Summary

While waiting for Trujillo, Salvador Estrella Sadhalá, nicknamed Turk, thinks that he will never see Lebanon. We hear about his family’s flight as Christian refugees from Muslim persecution, first to Haiti and then to the Dominican Republic. We hear about the resistance of his grandparents to his mother’s marriage to Piro Estrella, a black soldier and politican. Salvador fondly thinks about his family, and worries about the reprisals they will face should the plot against Trujillo fail.

Salvador remembers how he was gradually convinced, despite his deep Christian faith, that it was right to kill Trujillo. He would discuss political matters with Father Fortín during confessions, outraged that the church sanctioned the murders of the Trujillo regime. Then, in 1960, the Pastoral Letter was read in every Dominican church: a veiled but unsubtle attack on the Trujillo regime by the Catholic church...