Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah Page B

anticipated so soon. Starting that Monday, very early in the morning before the cock crowed, until deep at night when the world shivers from the cloak of darkness, the machines rattled as they were assembled and tested. Each time the engines started again after a quick interval, it seemed their sounds chased silence farther out of the land. The ugly din interrupted the chanting of the birds so much that they stopped singing and instead listened, bobbing their heads on the treetops as they looked around inquiringly. The sounds of the machines were followed by thick smoke from the bowels of their engines; the smoke quickly blanketed the clouds and cast a dark glow around town. The smell made even the dogs sneeze, some chewing on plants perhaps to cure themselves.
    The people of Imperi were beginning to believe in the new life of their town. They no longer leapt up when children suddenly shouted in joy while playing. They remained relaxed on their verandas when strangers emerged from the paths. But the town’s revival was fragile. If the elders had been asked, they would have advised the company to let Imperi become stable before beginning operations. But this wasn’t the case, and the presence of the mining company took the town and its people in a direction of “many crooked roads,” as the elders said, softening the truth about the devastation that gradually became accepted as the only condition possible for the inhabitants. The direction to the crooked roads began with the arrival of mostly men, including the foreigners, as employees and those looking for work. They were everywhere in their hard hats—surveying the roads with long poles and equipment, while the children gathered around to marvel, waiting to be picked up by vehicles for work, sitting by the roadside to eat their lunches.
    Then, older students, mostly boys over eighteen, stopped going to school and sought employment. The possibility of an immediate salary was enticing in a place where it was difficult to find any way to earn income. Soon, some of the teachers followed their students to labor in hazardous conditions for just a few more leones—not a significant difference from what they had earned, but at least it was steady pay.
    Machines were everywhere grading only the roads that the company needed to use for its work and nothing more. Water pipes were laid past the town to the quarters for workers. At the end of the day, the same workers who had laid the pipes all day would send their children to look for water miles out of town for them to wash their dirty bodies. They would buy cold water to drink, if they had money; otherwise, they drank the same water that they washed with, which made their bodies itch.
    Electricity poles with live wires passed through the town to power mining operations, headquarters, and living quarters. The electricians were issued flashlights to navigate the darkness back to their homes after work, where their children studied under dim kerosene lamps, their eyes struggling to see their old notebooks.
    “Here, son, use my flashlight and move that lamp away. I can see the dark smoke settling inside your nose,” a father said, setting his light on the stoop of the veranda. The boy smiled up at his father and resumed his work, writing neatly in his notebook on the lopsided table that he propped up with his foot to keep straight. The next day his father walked home in the darkness; his battery had died and he was warned that next time he would be sacked if he used his flashlight for any purposes other than walking home after work or going to dark areas where they needed electric cables laid out. Therefore, he didn’t sit next to his child on the veranda that night, and nights after, afraid that he might not be able to restrain himself from turning the light on for his son.
    More bars opened in town, and at night music blared out and drunken men harassed the young women who walked by. The elders no longer told stories in the town