She does not want to remember but she is here and memory is gathering bones. — Maaza Mengiste

What he knows is this: there is no past, there is no "what happened", there is only the moment that unfolds into the next, dragging everything with it, constantly renewing. Everything is happening at once.

My father was always a stranger to me, he will say. I knew him through his questions, not his answers.

She is afraid of crumbling and disappearing, of being taken and being left behind at the same time: a body tumbling between hands while dying inside.