Samuel Bai

Samuel Bai is a former child soldier from Sierra Leone whose story reaches the reader through therapy sessions, Sofia Zetterlund’s unstable recollections, and evidence uncovered after his disappearance from her immediate narrative. He is at once a source of testimony about the rebel army’s practices, a patient Sofia regards as a victim, and a man implicated in violence against her; the novel keeps these positions in uneasy relation rather than reducing him to a single role.

Identity and First Meeting

Samuel is described as tall and muscular, but initially reserved and seemingly uninterested. He becomes more communicative when Sofia suggests that they speak Krio rather than English. That shift matters to their early relationship: a change in language opens a route to conversation, and the reserve that marked his first impression gives way to greater engagement.

Their meetings take place at Sofia’s office at Mariatorget. The therapeutic setting places Samuel in the position of a patient whose experiences must be approached through conversation, while the change to Krio suggests that communication depends partly on finding terms he can use comfortably. The available scenes do not give a full account of his life before therapy, but they identify his experience as a child soldier as central to what he later tells Sofia.

Therapy and Testimony

Sofia’s files record an extensive course of treatment. She and Samuel met nine times in May; during June, July, and August, he came twice a week. He was punctual and did not miss a session. Her diary records forty-five meetings in total: fifteen on Mondays, ten on Tuesdays, seven on Wednesdays, eight on Thursdays, and five on Fridays. The precise tally gives the treatment a documented regularity, in contrast to Sofia’s later uncertainty about what happened between them.

In one session, Samuel described cannibalism in the rebel army. He explained that it was used to violate and humiliate victims, while also having a ritual dimension. His account makes him a witness to the meanings violence was given within the army, not simply to the acts themselves. The distinction between deliberate humiliation and ritual practice comes through his explanation, as remembered by Sofia, rather than through an outside description of the events.

Sofia’s judgment of Samuel is strikingly sympathetic: she thinks that he is guilty of none of the terrible things he did as a child soldier and regards him as a victim. This view does not erase the actions associated with his past; instead, it places responsibility in the context of his childhood and the violence surrounding him. The novel leaves that moral assessment beside later evidence of harm involving Samuel, allowing the reader to feel the strain between victimhood and agency without resolving it into a simple verdict.

Assault and Fractured Recollection

Samuel also attacks Sofia. Ann-Britt later reminds Sofia that she decided not to see him again after the attack, and tells her that it was only three times. That correction sits beside the treatment records’ count of forty-five meetings. The passages do not fully reconcile the difference, but they distinguish the documented course of therapy from Sofia’s later memory of its ending. Her uncertainty makes the relationship’s last phase difficult to recover with confidence.

After one encounter, Sofia emerges onto the street and begins walking home without seeing Samuel. He then appears and greets her warmly, smiling and referring to having seen her buy food for two. The brief exchange gives their interaction an everyday familiarity, even as the surrounding narrative places it against the danger and rupture of their relationship. The contrast does not establish that their conflict has ended; it shows how easily an ordinary gesture can coexist with a history Sofia cannot reliably hold in mind.

At another point, Sofia strikes Samuel, and her mind’s eye presents Gao Lian attacking him as well. Samuel is too badly hurt to offer meaningful resistance and makes only feeble attempts to shield himself. The scene puts Sofia’s earlier belief in his victimhood beside further violence directed at him. It also complicates her position: the person who had treated him and understood him as a victim becomes involved in violence against him. The account of Gao’s attack is presented through Sofia’s mental image, so it does not carry the same status as the documented records or the later forensic evidence.

Forensic Evidence and Narrative Significance

Evidence found in Viggo Dürer’s cellar includes Polaroids of Samuel, identifiable by scars associated with the Revolutionary United Front, and a video recording. In the recording, Samuel is chained and struggling against a man whom Jeanette Kihlberg and Jens Hurtig recognize as the man they found dead in a cottage in Lapland. These discoveries place Samuel within a wider pattern of confinement and abuse, while also connecting his story to the investigation beyond Sofia’s therapy room.

Samuel’s role is shaped by this movement between forms of evidence. In therapy, he speaks about the violence of the rebel army; in Sofia’s recollections, he is both a patient she pities and a person who attacks her; in the cellar photographs and video, he appears as a recognizable, confined figure within material gathered by the investigation. No single view cancels the others. His story instead exposes how testimony, memory, and physical evidence can offer different, partial accounts of a person’s experience—and how the line between a victim’s past and later actions remains morally difficult to draw.