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They forced us to walk all night. Like all the children taken with me, I had to carry on my head a heavy bag full of grain or flour. The throbbing pain in my arms, injured by the overtight cords, made the exercise even more difficult; I kept slipping in the mud, tripping over roots, creepers, or brambles, often I dropped the bag and for my trouble received a volley of blows. Thorny branches scratched my arms and face, mosquitoes were devouring me and I couldn’t even scratch the bites; I moved forward step by step, panting, roughly guided by the rope tying me to the young girl in front of me. Whenever one of the children, exhausted, wound up collapsing, they would shower him with kicks; if he didn’t get up quickly enough, they would kill him, with a blow from a stick, the butt of a rifle, or a knife: ever since the appearance in the rain of the first soldier, I hadn’t heard a single gunshot. Around us rose the immense trees of the forest, black and menacing, caught in a network of vegetation as in giant spiderwebs; the moonlight barely filtered through but that didn’t seem to bother the soldiers leading the march. The darkness, on both sides of the column, was animated by the mad dance of fireflies, minuscule points of green light that appeared and disappeared, brief as a friendly wink; on all sides, the forest rustled, bird cries or monkeys frightened by the passing of the troop, sounds of crunching leaves, of broken branches, of drops of water shaken from branches, an order barked out in an unknown language, the yap of pain and fear of a child being hit, the hoarse noise of desperate breathing. Violent odors seized me in the throat, odors of earth, mud, swamp, decomposed leaves, the sharp smell of sweat from the soldiers who sometimes passed by me, the sweeter smell of shit when one of the children, unable to hold back anymore, shat while walking, the smell of fear, the most recognizable of all. When we arrived at the camp it was still night. Armed soldiers and a crowd of children welcomed us in a vast subdued murmur; bags, jerrycans, pots were taken off our heads by agile, almost invisible hands; separated into two groups, boys and girls, we were led, through a clearing still soaked with rain, before the leader of this strange army. Installed on a little seat made of woven wood, he sat in state beneath a straw awning, surrounded by a dozen soldiers armed with Russian rifles and machetes, young women and girls at his feet, sitting in silence. Rough hands forced us to our knees on the wet grass, a dozen meters from the group; the commander rose, the moon lit up his features and I could clearly make them out, he looked young, barely older than his men, I could see them better too and not one of them seemed to have passed adolescence. A soldier approached his chief, who, in a loud but slightly shrill voice, uttered several phrases, immediately translated by the soldier into a language that I understood no more than the original. Then the entire assembly knelt around us, the commander alone remaining standing, his little oiled braids and his gris-gris gleaming in the nighttime brightness, and intoned a solemn hymn, taken up in unison by all the others. When this was over, several soldiers passed among us, each holding a little gourd; at each new captive they dipped their fingers in the container and with a thick white substance drew a cross on his forehead, chest, back, and both hands. When my turn came, I submitted passively, closing my eyes; from now on, I belonged to them. Then the commander shared out the girls among his soldiers, keeping two for himself, and I was pushed with the other boys to a corner of the clearing, where we were again tied to each other by the waist and ordered to lie down and sleep. Above my head, the foliage of the trees stood out from the pale nighttime sky, a few drops were still falling from the leaves, the moon shone a little higher, and I could see no stars. A brief little cry sounded behind me, followed by a rustling of leaves and a grunt; I turned around as well as I could: in the midst of an expanse of tall green grass, near the first trees, a soldier had just pushed one of the girls onto the ground. She had fallen on her stomach, on the faintly golden ground, and he was lowering his pants and kneeling behind her to lift up her dress. She cried out again and he struck her, a brutal punch to the back of her neck; she fell abruptly silent, and he lay down on top of her; his black buttocks and his powerful thighs, almost blue in the cold light of the moon, were facing me, I watched them move in and out for a few moments, the girl’s body had disappeared in the tall grass but I could sense her powerless trembling, finally I turned onto my back and closed my eyes. The respite didn’t last long, a kick in the ribs woke me up too soon, all around me, in the dawn light, the camp was bustling about, young girls were pounding food in wooden mortars, boys were bringing in dead wood, fires were being made and water boiled. A few soldiers untied us and indicated that we could go into the woods to attend to our needs. I walked between the trees, distancing myself a little from the other boys and looking for a bush, and finally lowered my pants, stiff with mud and filth, and squatted: shit began to flow right away, liquid, stinking, almost green. When it was over I wiped myself as well as I could with some leaves and stood up. A little further on some soldiers were shouting, boys were running through the trees toward the camp. It was then that I noticed with surprise a hut, planted there on the edge of some land cleared between the trees, with earthen walls and a little wooden door. I approached and pulled the metal latch to push the door open, it gave way easily and I lowered my head and shoulders to enter. Once in the hallway I straightened up and despite the pain still shooting through my muscles immediately resumed running. I no longer felt either fatigue or discomfort, my breathing came easily and my long strides fell with regularity, even though I had trouble keeping my balance, I reeled a little, disoriented by the lack of light and landmarks, I bumped violently against a wall but didn’t interrupt my running, gropingly searching for the way to navigate between the walls, avoiding the darker sections that could have turned out to be dungeons, or else side galleries leading God knows where. Finally I stumbled into the locker room and changed rapidly, pulling my swimming cap over hair still stiff with mud and going through the swinging doors to find myself in a large and very blue space echoing with shouts and water sounds. All around, long mirrors framing the pool sent back reflections of my body, fragmented and impossible to connect to each other, I tottered again, then pulled myself together, straightened up, and, body taut, buttocks tight, plunged straight as a spear into the clear, cool water.