found, to his surprise, that he had put an end to their threats. - V. S. Naipaul

When we had come no one could tell me. We were not that kind of people. We simply lived; we did what was expected of us, what we had seen the previous generation do. We never asked why; we never recorded. We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time. Neither my father nor my grandfather could put dates to their stories. Not because they had forgotten or were confused; the past was simply the past.

I felt his pain as an extra pressure on myself. I mentally added his pain to mine, made it part of my own.

His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.