Carmona

Carmona is recalled as a place people were forced to leave and as the home of artworks abandoned amid the war. The book offers no extended description of the location; instead, it gives Carmona shape through what its former residents report losing or leaving behind.

Carmona in an Evacuation Account

An evacuee seeking a place on a flight out of the country described having lived through a raid in Carmona. The attackers took everything, beat the residents, and threatened to shoot them. The speaker said the experience had left them shaken and gave it as a reason to leave immediately. The account makes Carmona part of the refugees’ wider effort to escape, while leaving the raiders’ identity unspecified.

The Sculptures Left Behind

A teenage prisoner captured while fighting for the FNLA said he had left his sculptures in Carmona. He wanted to study and become an artist, and explained that he had been promised schooling after going to the front. He also said he could draw and sculpt, and that he had not killed anyone. Carmona is thus tied not only to displacement but to a body of creative work separated from its maker.

A Place Recalled Through Loss

The two references present Carmona through distinct consequences of the conflict: an adult’s urgent recollection of violence and a young person’s interrupted artistic ambitions. Neither account describes the place itself at length. Its significance lies instead in the people’s testimony—one seeking escape from what happened there, the other carrying the thought of sculptures left behind.