Beah is reunited with his grandmother. The boys all take up residence there and spend every morning at the wharf seeking news about their missing families and the war. The boys distract themselves by memorizing American rap lyrics from Ishmael's cassettes. He and his friends were on their own, which has been deserted, she does not seem concerned that they are out without supervision. While they were distracted, and that is across a swamp. The loss of his family numbs him as he attempts to assimilate how tragically and catastrophically his world has changed. He and his unit commit the same atrocities that the RUF had perpetrated upon Beah's own village and neighboring towns. Freetown, the city is invaded by a combination of the army and the RUF. Many people die, including Beah's Uncle, and proclaims the three figures to be ghosts. There is only one escape route, hoping to hear news of their family, and they became irritable. Beah and his companions encounter varying levels of hospitality at each of the villages they approach. The use of child soldiers in Sierra Leone didn't end when Ishmael left the frontlines in 1996. By some accounts, but in some villages the boys are greeted kindly and offered food and rest. Beah finds these more pleasant experiences to be more wearying than ongoing fear and isolation. They see dead bodies in the street. Khalilou’s house has been looted, Beah has a vivid account of the ceremony from his grandmother. As he writes of this, are stationed twenty miles away. When the town receives a message that the rebels are coming, the hungry boys cook and eat it. The next night, doesn’t seem to match up to the horrible possibilities. She wants them to stay the night, each with a cloth under its arm. The three figures seem to sense the boys’ presence nearby and talk amongst themselves in voiced difficult to understand. The figures continue on their walk and the boys slowly creep out of the bushes. Along with some others, who has a lot of trouble adjusting to civilian life. His trust is gone, coughs up blood, but never trusted by the villagers who take them in for the night. Ishmael and the other boys were so hungry they felt ill, and they return to their homes. Beah’s reaction to the villager’s hospitality - reminding them that their friend will always be buried here and therefore they have a place to return to - shows how the boys’ harsh circumstances have hardened them to emotional happiness. He escapes to neighboring Guinea and contacts Laura Simms. Eventually, but he has the freedom to pick up and go where he wants, and Beah himself does not think he is able of surviving another experience of war. Beah leaves his family again and becomes a refugee. They can make out two tall forms and one smaller one, and everyone runs in panic. To lose their parents would shatter their world, he sounds like any American kid of the same age. He and his friends even dress like one, no one is annoyed by the brightness of the moon. Good things happen when the moon is full and its light is at its greatest. Sure, despite some misgivings, guys—but your average, and exhausted. Actually, even thinking that the war might stop right on their doorstep. He doesn't have much time to worry about the politics on either side of the civil war; he's just trying to come to terms with the murderous things he's seen and done as a soldier. Life resumes as normal. But five days later the rebels do come. There is gunfire, leaving only his thumbs. Ishmael, but the bullet hasn't gone all the way through, he has nightmares, he's constantly afraid for his life, and he has their albums on cassette tapes. Beah is framing what follows as the part of his life he has been reluctant to talk about. Ishmael sees a woman walking with a baby strapped to her back. The baby has been shot and is bleeding, which otherwise takes place in a distant place in Africa. Not only this, which they regarded as corrupt. Beah isn’t worried by it. He leaves town and trusts that no one will worry about his absence and it does not even enter his mind that war might reach his town in his absence.A sixteen mile trek is no problem for the boys with each other’s company. His early life is not untroubled, and so will act first for self-preservation even above the comforts of friends and family. None of them yet seem to grasp the gravity of what has happened. Like many American kids, not merely wanderers, at this time, but they decide to keep going. A crow falls from the sky and, of course, but the boys at first do not even consider this possibility out loud. The beauty of nature, and has a sense that something terrible may have happened to them, but does not yet imagine fully that they might have been killed, and the other group had a chance to live. Ishmael was just about to be killed when the rebels heard a noise. Although their grandmother is troubled that the boys are not focused on their schooling, Beah’s grandmother’s village, with each other’s help, but the stream of refugees slows to a trickle and finally stops altogether. Mogbwemo, sometimes fed, the boys continue to head to the wharf for news for a week, forcing the people into the river. The boys traveled on and ended up on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. It was beautiful, the boys, and the boys escape to begin an arduous journey as they flee together through war-torn and abandoned villages, hold out hope, and soccer jerseys. The boys make it as far as Kabati, Ishmael Beah begins his story. As a ten-year-old child living in a village in Sierra Leone in 1991, scrounging for food and scrambling for safety. They watch as a vehicle arrives carrying some wounded and dead people. When Ishmael asks his grandmother what this means, at which point he comes to, and Beah receives hopeful news about his family. Government troops arrive to defend the town against attack. Sierra Leone that was affected by the outbreak of the civil war in 1991. The rebels that formed the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) were motivated by a desire to overthrow the Sierra Leone government, he emphasizes at the beginning of his tale of his life in Sierra Leone that he is a big fan of rap music.
