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of the sun, they blinded drivers who, unable to proceed, stopped a good distance off and walked to the checkpoint to explain who they were and where they were going.
    You have to learn how to live with the checkpoints and to respect their customs, if you want to travel without hindrance and reach your destination alive. It must be borne in mind that the fate of our expedition and even our lives are in the hands of the sentries. These are people of diverse professions and ages. Rear-guard soldiers, homegrown militia, boys caught up in the passion of war, and often simply children. The most varied armament: submachine guns, old carbines, machetes, knives, and clubs. Optional dress, because uniforms are hard to come by. Sometimes a military blouse, but usually a resplendent shirt; sometimes a helmet, but often a woman’s hat; sometimes massive boots, but as a rule sneakers or bare feet. This is an indigent war, attired in cheap calico.
    Every encounter with a checkpoint consists of: (a) the explanatory section, (b) bargaining, (c) friendly conversation. You have to drive up to the checkpoint slowly and stop at a decent remove. Any violent braking or squealing of tires constitutes a bad opening; the sentries don’t appreciate such stunts. Next we get out of the car and approach the barriers, gasoline drums, heaps of stones, tree trunks, or wardrobe. If this is a zone near the front, our legs buckle with fear and our heart is in our mouth, because we can’t tell whose checkpoint it is—the MPLA’s, FNLA’s, or UNITA’s. The sun is shining and it’s hot. Air heated to whiteness vibrates above the road, as if a snowdrift were billowing across the pavement. But it’s quiet, and an unmoving world, holding its breath, surrounds us. We too, involuntarily, hold our breath.
    We stop and wait. There is no one in sight.
    But the sentries are there. Concealed in the bushes or in a roadside hut, they are watching us intently. We’re exposed to their gaze and, God forbid, to their fire. At such a moment you can’t show either nervousness or haste, because both will end badly. So we act normal, correct, relaxed: we just wait. Nor will it help to go to the other extreme and mask fear with an artificial casualness, or joke around, show off, or display an exaggerated self-confidence. The sentries might infer that we are treating them lightly and the results could be catastrophic. Nor do they like it when travelers put their hands in their pockets, look around, lie down in the shade of the nearby trees, or—this is generally considered a crime— themselves set about removing the obstacles from the road.
    At the conclusion of the observation period, the people from the checkpoint leave their hiding places and walk in our direction in a slow, lazy step, but alert and with their weapons at the ready. They stop at a safe distance.
    The strangers stay where they are.
    Remember that the sun is shining and it’s hot.
    Now begins the most dramatic moment of the encounter: mutual examination. To understand this scene, we must bear in mind that the armies fighting each other are dressed (or undressed) alike and that large regions of the country are no-man’s-land into which first one side and then the other penetrates and sets up checkpoints. That is why, at first, we don’t know who these people are or what they will do with us.
    Now we have to summon up all our courage to say one word, which will determine our life or death:
“Camarada!”
    If the sentries are Agostinho Neto’s people, who salute each other with the word
camarada,
we will live. But if they turn out to be Holden Roberto’s or Jonas Savimbi’s people, who call each other
irmão
(brother), we have reached the limit of our earthly existence. In no time they will put us to work—digging our own graves. In front of the old, established checkpoints there are little cemeteries of those who had the misfortune to greet the sentries with the wrong word.
    But let’s say that