Leaving and Returning

This flow tracks the novel's tension between forced departure and the wish to recover people, places, and a lost home.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Flight from Angola

Flight from Angola Leaving under fear Portuguese residents flee because they believe the coming months will bring destruction. Their cars and crates carry them toward Europe, Brazil, and other destinations, while those who remain watch the old city empty. A divided meaning of home For those leaving, Angola has become both the place they want to escape and the home they fear losing. The scale of the exodus makes return uncertain and turns home into something that must be shipped or remembered.

The Promise to Return

The Promise to Return Words at departure Rysiek tells Dona Cartagina he will come back, though he knows the future is uncertain. His departure is practical, but the promise keeps him tied to the people he leaves behind. A poem of return In his farewell visit, he recites lines from Agostinho Neto's Sagrada Esperança about returning to the land. The poem joins personal longing to the new country's hope of recovering its own future.

Imagined Reunion

Imagined Reunion People lost to memory Rysiek wonders what became of his acquaintances and admits that people can vanish first from the world and later from memory. He cannot confirm the survival of many of them. An affirmative image He imagines a grey-haired Dona Cartagina hurrying toward the Tivoli and answering that she is still herself. The imagined encounter cannot prove her survival, but it resists the finality of loss.

September to November 1975

November 1975

The later retrospective ending