Someone Else's War/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Masindi Regiment/"Runaway Regiment"

The first regiment that successfully breaks free from the LRA.

Matteo Ta'anari

Age fourteen. A boy of mixed Afro-Arab and Arab-Berber ancestry. At the start of the novel, his parents are killed by the LRA, his brother Kalid taken hostage. Matteo snaps himself out of his grief and hatches a plan to get himself similarly captured by the LRA, thus finding Kalid and smuggling him to safety.

Army life turns out to be nothing like he had expected. To begin with, the LRA wants a completely Christian Africa; this means that Matteo is forced to kill his fellow Muslims while hiding that he himself is a Muslim, constantly in fear of his own life and in torment over the horrors he commits. As he comes to befriend the boys working alongside him, he realizes that none of them are in the LRA by choice. His desire to save his little brother evolves into a desire to save all the child soldiers. No easy feat when there are thirty thousand of them scattered across the eastern continent.

  • Actual Pacifist: He steadily develops the belief that murder is never justified and spends most of the novel exploiting crafty ways to free his friends without having to harm the men who hold them captive.
    • Technical Pacifist: Confronted with the man largely responsible for Ruth's captivity and rape, he kills that man in a moment of blind rage. He feels worse after the encounter instead of better, but although he still feels that murder is unforgivable, he realizes he's willing to do it if it means keeping his friends safe.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Toward Kalid, Jeremiah, and Nami.
  • Body Horror: By the end of the novel, at least 90% of his body is covered in burn scars. His arms and throat are riddled with bullet scars.
  • Catch Phrase: "Inshallah" ("God willing")
  • Defrosting Ice King: He's kind, careful, and reverent with Ruth in a way that he never acts toward anyone else.
  • Determinator: Possibly the poster boy for this trope.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Matteo has a special relationship with his mother that winds up saving his hide in unexpected ways. On a similar note, he can be a brat to other kids his age, but he's very polite to his elders. Except Luo.
  • Five-Man Band: The Hero, obviously.
    • Subverted. He's set up as the hero, but in the end it's Ruth who saves everyone, not Matteo.
  • Foil: To Asher.
  • Freudian Trio: With Ruth and Asher. Matteo is The Id.
  • God Is Good: Matteo definitely thinks so. It's rather touching that the horrific amounts of violence and loss he undergoes can't even chip away at the surface of his belief.
  • Green Eyes
  • Hot-Blooded: Reckless, impulsive, and short-tempered, it's hard to imagine that he thought he was the most mature kid in his village.
  • Idiot Hero: Matteo is some kind of unusual deconstruction of one of these. He's actually pretty smart--when he has time to think and plan, it almost always works out exactly as he wants it to--but when there's a reason to make a snap decision, his better judgment flies straight out the window. In one such instance, he winds up as one big walking first degree burn. And deaf-mute. He is constantly defying Lieutenant Luo, too, even though he knows he shouldn't.
  • In-Series Nickname: Kalid, Eliza, Jeremiah, and Marunde all call him Teo. Though the narration consistently refers to him as "Matteo," the only time he uses his own name, he shortens it to Teo as well.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold
  • Kid Hero
  • Knight in Sour Armor: He somehow manages to blend an unflinching knowledge of the cruel world around him with a relentless belief that the world can and will change.
  • Mouthy Kid
  • Naive Newcomer
  • Puppy Love: With Ruth.
  • Skilled but Naive
  • Took a Level In Kindness

"I spent a lot of time not really caring about people. Especially people my age. I always passed my classmates off as immature. Did I think I had the right? Now I realize that they're supposed to be immature. As children, that's their right. The children here are not children. And nobody had the right to take that away."

Ruth Mallory

Age fourteen. She's in charge of cooking for the men. A Christian girl from Kampala, she was captured by the LRA three years ago. Since then, she has given birth to two children, both girls, both dead. One was killed by the apparent father while the other was killed by Ruth herself, who didn't want the baby to live the same life she had. 

It's actually she, not Matteo, who saves everyone in the end.

Asher

Age sixteen and Matteo's squad leader. A Somalian boy who, along with his older sister, was captured by the LRA when he and his family were on the Kenyan border. He and his sister immediately tried to escape the army; his sister was shot to death while he merely walked away with a severely mutilated face. Six years later, he is cold, dry, and unemotional and refuses to step out of line.

Otto

Age twelve. An Acholi boy who has been in the Lord's Resistance Army for four years. His parents, impoverished, were struggling to feed all four of their children, so he quietly ran away one night to make their task a little easier, determining that either the LRA would find him, or death would. He did this when he was eight.

"So," Panga said over his shoulder, "what do you kids want to be when you grow up?"
Another silence, a more unsettling silence, fell.
"Not dead?" Otto offered uncertainly.

Jeremiah

Age seven, and a very angry little boy. Born to a female captive of the LRA, he has never known life outside of the army. Nor has he ever known kindness. Largely ignored by the adults unless it's time to go fight, he was never taught the simplest of concepts, such as the permanence of death.

Auley Zuma

Age fifteen. A classmate of Matteo's, he's accidentally captured by the LRA when he tries to stop Matteo from joining the army. He initially protests his presence in the LRA, but after participating in his first battle, he becomes enticed by what he perceives as his newfound power. Insouciant, irreverent, and insensitive, he has a hard time figuring out when to be serious.

Marunde

Age seventeen and a squad leader like Asher. The oldest of the "veterans," he has been with the LRA since he was eleven and is slated to join the ranks of the adult officers very soon. A direct Foil to Auley, the promise of power doesn't entice him at all, and he is indifferent to his horrible life until Matteo shows him that it's possible to escape.

Matteo watched the other two squad leaders. One of them was tall and skinny with strong, lean arms, his nose pierced, his hair's only apparent endeavor to stand out in every possible direction.

Lazy

A teenage boy who has difficulty staying awake. He was originally in the Amal regiment before the adults there, annoyed with him, sent him away to be someone else's problem.

Abdel

Age twelve. A boy in Marunde's squad, he's been with the LRA for one year and considers Marunde his best friend. Originally from DR Congo, he pretends to be psychic and has predicted that he will grow up to be a poet. A Foil for Otto.

Lucy

A weary, jaded, ill-tempered woman in her twenties. Originally from the Maghreb, her family emigrated to East Africa when she was a small girl. The LRA kidnapped her when she was six. She is the oldest woman in the regiment, having spent her entire life with the army, and the least motivated to rebel.

Nami

Age seven or eight. She has a close relationship with Ruth, but trusts no one else.

Sarai

A cynical teenage girl with a fierce temper.

Lieutenant David Luo

An adult officer in the LRA. Matteo's squad answers directly to him. A very bitter young man, he has been with the LRA since he was nine. He has no qualms about beating his young charges whenever they step out of line.

Amal Regiment

A regiment stationed north of Gulu. Matteo and his friends infiltrate their ranks while looking for Matteo's little brother. On an unspoken agreement, none of the children in this regiment go by their real names, and each squad has its own naming convention (colors, adjectives, types of food, etc).

Jade

Age thirteen. A brusque, burly girl who serves as the leader of her squad.

"How long have you been a soldier?" Matteo asked quietly.
"Three years. I'm thirteen. I've always been kind of burly, so I guess they figured...I don't know, that I'd make for a better boy than a girl."

Nyumba/"Blue"

Age eleven. A girl in Jade's squad. She's originally from DR Congo.

Thomas/"Heavy"

An Acholi teenager who used to be in the same squad as Lazy. He's Otto's older brother.

Natives of Noam

Kalid Ta'anari

Matteo's nine-year-old brother. At the very start of the novel, he's sick with a fever and can't make the overnight walk to Luwero with his older brother. It's his disappearance that prompts Matteo to go looking for the LRA.

Eliza

A girl in Matteo's class. Her father and Matteo's worked together as salt miners. Her mother was a soldier with the UPDF and died trying to end the civil war. She disappears fairly quickly after the start of the story, but becomes important again later on.

Mrs. Alowo

The village's school teacher. She's originally from West Africa.

Lula

A timid little girl around the same age as Kalid. She has an attachment to Eliza and later becomes friends with Jeremiah.

Isaiah

A nearsighted boy who gets taken captive by the LRA along with Matteo and Auley. He doesn't last long.

Fatimah Ta'anari

Matteo and Kalid's mother, an Arab-Berber woman whose family emigrated to the east when she was a teenager. Killed at the onset of the novel.

Akif Ta'anari

Matteo and Kalid's father, a man of Afro-Arab descent. Killed at the onset of the novel.

Other

Lieutenant Panga

A soldier with the UPDF. He has been trying for a long time to put a stop to the LRA, but his efforts are losing political support. When he meets Matteo's friends in Lira, he immediately joins their cause.

Father James

A Catholic priest from Luwero who lets the children from Noam sleep in his church at night to avoid being captured by LRA search parties.

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