4THE TROOPS EMERGED onto the riverbank in a column, with the red sun, which had just brokenthrough the mist, shining down on them. Like everyone else’s, half of my father’s face was red,the other half green; and, like everyone else, he was watching the mist break up over the BlackWater River. A fourteen-arch stone bridge connected the southern and northern sections of thehighway. The original wooden bridge remained in place to the west, although three or four spanshad fallen into the river, leaving only the brown posts, which obstructed² the flow of the whitefoam on top of the water. The reds and greens of the river poking³ through the dissipating mistwere horrifyingly⁴ sombre. From the dike⁵, the view to the south was of an endless panorama⁶ ofsorghum, level and smooth and still, a sea of deeply red, ripe faces. A collective body, united in asingle magnanimous thought. Father was too young then to describe the sight in such floweryterms – that’s my doing.
Sorghum⁷ and men waited for time’s flower to bear fruit.
The highway stretched southward, a narrowing ribbon of road that was ultimately swallowedup by fields of sorghum. At its farthest point, where sorghum merged¹ with the pale vault⁹ ofheaven, the sunrise presented a bleak¹⁰ and solemn, yet stirring sight.
Gripped by curiosity, Father looked at the mesmerised guerrillas. Where were they from?
Where were they going? Why were they setting an ambush¹¹? What would they do when it wasover? In the deathly

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