Children
stretch out their matchstick thin arms, a rusty tin can in the palms of their
hands, through the barbed wire surrounding the Camp, just for a morsel, a
morsel of just about anything to eat.
People
sit on their haunches around the camp, starving, waiting just waiting for a
scrap of food.
Women
turn prostitutes for a morsel to feed their children.
Their eyes reflect patience,
endless patience.
There is nothing,
absolutely nothing. No medicines. No food for anyone.
This is what Antonio
Lobo Antunes sees every day in Angola, he fights a war he just does not want to
fight, he has left his pregnant wife back home in Portugal for a war which has
absolutely no meaning for him or for that matter for anyone else.
Antonio Lobo Antunes is
brutal. And why not? The colonial war for Independence turned civil war was ferocious.
Seen through the tired eyes of the doctor António Lobo Antunes this bloody Colonial
War is savage. What is there about this vicious War?
Every sordid detail is
placed before you. Take the terrible, terrible loneliness sapping you of your
will to live, add to it the lack of camaraderie between the soldiers, compounded
by the utter hopelessness of the War. They just want to go home. What are they
fighting for? What is all this bloody War about?
They all wonder, there
seems to be absolutely no escape, shall we commit suicide, or shall we wait for
a nice coffin. There are no answers.
Who are the Victorious? Doesn’t
seem to be any, in fact all of them are losers. Everyone a victim. The people of
Angola are in a vacuum, what the hell is going on? There the Colonisers, the
Portuguese, and then some other Outside Forces urging them to get rid of the
regime, purify your country evict the Colonisers. Where are they heading?
Such a colossal waste this
war is, such terrible consequences, one moment the people of Angola are fighting
a war of Independence, throwing the Colonisers out of their country and the
next thing they know the war for Independence has turned into a Civil war.
How could it have
happened?
That is the way
Colonisers operate. They are the Masters. They take what they want, they use,
they abuse, and when they can use no more they leave. It really is very simple.
Good news for Portugal overnight
it had turned into a Democracy. They were free without shedding a drop of blood.
Why take care of
countries which now are a burden?
What can they get from a
war torn Nation? Abandon the Africans to their own fate. The Colonisers owe
these illiterates nothing. Take care of yourselves; you are now Independent, you
are now Free, Isn’t that what you wanted anyway?
Black brother fought Black
brother, aided by powerful 'Democratic countries'. Black brothers killed Black
brothers. Oh yes, terrible, terrible consequences.
But who for God’s sake cares for a bunch of illiterate, black people?
The white, democratic
people know these Blacks do not amount to much anyway.
Eventually when Lobo Antunes does return to Portugal, life is never the same for him, nobody in Portugal respects these soldiers who were embroiled in a meaningless war.
Slowly and steadily he
loses everything.
His marriage just meanders and falls apart.
His beloved daughters, he
sees them once a week.
He begins drinking; you
see he hopes that 'it will never be morning again'.
He has encounters with
strange women in bars.
He is just a sad beaten
man. Once upon a time, a very long time ago he had been a Doctor but now he is
a sad, beaten and humiliated man. A husk of a man, he is a person who has no
substance, no personality, not even character, his dreams and hopes long gone,
an empty shell of a human that once was.
Oh yes, war does that to
you.
Brutal though the book is, there are those moments of utter sadness
permeated by a luminosity, which lifts the book out of being just a book of
utter brutality and makes it a beautiful story.
António
Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon, the eldest of six sons of João Alfredo de
Figueiredo Lobo Antunes.
At the
age of seven he decided to be a writer, but when he was 16, his father sent him
to the medical school at the University of Lisbon. He graduated as a medical
doctor specializing in psychiatry. All through this time he never stopped
writing.
By the
end of his education, Lobo Antunes had to serve in the Portuguese Army and
participate in the Portuguese Colonial War, which lasted from 1961 to 1974.
Lobo
Antunes returned from Africa in 1973. The Angolan war for independence was the
subject of many of his novels.
In 1979,
Lobo Antunes published his first novel, Memória de Elefante –
The Memory of an Elephant, which narrated the story of his separation. The
success of his first novel, prompted Lobo Antunes to devote his evenings to
writing.
He practices
psychiatry as well, at the outpatients' unit at the Hospital Miguel Bombarda of
Lisbon.
His
style is considered to be very dense, heavily influenced by William
Faulkner and Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
His
Awards are numerous
Source: http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Lobo_Antunes
