Word: daybreak
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...daybreak in Ushuaia I was put on a 44-seat air force Fokker turboprop for a mail flight to the coastal bases of Rio Grande and Rio Gallegos. It was the first leg of a three-flight, twelve-hour journey in custody. It was also an edgy and unpleasant experience. My bags were "searched" twice, that being the kindest term for the hostile way in which personal contents can be scornfully tossed, spilled and made to seem like bits of compromising evidence all their own. Why was a "distinguished" American journalist carrying a duffel bag? Why were his shirts rumpled...
...ivory-handled pistols: war as a picnic of cannibals. The Icelandic author Halldor Laxness found the murderous fascination of war in the Old Norse texts of Scaldic poetry, the hymns of the "kill spree." The poets were particular about the best light and color for battle: "The hour before daybreak is all right because it lends to the crimson of liquid blood a nice admixture of an azure sky and the silvery gray of the fading moon...
...villagers are polite to strangers but are always careful that visits do not last too long for fear they will cause suspicion. Says a nervous schoolteacher: "The life we have here is on credit, day to day. The people go indoors early in the evening and stay there until daybreak. We wake up not knowing if we are going to sleep again in the evening. We don't tell the truth, even to people we know. We've lost faith in everyone and everything. If we find a dead body, we leave it for the dogs...
...daybreak the convoy reached the border town of Ban Hin Taek, the fortified mountain stronghold of Khun Sa, the most powerful opium warlord in Asia. Their objective: capture the town and crush the 2,000 mercenaries of Khun Sa's Shan United Army, who ran the opium refineries and ruthlessly held sway over the entire region. The Thai soldiers promptly took up battle lines on one side of the town's main street. Ten yards away stood the surprised drug traffickers, many of them routed from bed and still in their underwear-but heavily armed with automatic weapons...
When not studying or working out, Ramos is likely to jog through his neighborhood at daybreak. In the gray light at the corner of Brook Avenue and East 138th Street, where he sometimes used to hang out in the winter with Popeye, Angel and Shorty, he can see up to 15 buildings that have been torched or abandoned. Despite the wreckage, according to Ramos, Brook Avenue is still the struttin'est street in The Bronx. On fine days it over flows with hip dudes, good music and fine reefer...