Others talk easily when Fazio kneels beside them on the mattresses and reaches out his hand. How she was separated from her five daughters and three sons. How she cannot sleep for the nightmares and worry. Fazio tells her that she must sleep and eat to stay strong. I wish I could have died.
Some young boys climb a wall, make-believe rifles made from steel pipes.
They offer a stranger only the barest hint of the cruelty they've survived - the details they choose to tell. It was difficult getting her wedding ring off, she recalled, because she was so thirsty that she had no spit to ease it from her finger. Fazio says he can relate to their fear. He thinks back to the Tet offensive in Vietnam when he crawled up hills in the first air cavalry division and took shrapnel and a bullet. He points to the group playing volleyball.