what sustains Ishmael emotionally and spiritually?

I think hope is all Ishmael or any of these children had. The hope that they might eat, the hope that they might not be shot, and the hope that just maybe things will get better. After losing his family and finally his sense of joy, Ishmael finds "purpose" as a child soldier at a government camp. Although fed and given a sense of stature, Ishmael's soul feels dead. He still remembers his grandmother's stories of the moon and the spirituality behind it. These stories that used to keep him going turn into no more than a child's fable. Still Ishmael does survive his ordeal largely due to his innocent sense of hope and memories of kinder gentler people, who taught him there was more to life than the hell he was living in.