I no longer remember his real name. Everyone called him Calavera—the Spanish word for “Skull.” His real name disappeared long ago, but the nickname remained. That’s how memory sometimes survives war: it forgets names but refuses to let go of faces.

I was about six years old when he first appeared outside our house in San Jorge, El Salvador, during the civil war. He could not have been much older than sixteen or seventeen. Those were years when childhood ended early. The law might have said one thing, but war had its own rules. If a boy looked strong enough to carry a rifle, it often found one placed on his shoulder. If another boy was old enough to serve the guerrillas, someone eventually found him too. Nobody asked whether they were ready.

The day we met him, it had been raining for what felt like days. I no longer remember what month it was; I only remember the rain. The dirt roads had dissolved into mud, water dripped endlessly from the roofs, and the village moved more slowly, as though even the war had decided to wait for the storm to pass.

Calavera sat quietly on the curb outside our house, soaked by the weather and wearing the exhaustion of someone much older........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)