Saint Anthony’s nave was an abandoned black cave surrounded by rubble. Seekers moved as haunted shadows on the buried square; pained souls drifting over those lost below. Throughout the nights they worked: grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, a lone child, a lone wife, a lone husband.
Hope exists — Padre João saw them here — and he is alive. Pêro repeated over and over to himself.
Hope exists Padre João saw them here and he is alive.Small groups tugged and shoved and hauled debris away from the square. Donkeys pulling wooden carts forced their way over leveled debris, transporting the material to place it in fissures on the hillside and in the earth’s scars in the city center.
As Pêro cleared, it was as if a person had taken one of his clay knives and driven it into his soft
