The love and compassion he finds at the center from a nurse named Esther opens up an understanding and forgiveness within himself. Ishmael is taken to a rehabilitation center, where he struggles to understand his past and to imagine a future.

Ishmael continues to soldier fiercely until his Lieutenant turns the boy soldiers over to UNICEF. The boy soldiers become addicted to cocaine, marijuana, and 'brown brown,' which give them the courage to fight and the ability to repress their emotions in times of war. The army becomes his family and he is brainwashed into believing that each rebel death may avenge his own family's slaughter. Their day-to-day existence is a struggle of survival, and the boys find themselves committing acts they would never have believed themselves capable of, such as stealing food from children.Įventually, Ishmael is conscripted as a soldier by the army and he becomes the very thing he feared: a killing machine capable of horrible violence. Among the confusion, violence, and uncertainty of the war, Ishmael, his brother, and his friends wander from village to village in search of food and shelter. When he is twelve years old, Beah's village is attacked while he is away performing in a rap group with friends. A Long Way Gone is the true story of Ishmael Beah, who becomes an unwilling boy soldier during a civil war in Sierra Leone.

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