The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind

by Eduardo Galeano

At dawn, the trumpet call announced from the mountain that it was time for crossbows and blowguns. At nightfall, nothing remained of the village except smoke. A man lay among the dead without moving. He smeared his body with blood and waited. He was the only survivor of the Palawiyang people. When the enemy moved off, that man got up. He contemplated his destroyed world. He walked among the people who had shared hunger and food with him. He sought in vain some person or thing that hadn’t been wiped out. The terrifying silence dazed him. The smell of fire and blood sickened him. He felt disgusted to be alive, and he threw himself back down among his own. With the first light came the vultures. There was nothing left in that man except fog and a yearning to sleep and let himself be devoured. But the condor’s daughter opened a path through the circling birds of prey. She beat her wings hard and dived. He grabbed onto her feet, and the condor’s daughter took him far away.

The horrors of and distain for war; the necessity of community