Another Day of Life

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ABBREVIATIONS

FNLA National Front for the Liberation of Angola, led by Holden Roberto and backed by the Western powers and Zaïre.

MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, led by Agostinho Neto and backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by Jonas Savimbi and backed by the Western powers and South Africa

PIDE Portuguese political police

PAP Polish Press Agency

This is a very personal book, about being alone and lost. In summer 1975 my boss — at the time I was a correspondent for a press agency — said, “This is your last chance to get to Angola. How about it?” I always answer yes in such situations. (The reason he asked me the way he did was that a civil war which continues to this day was already under way. Many were convinced that the country would turn into a hell — and a closed hell at that, in which everyone would die without any outside help or intervention.) The war had begun in the spring of that year, when the new rulers of Portugal, after the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship, gave Angola and Portugal’s other former colonies the right to independence. In Angola there were several political parties— armed to the teeth — doing battle with one another, and each of these parties wanted to take power at any price (most often, at the price of their brothers’ blood).

The war these parties waged among themselves was sloppy, dogged, and cruel. Everyone was everyone’s enemy, and no one was sure who would meet death. At whose hands, when, and where. And why. All those who could were fleeing Angola. I was bent on going there. In Lisbon I convinced the crew of one last Portuguese military aircraft flying to Angola to take me along. More precisely, I begged them to take me.

The next morning I saw from the window of our descending plane a motionless white patch surrounded by the sun. It was Luanda.