“They wouldn’t have believed me, and if they had they would have wanted me to explain.
And I had no explanation, no answers. When you’re on a battleground, you don’t have the
luxury of time to dwell on the various historical factors and sociopolitical influences that caused the war.
You just keep your head down and try to survive it, to shove the pages back in the book, close
the covers and pretend that nothing’s broken, nothing’s wrong.”