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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Miguel de Salabert: “What have you done with my legs?”
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Miguel de Salabert
From Interior Exile (1961)
Translated by Renaud Bruce and Herma Briffault
I first learned about men from their bombs. In those days no one had time to think how the world might look to the wide-open eyes of a child.
We spent our time running from the house to the shelter and from the shelter to our house. Once, in the middle of a bombing, I ran out of the shelter because I had just seen a man die. A terrible roar, an avalanche of rubble, a man who shot into the air and fell again to earth, his head shattered. For a long time I remembered the head of that man. It haunted my dreams and every time I woke up screaming.
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When there were no more bullets left, the poor and the rich would come out of their trenches and count the dead. Those who had killed the most enemies won the battle. That’s the way we do it with toy soldiers.
“And who’s going to win the war, Uncle Juan?”
“Nobody.”
“Then what’s the use of having the war?”
But he didn’t answer.
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