Clara packed her bags, though she did not hesitate to leave all her belongings, with calmness and with no sense of what was to come. She took one last look around, saw the clear blue sky, the birds migrating to the east and the sun beginning to settle in the west. Now more than ever she perceived the world with a new undecided perception of her new reality.

The streets she grew up in were in flames and chaos was coming. All but the little shack in which she had built as a child remained, unfettered and untouched. Among her childish things she found her old dusty journal decorated with tassels and charms hanging about the dark brown murky cover with her name engraved on the bottom right corner, Clara Paz. As she relived her past memories as a now seventeen year old woman, her hand trembled and she began to write.

April 7, 1972

So world,

You have left me alone yet again. As I write I stand in the only place I called home. I think about the times the aunties charged at the boys for tussling with the girls. But as fearless as ever we girls always won. You have left me alone with haunting memories of the past I wish to believe I didn’t cause. You have left me with agony and guilt for the things you could have changed but stood in silence and did, nothing. You heard my quiet weeps, saw my dirty hands, felt my torn dress, yet you said nothing. Oh how I wish to face you now, world! Hear my cries and hear my roars, feel my heart thumping and pounding like the sound of war. Feel my scars, see my blood, and watch how I tame the crashing waves of ocean that you caused.

C. Paz

As she wrote, Clara began to cry for her little shack was her only home. Her only hope. But as destined by the soulless monsters who governed the world, she left the one place she loved in search of something more.