The baker who works during the quiet hours of the night, the man who replaced me, will never tell anyone that I'm there. Sometimes he shares his food with me.

I need the silence of the roof after the long days under the searing sun. I still have my mattress. Here I can lie and look up at the stars before I fall asleep. Here I can think about everything that Nelio told me before he died. I know that I have to keep telling his story even if only the winds from the sea listen to what I have to say. I have to keep talking about this earth, which is sinking farther and farther into unconsciousness, where people must live to forget and not to remember. I have to keep speaking so that the dreams will not grow hot with fever, then cool and finally die. It's as if Nelio wants to place his hand on the earth's forehead and mix Senhora Muwulene's herbs into the rivers and oceans of the world. The earth is sinking farther and farther, the groups of street children are more numerous and grow larger – the street children who live in the poorest of countries, the lands of street children.

My story is done, but it keeps on starting over. In the end it will hover like an invisible note, embedded in the wind that ceaselessly blows from the sea. It will exist in the raindrops falling on the parched earth, and in the end it will exist in the air we breathe. I know that it's true, what Nelio told me, that our last hope is to remember who we are, that we are human beings who will never be able to control the warm winds from the sea, but maybe one day we will understand why the winds must always continue to blow.

I, José Antonio Maria Vaz, a lonely man on a rooftop under the starry tropical sky, have a story to tell…

Henning Mankell