The Silence of Symchay
A/N: This is a chapter in A Day in the Life Summer Challenge, but it is published separately because of its content and subject matter: The Survivor in the Soap episode from Season 8. It is not a happy summer cotton candy chapter.
As I drove my cab through Georgetown this evening, I passed a park which included not only the expected playground, but also a public swimming pool, and I had to reflect how different my life would have been growing up in America than in Sierra Leone, which is my native land.
I will warn you before I go on. This tale is not pretty, nor happy. It is dark and evil, twisted and sad. But I feel I must speak, the truth must be told. I am blessed to be here, to be free. Those who live here must realize and appreciate what they have, what they could lose, as I did when I was too young to prevent it, stand up for myself, call evil by its name and stop it from tearing my homeland asunder.
I am very fortunate to be in this wonderful country now, through the efforts of two bold women, two determined men, and their very intelligent friends. A long time ago a brave photographer took my picture, and that image has both haunted me and saved my life. Kimberly Singer documented the experiences of abducted child soldiers in Sierra Leone during a war led by the rebel General Joseph Mbarga, a cruel controlling man.
You see, they were ordered to kill our countrymen, even family members, and if they refused, their hands were cut off at the wrist. Two weeks after forcing me into their army, they raided my village, murdered my father, and demanded I kill my mother and my little sister. I was stunned, horrified. I could not speak; only managed to shake my head. No, I cannot!
And before I realized what was happening, General Mbarga shoved me down to the ground, grabbed my arm, forced it flat on a log, and brought his razor-sharp machete down. Feeling a sudden sharp pain, I looked at my arm—and my hand was gone! Sliced from my body; gone forever, irrevocably-laying instead on the ground! I passed out from blood loss and shock.
My name is Brima Chalobah. I recently had to relive those nightmares, view those pictures again, to gain justice for my friend Symchay Conteh, who sheltered me when I came to the U.S. illegally. Sumchay was so happy to be cooking, becoming a chef. But it wasn't to last. Relieved to be free, I slept on his couch and drove shifts in a cab, until I spotted the maintenance man for Symchay's apartment building.
It was Joseph Mbarga, except that he now called himself Tony Dennis, a soft-spoken maintenance man, hiding his past.
The second bold woman, a Dr. Brennan, identified my friend from his bones. She and her partner Agent Booth thought I had killed my friend. But the bones told her I could not have done so with only one hand.
Agent Booth made me look at the awful gallery exhibit—images of the crimes we'd been forced to commit. Dr. Brennan recognized a young Symchay in those grim photographs. Agent Booth realized the general Mbarga was now calling himself Tony Dennis, maintenance man, but still just as arrogant as always. The woman called Angela used her computers to prove his voice identity.
I do not understand these miracles of science and wonders of technology. But these people, who knew neither of us, brought us both justice, and finally peace. Mbarga is being deported. Just as I would have been killed for returning to our homeland, so will Mbarga pay with his life after facing his crimes.
The short man, Alex Radziwill helped Agent Booth to incriminate that rat Mr. Wilford Hamilton. He pretended to help us, but shielded a war criminal-Mbarga. When Symchay came to him with news of Mbarga, the lawyer killed him to conceal his complicit deceit.
I hated looking upon those pictures of my misdeeds once again, but if Agent Booth had not forced me to do so, my friend's killer would have gone free. He and Radziwill would not give up, or yield to Mbarga's intimidation.
I know this account of inhumane crimes revolts you, turns your stomach, may give you night terrors as the actions and memories have for me. When I hear the happy shouts of children in that pool and on that playground, I think of my friend Symchay and the childhood we lost. He was corrupted by Mbarga and murdered by Wilford Hamilton.
But Dr. Brennan, Agent Booth and Mr. Radziwill have given him back his voice. And as much as I hate it, I must speak of this evil; so that Symchay's story may revealed; its lesson taught to others. I speak to expose the corrupt cruelty of rebels in my homeland Sierra Leone, so that this horror will not be repeated again somewhere else in our world.
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