Then I saw him: taller than the fence, his body looming larger, enormous, with his right hand clenched like a hammer, a crazed look in his indignant face. He was panting, in a furious hurry. When I cried out, Omar jumped in, lifted the hammock, and began to punch Yaqub on his face, his back, all over his body. I rushed to get on top of Omar, trying to hold him down. He was kicking and pummeling his brother, calling him a traitor, a coward. Some of the people from the slum came into the garden and came close to the veranda. In a sudden move, I grabbed Omar’s hand. He managed to get loose. I saw he was surrounded by several men, and went away slowly, still eyeing the red hammock. I caught sight of him running to the living room and furiously ripping up the plans of the project; he tore all the sketches up, threw the plates on the floor, and ran headlong down the corridor.

Yaqub twisted and turned in the hammock, and couldn’t get up. His face swelled up, his mouth wouldn’t stop bleeding, and his lips were full of scratches and bruises. He groaned, feeling his head, back, and shoulders with his right hand. Two people from the slums helped get him out of the hammock; he could hardly walk. Two of the fingers of his left hand looked like hooks, and his body was bent over and shaking. Domingas went with him to a hospital, and before she went out asked me to clear the table, throw the broken china in the rubbish, and put the hammock to soak in the washtub. I hid the torn sheets of Yaqub’s project in my room.

When my mother came back, she quickly dried the hammock and spread it out in her room. She abandoned the kitchen, and refused to get lunch ready. She said Yaqub’s condition wasn’t serious, though his left hand was in a mess, with two fractured fingers. He was going to lose some three teeth, his face was unrecognizable, and he had terrible pain in his back and shoulders. He had asked Domingas to keep her mouth shut, invent a story, and say to Zana: “Your son had to leave for São Paulo in a hurry.”