Free Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuściński

which means there is no perfect way out. That is what Diogenes says, and he observes that those who died in this burned-out truck must have made a mistake, they must have been traveling in the early morning or at dusk or at night. Then it’s cool and the enemy has the strength to come out onto the road and spring an ambush. At noon, on the other hand, the heat is going full blast and a deathly sleepiness and indolence seize the combatants. They retreat into the shade and drift into slumber. Martial enthusiasm sputters out and enmity grows tepid. You have to take advantage of this and travel at high noon, the safest time. I remember that Monti said the same thing. The front falls asleep when the sun stands at its zenith.
    We drove until dusk under pressure, in an intent, helpless alertness, passing two more charred trucks from lost convoys. Diogenes urged the driver on, forbidding him to halt. At five in the afternoon we saw several armed people standing in the road. They stood there, pointing their automatic rifles toward us. Diogenes took his Kalashnikov off the safety and the soldiers in back got up from where they had been lying and, taking cover behind the cab, took aim at the people in the road. The driver slowed down and the distance between the truck and the people ahead decreased. Nobody fired. Then, when we were close—close enough to make out their figures and even their faces—one of the people in the road pointed his rifle upward and fired a round. Diogenes pulled his pistol out of his holster and also shot into the air. The Mercedes stopped and the people in the road came running up.
    “Comandante Farrusco’s unit,” one of them said.
    “Comandante Diogenes’s convoy,” Diogenes answered.
    We were in Pereira d’Eça. They asked for cigarettes. I reached into my pocket and only then, when everything in me broke and subsided into loose, relaxed, calm particles, did I notice that my trousers and shirt were drenched in sweat, that I was wet all over, and that in my pocket, where there had been a pack of Polish Radomskie Extra-Strongs, I had nothing but a handful of damp hay smelling of nicotine.
    The wrecked billboard on the way into town offers a chance to rest your eyes: “In Pereira d’Eça,” it says, “Stop at the Black Swan Inn. Air-Conditioning—Home Cooking—Garden— Bar—Attractive Prices.” And a clumsy drawing of a bird swimming in a lake that at this latitude could appear only in a dream. This is an inducement to those who have been around the world and grown acquainted with distant continents and unfamiliar territories. The traveler along the sterile and monotonous road from Luanda to Windhoek—2230 kilometers—can find a comfortable stopping place here. May I impart a word of advice to the weary wayfarer? Don’t stop in this town tonight. Not these days. Times have changed and the promised comfort is lacking. There may be water, indeed, but there are no lights. It’s dark. The moon doesn’t rise. There are only stars, but somehow distant ones, faint and not very helpful. It’s not a good place to sleep, because the houses have been smashed and looted. Nor is the cuisine to be recommended. On the concrete floor of the inn, in a puddle of dried blood, lies a butchered goat that has already begun to reek. Anyone who’s hungry carves out a hunk of meat with a bayonet and roasts it over the bonfire. How do these people live? Why don’t they die of poisoning from carrion virus? Nor can one count on the advertised air-conditioning. It is sweltering and not even at night does the heat lift from the earth; it crushes the languidly, viscously unmoving, flattened town.
    In the glare of an oil lamp, the only light, three faces are visible, covered with sweat, shining as if smeared with olive oil. The wide, bearded face of Comandante Farrusco. The pale face, covered with adolescent pimples, of his assistant Carlos, the hero of Luso. The prematurely destroyed, uncared-for face of a woman