A reconstructed life · The Atlas
The returned who could not open the box
“O Caixote”✦Angola✦1976–2003✦2 fragments
Luanda, 1975: a household 'returned' by the airlift to a Portugal it had never seen, and a crate that took eighteen months to arrive — and was not opened for twenty-six years. While it stayed shut, they still lived there.
Follow this life on the Atlas- 01
Returned to where?
Kept by the one who stayed, Luanda · circa 1990s
Father,
They lodge us in a hotel with a number for a name, and feed us with paper chits, and at the school they call the children returnees. Returned to where, father? I was born on our street. I know its mornings by heart and I have never once seen this country before.
Custódio walks the city for work and reads the newspaper twice. The crate has not come. I dream it arrives and I dream it doesn't, and I could not tell you which dream is worse.
Take the four-o'clock coffee for me. Argue politics with someone. Lose on purpose.
Alda
- 02
The packing list
The packing list, read twenty-eight years late, Lisbon · Spring, 2003
Contents of one crate, Luanda, October 1975
The dinner service for twelve. The christening gowns, both. The wall clock from the shop, stopped. The first ledger, 1952. Mother's sewing box. The albums, four. The good linen. The children's school folders that would not fit the cases.
Whoever opens this: nothing here is worth money. It is a house. Handle it the way you would handle a house.
And if it is you who opens it, Custódio — I was never going to open it. Forgive me. While it was shut, we still lived there.
A.