Talzani

The plastic tags were thin and Talzani held about fifty yellows, reds, and blues. He cradled them in the palm of his left
hand, brought up his right, and began to absently shuffle them. (p. 18)
I myself have never seen one who face death; they all turn away at the end. (p.20)
Without your camera, its not so easy. (p.20)
Pain is always preferable to numbness. (p.21)
Beautiful and cursed. I wonder sometimes how this works. Do we see its beauty despite of the war, or because of it?
Talking to Mark about Colin p.22; Colin in the bag p.24
My little tags. A pattern, no? A scientific method to decide who lives and diesIf only it were so (p. 25).
There is no pattern to who lives and dies in war We invent all kinds of explanations and superstitions for why things
happenNone of it is true. In war people die because they do. Theres nothing more to it than that. (p. 25).
Some live, some die Anything else is just self-torture and arrogance. Because we are not gods, none of us are gods.
(p. 26)

Narrator

All the ones who couldnt be savedI wasnt sureI had to guess. Thats all any of us can do. Guess. (p..231)
Get a yellow and be shunted aside. Get red and be treated. Get blue and die (p. 16).
most modern wars did not end. They continued for generations, heating up at times, cooling down at others, but the flames
never went out (p. 46).

Marks
Father

cruelty has always been mans most awesome weapon capable of shocking entire nations, entire peoples into
submission the spoils of victory went to those who showed mercy the least, who knew cruelty the best (p. 103)
...you were the most sensitive. Very inquisitive, too (p. 131).
You forget, I know what its like out there. (p.131)
You dont just come home and pick up your life againThis shit takes a toll (p. 132).

Mark

Mark died a long time ago, Mark stopped coming home a long time ago. P.133
You had to be alert when Talzani came for you, because triage was done quickly .. Your fate decided by the colour of plastic.
Get a yellow and be shunted aside. Get red and be treated. Get blue and die. (Narrator p. 16).
For Mark, war had become a job. (p.46)
Marks envy of Collin (end p. 47)
Mark had seen the future that awaited him he would be walking into a new life, that never again would he be the easy,
confident man that he had been. (Narrator p.48)
Forget the dead the dead dont need anything from us. A doctor in Kurdistan told me that(p. 183)
You have to keep it separateKeep it separate. (p. 93)
Mark was overcome with gratitude at being away from the eyes of others, at leaving behind that part of him that was
crippled and grotesque. (Narrator p. 89)
Too grisly for the essay or a stand-alone for the domestic market, but a good prospect for the Asian magazines.
(p.53)
Mark had looked him in the eye and said, It doesnt affect me. (p.132)
They said it lacked context. (p.124)
Discussion of the photo of the boy who was killed in front of him (middle of p.124)
Hes your family Elena. You need to learn forgiveness (p.127)
Marks meeting with his father p. 132
That would be terrible, wouldnt it? he said at last, and his voice was thick, pained. To die like that. Out there, lost, no one
to find you. That would be so terrible. (p.137) (He is speaking of Carlos Perez but is really thinking of Colin)

Description of collecting bones in Uganda p.147-149

Tears slipped from his closed eyes. I didnt know how to say goodbye. I loved him. I still dont. Im sorry. (p.164)
there was no way to share any of this. Everyone was alone with their burden.(p.208)

Joaquin
Morales

Colin was right beside him. Colin had never left him. Mark was looking for himself, still trying to find his way back from the
dead. (p.225)
You have to turn away from the past. All of us, we have to turn away No one has the right to waste their life. (p.183)
I always felt that if I had the opportunity to perform on a wider array of patients civilians such as yourself I might finally
defeat my critics (p. 114)
Narrators description of Morales paragraph 1 page115
I will tell you a story Its about Spain, about how the living and dead are chosen now. (p.110)
To feel guilt in war only shows you have a conscience, a quality to be admired (p. 156).
I have the advantage of the land that surrounds me. (p.134)
I am not a psychiatrist I prefer to think of myself as a scholar of the human spirit. (p. 117)
Joquain had always understood that regrets were useless, like laminating the weather
You feel responsible because, to a large extent, you were. (p.122)
This Western idea that we can pass over our pains, how absurd! You never pass over them. You carry them with you forever.
That is what it means to live. (p. 124)
I can show you how to carry the pain look at me: Im still smiling, Im still light on my feet, and the world is still a
wonderful place. (p. 124)
Its a very complicated matter to be a survivor. Sometimes we must place our faith in magic, believe in answers we know are
not true, in order to continue. Sometimes we must envy the dead. (p.149)

The camera is a very convenient device for placing distance between oneself and ones surroundings. Would you
agree? (p.157)
So you were standing hereand the artillery shell landed hereand where was Colin? (p. 161)
It was not so black and white as you imagine, my dear. Both sides did unspeakable things in that war. And, remember, your
grandfather lost everyone. (p. 187)
Description of Joaquin in his home p. 190-92
Discussion of God p. 200
but the land holds the same lesson for all of us. A reminder of our artlessness, our fall from grace. (p.214)
We invented history for the same reason we invented God. (p.215)
If there is anything to be learned from any of it, it is only that civilization is fragile, that in war it takes nothing for a
man any man, fascist, communist, schoolteacher, peasant, it doesnt matter to become a beast. (p.216)
Discussion of killing p. 216
I shall be forgotten, but you, Francisco, are immortal; in a hundred years, they will still be spitting on your grave.
(p.218)

Elena

Fraud though I am I knew the truth about Colin from the first moment I heard his name and saw your face
(p.232)
Now, after three years this, she wanted a life free of fear, free of the strategies she devised to make it all bearable.
(Narrator p.39)
As a program officer, Elena rarely went into the field. Her work was seeing to the administrative needs of the camps
from the comfortable vantage point of the New York liaison office, filing requisition forms for blankets and cots,
making sure that there were sufficient stocks of penicillin and toilet paper. (Narrator p.43)
How many people had remained lost to each other, Elena wondered, because a name had been mistranslated, because

she had typed a wrong number in a birth date? (Narrator p.54)

He was getting worseHe was keeping it from her, letting out the pain only when he thought he was alone (pp. 66-67).
Elenas description of Marks deterioration p.66
Read Moraless assessment of Elena carefully (para 4, p. 115).
If you had wiped out a village, if you had tortured people to death, all you had to do was go see Dr. Joquain Morales at the
Morales Institute for Physchological Purification, and he absolved you of all guilt (p.126)
He has no technique; hes a fake. A fake, and a war criminal. Maybe he didnt kill people directly, but he did worse, he
erased them. (p.127)
Elena had lived in the company of women. (p.155)
I will be plain. You have fallen, my boy. Your heart has stayed with the dead, and you cant find your way back. You try you try very bravely but you cant get back. You pretend to laugh, you pretend to love, but, in fact, you feel very little. A
ghost, as you said. A different path but just as despairing as my soldiers. But as I restored them, I can restore you. I can
bring you home. p.160
And now Elena realised the sorrow of war sometimes wore a very different face from the ones she had always considered,
that along with the dead and the maimed and the blind, there were those who came back whole smiling, perhaps laughing,
perhaps but who were wholly unrecognizable to themselves and everyone who had ever loved them. (Narrator p.176)
Elenas way of coping with Marks condition p.177
Elena, the golden child of the family, the intelligent and ambitious girl who had set an independent course and
found success beyond all imaginings (Narrator p. 186).
But theres always a reason. There has to be a reason. (p.187)

Colin

she tried to remember Marks face, his old face, before the pain settled in his eyes. She had always found this difficult in
the past, but this time his face came to her, slowly, one feature at a time, until it was complete. (Narrator p.188)
An odd shaped bundle of dark plastic about six feet

long, tied off at either end with white rope. (p.24)

Antonio

It leaves scars in my head. It leaves scars all the time. (p.92)

Discussion of Spanish Civil War p. 204-205
He forgot that when you leave your people you are alone, and anything can happen to you. P.205