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And of Clay Are We Created - Coggle Diagram
And of Clay Are We Created
p. 39
discovered the girl named Azucena's head protruding from the mud pit.
The television cameras transmitted the unbearable image of the head budding like a black squash from the clay so often everybody knew who she was.
reporter Rolf went there on assignment. Never suspecting that he would find a fragment of his past thirty years before.
p. 40
At the first subterranean sob rocked the cotton field the Geologists predicted the world's end. But no one listened.
When the survivors emerged from the paralysis of the first awful terror, they could see that everything was gone,
When the station called before dawn Rolf and I were together. He got ready for his assignment. He was the first one to reach the scene cause he had the advantage of the television helicopter.
p. 41
The place was full of noise and the bedlam of lost children. The story scene to us in his calm voice.
For years he had been a familiar figure in newscasts, reporting live at the scene of battles and catastrophes with awesome tenacity. Nothing could stop him. I was amazed at his equanimity in the face of danger.
It was as if the lens of the camera transported him to a different time from which he could watch events without actually participating in them.
p. 46
The camera man's asked Azucna the same questions again and again.
Rolf on the other hand tried again to dislodge her.
He fed her a cop of cornmeal mush and bananas the army was distributing but she vomited up immediately.
By evening a gentle, persistent drizzle began to fall. Azucena murmured that the sky is weeping and started to cry. Rolf bagged her not to be afraid.
p. 42
Rolf was in the story of Azucena from the beginning. He zoomed into Azucena. And he filmed the people who tried to reach her. The mud was like a quicksand around her. No one would save her, there was a danger of sinking.
Rolf threw the rope to Azucena but when she tried to grab it she immediately sank a little deeper.
Rolf kept talking to her, just to distract her . He slowly worked his way forward to his waist. It was impossible to reach her from the approach he was attempting.
He took a rope and tied it beneath her arms, so he could pull her out. He told her that everything would be fine. He told the others to pull, but as soon as the cord tensed the girl screamed. They guessed that her legs might be held by the bodies of her siblings.
p. 43
Rolf promised that he would get her out.
Despite the quality of the transmission, I could hear his voice break.
Rolf exhausted all the resources of his ingenuity to rescue her. He tried bur every tug
was an intolerable torture for the imprisoned girl
The girl could not move, she barely could breath, but she did not seem desperate. As if she accept her fate.
somebody gave him a tire to use it as a life buoy, and then laid a plank near the hole to stay closer to her.
after a few fail to get the rubble out, he concluded that he would have a pump to drain out the water. He asked for a pump but the pump needed to be waited till the next morning.
Azucena bagged him not to leave her. someone brought her a coffee, and he helped the girl drink it. he warm liquid revived her, she began to tell him about her small life.
Rolf imagined that everything will be alright.
And thought about the gifts for her.
p. 44
Rolf told Azucena about his adventures and travels.
From time to time she dozed, but he kept talking in the darkness. That was a long night.
Many miles away, I watched him and the girl on the television. I could not bear the wait at home, so I went to ask for helps.
While reporters selected scenes with most impact for news report, I searched for footage that featured Azucena's mud pit. The screen reduced the disaster to a single plane and accentuated the distance that separated us.
p. 45
The child's every suffering hurt me as it did him; I felt his frustration, his impotence.
As times I would be overcome with compassion and burst out crying; at other times.
I were staring through a telescope at the light of a star dead for a million years.
I watched the hell on the first morning broadcast, cadaver of people and animals awash in the new river.
The civil defense were clawing through rubble searching for survivors while long of ragged specters awaited there turn for a cup of hot broth. Radio networks were jammed because of all the phone calls from families offering shelters for the orphaned children.
Azucena was shivering inside this tire. Immobility and the tension had greatly weakened her. But she was conscious and could still be heard. Rolf's condition had gone bad. He had completely forgotten about the camera.
p.47
Azucena's face was beamed to millions of screens around the world. And all the while Rolf kept pleading for a pump.
With improved technicians, I was able to follow events hour by hour. I was present when she taught Rolf to pray.
When the darkness came on the second day, Rolf tried to sing to Azucena with old Austrian folk songs. But she was fer beyond sleep. The night Rolf's past for so many years began to open, and the deepest memory poured out.
He couldn't tell it to Azucena; she perhaps did not know the years of the war.
p. 48
So he could not tell her of defeat, nor of the afternoon the Russians had led them to the concentration camp to bury prisoners dead from starvation. There was much he didn't tell, Azucena had surrendered her fear to him.
He reverted to the years when he was around age of Azucena. Like her, found himself trapped with out escape. He saw his father who was hitting with a belt.
Wandering in the mist of his memories he found his sister. A sweet child who spent her life hiding from her own father.
He took excessive risk as an exercise of courage, traning by day to conquer the monsters that tromented him by night.
p. 49
The president of the republic visited the area. He had ordered a state of siege. The entire valley would be declared holy ground, and bishops would come to celebrate a solemn mass for the souls of the victims.
p. 50
II knew somehow that during night his defenses had crumbled and he had given in to grief; finally he was vulnerable.
I recognized the precise moment at which he gave up the fight and surrendered to the torture of watching the girl die.
p. 51
He told her that he loved her more than ever. How finally they were able to accept death and be free from clay.
Azucena gave up, her eyes locked with those of the friend who had sustained her to the end.
p. 52
I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before