During the day the sun refused to rise gradually, as it had before. It became bright from the minute it surfaced from behind the clouds, its golden rays darkening my eyes. The clouds in the blue sky sailed violently, destroying each other's formation.
One afternoon, while we were searching for food in a desecrated village, a crow fell out of the sky. It wasn't dead, but unable to fly. We knew this was unusual, but we needed food and anything at that point would do. As we took the feathers off the bird, Moriba asked what day it was. We all thought about it for a while, trying to remember the last day when our lives were normal. Kanei broke the silence.
"It is a holiday." He laughed. "You can call it any day you want," he continued.
"But it is not just a day, its a strange one. I don't feel too good about it," Musa said. "Maybe we shouldn't eat this bird."
"Well now, if the falling of this bird is a sign of a curse or bad luck, we are in both. So I am eating every bit of it. You can do as you please." Kanei began humming.
After Kanei stopped humming, the world became eerily silent. The breeze and the clouds had stopped moving, the trees were still, as if they all awaited something unimaginable.
Sometimes night has a way of speaking to us, but we almost never listen. The night after we ate the bird was too dark. There were no stars in the sky, and as we walked, it seemed as if the darkness was getting thicker. We Weren't on a dense forest path, but we could barely see each other. We held on to one another's hands. We kept on walking because we couldn't stop in the middle of nowhere, even though we wanted to. After hours of walking we came upon a bridge made of sticks. The river below was flowing quietly, as if asleep. As we were about to set foot on the bridge, we heard footsteps on the other side, coming up toward us. We let go of one another's hands and hid in the nearby bushes. I was lying with Alhaji , Jumah, and Saidu.
There were three people. They were wearing white shirts. Two of them were about the same height and the third was shorter. They carried cloths under their arms. They too were holding hands, and when they stepped off the bridge around where we lay, they stopped as if they sensed our presence. They mumbled something. It was difficult to hear what they were saying because their voices sounded like bees, as if something was obstructing their noses. After they were done mumbling, the two taller people began pulling the shorter one. One wanted them to go the way that we were going and the other insisted that they continue in the opposite direction. Their quarrel caused my heart to begin beating faster, and I was trying hard to make out their faces, but it was too dark. After about a minute, they decided to continue going in the direction we had come from.
It took us a few minutes to rise from under the bushes. Everyone was breathing hard and couldn't speak. Kanei began whispering our names. When he called out Saidu's name, Saidu didn't answer. We searched for him among the bushes. He was lying there quietly. We shook him hard, calling out his name, but he was silent. Alhaji and Jumah began to cry. Kanei and I dragged Saidu onto the path and sat by him. He was just lying there. My hands began trembling uncontrollably as we sat there throughout the night in silence. My head became heavy as I thought about what we were going to do. I do not remember who it was among us that whispered, "Maybe it was he bird that we ate." Most of my travel companions began to cry, but I couldn't. I just sat there staring into the night as if searching for something.