The Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, among other people linked to the world of culture, survived last night a Russian bombing of Ukraine, although he suffered wounds like 50 other people. The Russian military fired two missiles at a restaurant where he was dining in the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, in Donetsk province.
The Latin American author, 64, has been in the conflict zone for a week, as a member of the pacifist organization Hold Ukraine and with the aim of promoting a solidarity campaign with the people invaded since February 24, 2022.
Colombian writer Héctor Abad, with marks on his body from the bombing. EFE/Catalina Gomez Angel
After receiving the first medical assistance, Abad Faciolince made a few statements to tell the ferocious attack that caused the death of three children and eight adults, and injuries to fifty people. "A rumble like sprouting from the ground threw us like lightning. I fell from everything and everything started moving in slow motion. I was full of black splashes," he told El Pais by telephone.
Surrounded by screams and fear
"I thought I was hurt, but it didn't hurt at all. I had heard that when you're hurt, nothing hurts. I kept silent, with the perpetual ringing of my ears, which are still ringing at me. Surrounded by cries of fear and pain also in slow motion. That's how I got up," he said as he drove from eastern Ukraine to Kiev, the capital.
Former Peace Commissioner Sergio Jaramillo after the attack. EFE/@JoseMAcevedo
Just hours before, it was all laughter. The Colombian writer was dining at the Ria restaurant accompanied by Sergio Jaramillo, former peace commissioner of Colombia; journalist Catalina Gómez and Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, among others. At that relaxed moment the missiles began to fall.
"We saw ourselves in hell. Catherine thought I was hurt by the drips. 'Forgive me for bringing you here,' she would tell me as if she was the culprit and not the Russians. We Colombians always feel guilty about something," the author added.
Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina suffered a severe skull fracture during the attack. EFE/Hector Abad
Although Abbot Faciolince was barely injured, one of his tablemates did not have the same luck and is now torn between life and death. This is the writer and activist Victoria Amelina, whose book Un hogar para Dom was recently translated into Spanish. The 37-year-old woman was seriously injured and is being treated medically.
Trajectory
Abad Faciolince is an internationally renowned writer known for the novel El olvido que seremos and Jaramillo, politician and negotiator of the 2016 peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
"We survived for a few fragile years, still, after death, in the memory of others, but also that personal memory, with each passing moment, is always closer to disappearing," the Colombian writer noted in the moving book with which he portrays his father.
Abad Faciolince is a clear exponent of the generation that flourished in the wake left in the region by the influence of the Latin American boom – and in particular, the immense influence of a Gabriel García Márquez already enthroned by the Nobel Prize winner.
His father, precisely, was a great influence in his life. He began his medical studies, to follow in his footsteps, but also in philosophy, journalism and literature in his hometown, Medellín.
But life is curious and destination is not always where it is imagined. The young Abbot Faciolince ended up graduating in modern languages and literatures at the University of Turin and walking the paths of journalism in the magazine Semana and the newspaper El Espectador.
He is the author of eight novels, Asuntos de un hidalgo dissoluto (1994), Fragmentos de amor furtivo (1998), Basura (2000) –winner in Spain of the I Casa de América Prize for Innovative Narrative–, Angosta (2004), the aforementioned El olvido que seremos (2006), El amanecer de un marido (2008), La Oculta (2014) and the recent Salvo mi corazón, todo está bien (2022).
File photo dated October 11, 2022 showing Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince speaking in an interview with EFE, in Bogotá (Colombia). EFE/ Carlos Ortega
He has received critical acclaim, which highlights two of his novels of narrative maturity, Basura and Angosta, because they created fictional microcosms, with dystopian overtones, which belie the mythologization of the American root so present in García Marquez. "They are crude, nothing aestheticized, although they do not reach dirty realism because they are not realistic. And not magical," has been said of them.
On the other hand, to his career as a columnist are added his poets and a solid experience as a translator of The Mermaid and other stories, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; Quid pro quo by Gesualdo Bufalino; Apostilles to The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco; and short stories by Italo Calvino, Leonardo Sciascia, Stefano Benni, Natalia Ginzburg, among other notable authors.
Abad Faciolince has contributed as an author in the newspaper Clarín and published here the first interview with Ingrid Betancourt, after her captivity and the release of her testimonial book, No hay silencio que no acabe.
"Books are a simulacrum of memory, a prosthesis to remember, a desperate attempt to make a little more lasting what is hopelessly finite," he has written in The Oblivion We Will Be.
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