In 1975, as Portuguese rule ends and Luanda empties into a city of packed crates, the Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuściński stays behind—one of the few foreign journalists who does. His firsthand account follows him from the city's eerie stillness to the front lines, where he meets soldiers and civilians caught in Angola's unraveling war.
Even a chaotic, merciless war can keep the rhythms of ordinary working life. On Saturdays and Sundays the guns fell silent, fighters put down their weapons and slept, and offices, markets and radio stations all shut down. The violence followed a working week.
When a whole city prepares to flee, the main business becomes packing up a life in wooden crates. The price of hammers and nails soars, and how to build and brace a crate becomes the chief topic of talk. A second, temporary city of planks rises inside the permanent one of concrete and brick.
Even while everyone is abandoning their homes, the old ranking of rich and poor rebuilds itself in what they carry away. The richer the family, the bigger and finer its crates, some as large as holiday cottages and made of polished tropical wood. People bring their social order into the escape itself.
When order breaks down, the worst thing is often not news of death but no news at all. Close friends disappear like stones dropped in water, gone from their homes and from the streets, and no one can find out what became of them.
In war the real experience is not the fighting or the sides but being lost and not knowing what will become of you. When you cannot count on surviving, the horizon shrinks to a single day. Each evening becomes a small relief: another day of life behind you, one more ahead.