War Child: a Boy Soldier’s Story Emmanuel Jal Little, Brown, 288pp, £12.99

Like the other “lost boys of Sudan”, the rapper, refugee and former child soldier Emmanuel Jal takes 1980 as his nominal birth date, but, as a six-year-old recruit to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in War Child, he takes the seasons and his height against his rifle as the real markers of passing time. He enters this world of brutalisation and terror after the death of his mother in the civil war between Sudan’s northern, Arab-dominated government and the non-Arab population in the south. With a promise of schooling, Jal is sent by his father, an officer in the rebel SPLA, on the hazardous journey to Ethiopia, only to find that there is no school waiting, just further suffering, when he is recruited as a jenajesh (child soldier).

The terrified six-year-old at the story’s start becomes an 11-year-old who “would rather die on my feet than live on my knees and beg a jallaba [Arab] for mercy”. A litany of atrocities has ensued, so that the first description of a child ripped apart by a hand grenade is shocking, but by the time Jal, as a 12-year-old soldier, comes across an injured enemy and asks his friend, “What’s the best way to make this fuck feel pain?” the reader struggles to feel horror at the question.

The unnecessary glorification of a few battle scenes aside, War Child captures the relentlessness and monotony of war, and the description of young soldiers marching through the desert is reminiscent of J G Ballard’s Empire of the Sun. Jal’s account becomes increasingly dreamlike as he nears starvation, kept alive by a perhaps incomprehensible will to survive the nightmare.

With Human Rights Watch estimating there are as many as 300,000 child soldiers worldwide, the plight of such children, especially in Africa, has in recent times been a recurrent theme of
literature and film both factual and fictional: the image of a child overshadowed by their gun has captured our imagination. While it may be that no portrayal can ever bring us close to the reality, Jal does afford the reader an insight into a terrifying existence that it is “physically painful” for him to remember. But, as in A Long Way Gone by the Sierra Leonean former child soldier Ishmael Beah, context is lacking, and the child’s-eye view is in danger of infantilising the conflict. Dates and events in Beah’s account have recently been challenged, and the timeline of Jal’s tale remains vague. Consequently, we accept these stories on their own terms or not at all.

We know that this story has a happy ending, but the fairy-tale-like description of Jal being “saved” by the aid worker Emma McCune is disappointing after what has come earlier, his subsequent difficulty in adapting to city life as a schoolboy scarcely elaborated on. From here, his rise to rap star is speedy, and soon he is mixing with the likes of Bob Geldof. More interestingly, in an afterword, Jal recounts what became of his family and describes his doubts about the worth of rescuing one child when thousands remain behind: “I am proof that one person can rise above any challenge, and if I can, then so will others if they are given the chance.”

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website