words words

At BYU I dreamt of having the luxury of just popping into the bookstore and being able to buy any book that I wanted. For some reason this is what would most comfort me on rough days. Sometimes I would let myself buy a book, and then return it a few days later just so I could alleviate that desire. One of the books I picked up was this one, The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano. It was sitting on an endcap, a small special display, because (I believe) the author was visiting the university. After reading a few pages, I thought it was beautiful and imaginative. Enchanting really, like the cover says. I have wished, years later, that I kept this book, which I never even read all the way through (I wouldn't return a book if I had read it all, I'm not one of those people.) I'm sure I just felt like I needed that $15 for more practical things. Years down the road I couldn't even remember the name of the book, nor the name of the author. While browsing the Latin America section at one of my favorite bookstores, I found it! Fate! And here it is, in my home, fresh from the library. I think I will buy it though eventually. Here's one of my favorite anecdotes so far:

 Celebration of the Human Voice/2

"Their hands were tied or handcuffed, yet their fingers danced, flew, drew words. The prisoners were hooded, but leaning back, they could see a bit, just a bit, down below. Although it was forbidden to speak, they spoke with their hands. Pinio Ungerfeld taught me the finger alphabet, which he had learned in prison without a teacher.

"Some of us had bad handwriting," he told me. "Others were masters of calligraphy."

The Uruguayan dictatorship wanted everyone to stand alone, everyone to be no one: in prisons and barracks, and throughout the country, communication was a crime.

"Some prisoners spent more than ten years buried in solitary cells the size of coffins, hearing nothing but clanging bars or footsteps in the corridors. Fernandez Huidobro and Mauricio Rosencof, thus condemned, survived because they could talk to each other by tapping on the wall. In that way they told of dreams and memories, fallings in and out of love; they discussed, embraced, fought; they shared beliefs and beauties, doubts and guilts, and those questions that have no answer.

When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others."