War came to Angola in 1961. My father would have been 11 when it started. Too young to comprehend, too young to feel the silent, invisible shockwaves that travel through the minds of men and women. Knowledge jumps like a cricket from one to another, but it leaves the young on Islands alone. Older brothers were old enough. Old enough to be conscripted, to be sent to war. This was not going to happen. They swore it amongst themselves. They would not die in the jungles. They would not d...

This is my father’s story. He keeps it in his head, behind firmly shut lips, a stare that extends backwards, knowing things that can’t be said or implied. It’s this silence that separates us. The child and his silent father. Whatever distance he has travelled is the distance that is still left for me. A long way in miles, as well as years, before my father can ever take me seriously. He spent his days from birth to adolescence on a tiny Atlantic Island called Madeira, an island th...