Tears of Amber

by Sofía Segovia

People need to see and hear the details of what is going on because their imagination is incapable of grasping general facts correctly. When a disaster consumes five million victims, this does not mean anything: the number is empty. However, if I show a single, individual man in his perfection, his faith, his hopes and his difficulties, if I show you how he dies, then you will remember this story forever. Erich Maria Remarque

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

But he’d learned to be glad for life for its own sake; glad to live another day, and another, and another. Hungry, but alive to enjoy food another day. Cold, but alive to enjoy warmth when it came. Alone, but alive to enjoy company when it found him.

He heard because he had no choice. He didn’t listen, because he didn’t want to.

while there was darkness, there were always faint rays of light for those ready to see.

Rudyard Kipling said that if history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

I’m not a child of amber, but I wrote this narrative about that land with its erased name as if it were mine, because I believe that the history of any place belongs to us all, and the lessons inherent in it are for everyone. We must learn the lessons. We mustn’t be blind to what has happened or is happening in other places or to other peoples, regardless of the distance in time, geography, or language.