Ten years ago while participating in a UN program, storyteller Laura Simms took an extraordinary young African teen under her wing. Ishmael Beah had been a child soldier in Sierra Leone, and his remarkable spirit and story of redemption touched her. After the conference, Ishmael had to return to Freetown, but he stayed in regular contact with Laura. When the civil situation disintegrated around him again, Laura worked to have him brought back to the United States, where she housed him, "mothered" him, and supported him through the both his participation in peace conferences and the everyday details of life in his new world. He prospered through high school and then at Oberlin College, where he gravitated toward writing, graduating as a political science major. Read USA Today article about Laura bringing Ishmael to the United States.

December 20, 2007

My son, Ishmael Beah is the author of the New York Times bestseller "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier."

The actual events of our lives are the greatest mythic stories. I am part of a great story, still unfolding.

In 1996, when I was working at the UN as a facilitator on a project for UNICEF and Norwegian People's Aid, I met two boys from Sierra Leone. Both had been child soldiers. One of those young men now lives in Canada; the other boy, Ishmael Beah, became my son.*

When I first decided to do all I could to help Ishmael get out of the war -- out of the hopelessness of living a wasted life in Freetown -- I was both motivated and frightened. Yet I knew I was answering something within that was far larger than my own understanding of the events. I often felt a bit guilty that I was saving only one life, but friends insisted that I contemplate the thought from the Torah that reminds us "when you save a single life, you save the whole world."

In more ways than one, the flowering of Ishmael's life will radiate far beyond what happened in 1998 when he finally arrived here in Manhattan. It took more than two years to bring him here, and it was the most demanding thing I had ever done. But along the way, the people I met were like guardians one meets on the road in a profound fairytale; the auspicious coincidence of events that mark the epics of great cultures was truly remarkable.

Ishmael has now told his story in a book that has been hailed as a most important advocacy against war: it reveals the devastating effect on children drawn into war, yet the book also radiates the inextinguishable truth of the existence of inherent goodness that if uncovered and tended cannot be destroyed nor stifled. It is a beautiful literary work told with the simplicity and genuineness of Ishmael's West African oral tradition. Now, he's rediscovered these stories here in Manhattan.

Now, Ishmael has been appointed a UNICEF Ambasssador, and is making great headway advocating against the use of children in war. I hope you will read his story, "A LONG WAY GONE: MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER" (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux); perhaps you have seen him interviewed on television, at one of his many live appearances, or at events we will now offer together. I hope that you will listen to his words and return here to find out more about his -- and my -- story. Most of all, my sincere hope is that the small act which I did will inspire you to help one person and continue to save the whole world.