On the afternoon when we went out to photograph buildings and monuments in the central area of the city, we stopped in the Praça da Matriz, and I remembered the mass in memory of Laval, which had been forbidden. While Yaqub was taking pictures and making notes I went all around the square, and sat down on a stone bench entangled by the thick roots of a strangler tree. The afternoon heat made me dizzy, my mouth felt dry, and my lips were stuck together. There was no water gushing from the mouths of the bronze angels on the fountain. Near the church, I stopped to rest and admire the birds in the aviary. I saw they were alarmed, flying desperately all over the place, but soon a humming like insects began to bother me, a deep, monotonous noise that got louder and louder, and when I turned to look at the street, I froze: I saw a jeep bristling with bayonets. I thought of Laval, and his body, punched and trampled in the bandstand, and dragged to the edge of the pond. I waited for the military vehicle to disappear, but then came another, and another; lots of them, making a thunderous din. The soldiers were yelling, shouting hurrahs, and a racket of voices and horns spread alarm through the square. It was a convoy of trucks coming from the Praça General Osório, going in the direction of the quay. Out of the corner of my eye I followed the rumbling of this green monster along the cobbled street, and felt acute discomfort, a sharp pain in my forehead, and then an urge to vomit when I saw the seemingly endless line of green vehicles. The ground seemed to shake more and more, and now it was sirens and howls that buzzed around my head, and bayonets pointing at the church door, where my fellow students from the lyceum were raising their arms, throwing themselves on the ground and falling, and then pointing at Laval, writhing in the aviary full of dead birds, his right hand holding his battered briefcase, his left trying to catch the sheets of paper burning in the air. I tried to go into the aviary, but it was locked, and I could still see Laval right close to me, his face ripped apart with pain, his collar covered in blood, a sad look in his eye and his mouth open, incapable of uttering a word. He disappeared as night suddenly fell, and I began to shout for Yaqub; I shouted like a madman, and then saw my mother in front of me, her hands on my hot face, her eyes wide open, burning, anxious. Halim and Yaqub were behind her and looking at me, with fright in their eyes. I was shaking with fever and sweating: I was drenched. I wanted to know about the mass for the schoolmaster, but they avoided the subject. My mother didn’t leave me; it was the only time I saw her night and day at my side. She left everything, all her daily tasks, and didn’t even go up and see Omar.