His earliest memory was of his father lifting him high into the air to let him greet the sun. Whenever Hermenegildo was home, time would stand still and the world was complete. After he had set off again on one of the paths that wound along the river, off towards the high mountains where there was a road and maybe even a bus that would take him back to the mines, life would revert to the way it was before. So Nelio remembered his first years using two different measurements of time: a time and a life when his father was home, and an entirely different time when he was alone with his mother and siblings. When Nelio was five years old, he began tending the goats with the other boys; he had learned to shoot birds with a slingshot and to handle the complex stick-fighting duels that all boys in the village had to master. One time a leopard had appeared near the village, another time a lion was heard roaring in the distance. Every morning he woke to the sound of his mother standing outside the hut pounding corn with a pole that was so heavy he couldn't lift it. And she would sing as if she were taking strength from the tones that issued from her throat.

The catastrophe came like an invisible predator in the night.

He was asleep. It was during the hottest season of the year, and he could still remember that he was lying naked on his reed mat. He had thrown off the blanket, his body was wet with sweat, and his dreams were uneasy from the stifling heat.

Suddenly the world exploded. A sharp white light yanked him awake; someone screamed – maybe it was one of his siblings, maybe his mother. In the desperate chaos that erupted he was trampled underfoot. He still didn't understand what was happening and he couldn't find his trousers. He was flung naked into the catastrophe, and at last he realised that it was bandits who had come sneaking up in the dark; they had come to burn and pillage and kill. The attack kept on into the dawn, but the huts burned with such a powerful glare that no one noticed the sun coming up. Suddenly it was simply there. By then the village had been burned to the ground and many people had been killed – slashed by machetes, stabbed by sharpened steel pipes or smashed by wooden clubs.

Afterwards it was so quiet. Nelio still couldn't find his trousers, and he was squatting behind a basket where his mother had stored the corn they had harvested several weeks before. The scorched stench of the burned huts was overpowering; it was a smell he would never forget. That's the way the world smelled when it came to an end in smoke and fire and chaos. That was the stench that came when people were hurled out of their dreams to meet death. It arrived with the ragged bandits, drunk on tontonto, drugged with soruma. It was very quiet. The bandits had herded together those still alive – maybe half of the villagers, men, women and children – in the open area in the middle of the huts where they would dance and drum whenever they had celebrations.

Nelio fell silent, as if the words had become too difficult for him. Then he looked at me and continued his story.

'It felt as if the spirits of our ancestors had gathered there too; they hovered uneasily, as if they had been chased as brutally as we were out of their invisible resting places. I stayed squatting behind the woven basket. I understood what was happening, but I was still more afraid of being caught without my trousers if one of the bandits suddenly noticed me and dragged me into the open. I tried to make myself invisible, using my terror as my cloak, and waited to see what would happen. There were maybe fifteen bandits. I didn't know how to count in those days. But there were about twice as many bandits as the goats in one of the flocks that I watched, which usually had seven or eight. The bandits were filthy and dressed in worse clothes than the ones we wore. Some of them had heavy military boots with no laces; the others were barefoot. Some of them had guns and cartridge belts; others carried long knives, axes, machetes and clubs. They were young, some of them not much older than me, and the youngest ones stood in the background, holding their weapons tight. But even the young ones had blood on their clothes; their faces were bloody too, and their hands and feet.

'There was a leader, a man who was older than the others, and he was the only one wearing a uniform jacket, which was stained, and a torn cap. When he opened his mouth I could see that he was missing a lot of teeth, maybe he had no teeth at all. He was drunk like the others, but he seemed to be drunk with the power he had over us in the village, now that all our houses had been burned, many were already dead, and those still alive were filled with terror. From time to time he would swat at the air, as if the restless spirits were bothering him. Then he began to talk, in a shrill voice, almost like one of the birds that would hover above the river where the women went to get water. He spoke the same language that we did, although he had a slight accent, which told me that he came from a region closer to the high mountains. He said they had come to liberate us. They had come to liberate us from the party and the government that now ruled us, the young revolutionaries' party. If we refused to be liberated, he would kill us all.

'They had burned our village and killed many people to show us they were serious in their struggle to liberate us and to help us have a better life. Now they wanted food and they would need help in transporting it from the village. I thought in panic about the basket that I was hiding behind. That was where the corn was. When they lifted the basket, they would find me. I tried to make myself even more invisible. With tears in my eyes, I started burrowing at the sand, as if I still had time to make a hole I could disappear into. At the same time I tried to see my father among those who had been herded like cattle in the open area, in the celebration area which was now like a graveyard, encircled by the ragged men with their bleary eyes and all those bloody weapons. I didn't see him, and I thought that he might be hiding, the same way I was, maybe behind one of the burned huts. The man who was the leader of the bandits was still talking. He said they had not only come to liberate us, but some of us would also have the opportunity to accompany them on their continuing journey, to other villages that would be liberated too. At those words, all of the people who stood anxiously huddled together began to moan and cry.

'That was when I saw my mother. She was squeezed in with the other women. On her back she was carrying my sister, who had been born a few weeks before. Her face, normally so beautiful, was contorted with the same fear as was in the faces of the other women. Her eyes were searching frantically for something that she couldn't find. I realised that it was me she was looking for. At that moment I understood, beyond anything I had ever before experienced, what it means to have a mother, and I knew I was going to lose her, just as I might have already lost my father.

'The bandits suddenly grew restless. They started lashing out, kicking aside the old men and women, hitting some of the boys who were older than me across the back of the neck and screaming at them to round up the goats. Then they began lining everyone up in a long row; their fear and moaning increased, and I had started to cry too, even though I didn't notice it at first. Several of the young women were shoved off to the side; they tore at their clothes when they saw that they were going to be forced to accompany the bandits as prisoners when they left the village.

'At that moment something horrifying happened. One of the men who saw his wife being led away was brave enough to step out of line and say that he would not allow them to take his woman. I saw who it was: Alfredo, my father's cousin, a skilled fisherman who never said an unkind word about anyone. Now he showed a courage he didn't even know he possessed, stepping out of the line as if he had stepped out of another life and taking a stand to protect his panic-stricken wife. At that moment he was defending us all, not just his own honour or his wife's. It was as if he were attacking everyone's terror with his action. The leader of the bandits stared at him, uncomprehending. Then he gave an order to one of the youngest boys who was with him. Without hesitation the boy, who was maybe thirteen, stepped forward and chopped off Alfredo's head with an axe. His head tumbled into the sand, colouring it red, and his body toppled, blood gushing from his neck. It was all so fast that at first nobody took in what had happened.