by Dave Eggers
“Oh lord,” she said.
Four looked down to see what seemed to be a line of trucks leaving the parade’s staging grounds. The trucks were military-style personnel carriers, and emerged from the hangars around the highway’s end, six of them, side by side, then twelve, in tight configuration. Then a dozen more, followed by a line of jeeps and trucks with mounted guns. Finally a fleet of tanks appeared and followed the convoy in rigid formation. Soldiers on foot embroidered the parade on either side of the road.
When the procession met the pilgrims walking to the capital, the soldiers opened fire and the people were cut down like tall grass meeting a scythe’s blade. Four, sitting in a plane slowly banking away, could hear nothing from this height. But the people continued to fall, the yellow tuk-tuk ceased its advance, was crushed silently under tank tread, and the convoy continued unimpeded down the immaculate road.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you JJ, ZH, SM and all at Knopf. Thank you AW. Thank you JR. Thank you Em-J, AU, CS, ZS and DG. Thank you OVG, HM, KG, CM and SP. Thank you VAD and MA. Thank you UN and ACLU and MSV and IRC. Thank you without abbreviation VV.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Eggers is the author of many books, including The Monk of Mokha; Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets? Do They Live Forever, shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; and What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France’s Prix Médicis Étranger. He is the founder of McSweeney’s Publishing and the cofounder of Voice of Witness, a book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia, a youth writing center with a pirate-supply storefront, which has inspired similar programs around the world. ScholarMatch, now ten years old, connects donors with students to make college possible for all. In 2018 he cofounded the International Congress of Youth Voices, a global gathering of writers and activists under twenty. He is a winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
www.internationalcongressofyouthvoices.org
www.internationalallianceofyouthwritingcenters.org
www.826national.org
www.826valencia.org
www.scholarmatch.org
www.voiceofwitness.org
www.valentinoachakdeng.org
www.mcsweeneys.net
www.daveeggers.net
