On Sunday, 30 August 1992, we were returned from the beach. When one of the members of our family opened the door, I heard the telephone ring, and ran to pick it up. I thought it was my father calling from the United States. Instead, I heard a woman’s voice asking to speak with an adult. I was eight years old and the woman on the other end of the line was passing on the message that my father had died. Several years before that, he had left for America. I knew him only from a few photographs and from his voice in the telephone receiver.

            I am now trying to get to know my father almost thirty years later. My close relations are helping me with this. My mother, my brother, my grandmother, and my uncle. They show me things my father left behind. They tell me about him when we look at old photos. They let me photograph them in places where they experienced something important with my father. I am trying to get to know my father and at the same time I know that these attempts are doomed to failure.