resist the repeated assaults of the big city whose noise and superficiality threaten its balance? This is the question at the heart of Ishmaël Beah’s beautiful second novel.

Dickensian novel, The little family is striking for the lucidity of its criticism of unequal African society where the most vulnerable are abandoned to their fate. His economy of means, his controlled narration and his empathy for the common people establish his author as the rising heir of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nuruddin Farah, Mongo Beti, indisputable masters of the African social novel.

The little family, by Ishmaël Beah. Translated from English by Stéphane Roques. Albin Michel, 320 pages, 22.90 euros.