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In the spirit of the Peace Corps, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book (after production and shipping costs) will go to fund ABC Camp, a youth summer camp in Ukraine that teaches leadership, creativity, and civic skills. It is a project that I have seen deeply influence many Ukrainians to become leaders, and that is why I really believe in it.
We need a total of $5,778 for the camp to take place, and so far only $1,218 has been raised. With each purchase of the book for $15.95 (using promo code NEWBLURB), $12 is donated to our funds, so please take this opportunity to help us out.
1. You can see a preview and purchase the professionally published book by clicking on the link below:
2. You may also, of course, donate apart from purchasing the book by clicking the link below:
3. If you are interested in electronic versions of the book (in PDF, Kindle, and HTML formats), which cost $12 and contribute 100% of the purchase price to the camp (and are tax-deductible), please follow instructions below:
4. Please "Like" the Facebook Page at the link below:
5. I have also pasted the Prologue below just to get you started ;)
Sincerely,
Tiago
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"Prologue" from Beyond the Orange Curtain by Tiago Forte
The man threatening me was tall and lanky, yet strong. He was mulato, like nearly everyone in the neighborhood. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, mixed with the body odor coming from his clothes.
He wore black combat boots with laces crisscrossed almost to the knee. Tucked into his boots were military-style cargo pants in a camouflage pattern of green and grey patches. On his upper body a dirty black tank top peeked out from under a black commando-style vest with many pockets, mostly empty, flattened by the ammunition belt draped diagonally across his chest.
The man was telling me about his childhood. About his parents who died before he knew them. About sleeping in the street. About pain and destruction and death. I didn’t understand most of what he said, shouting as he did in a garbled, stuttering rant, in the slang-infused Portuguese of someone who had probably never seen the inside of a classroom. But his intentions were clear: He wanted me to know that he had suffered, and that he was going to make me suffer.
I found out later on that the man’s name was, fittingly, Chucky. I had seen him many times before, regularly patrolling the street where I lived. He’d never given me any trouble, or even so much as made eye contact. So I mostly ignored him, thinking of Chucky as just part of the scenery, a permanent fixture on my daily walk to school.
At the moment, however, he was hard to ignore, holding a five-foot-long semiautomatic rifle to my head, his finger on the trigger. I told him — and I could feel my voice shaking — that I worked for a non-profit organization that helped residents of the community, that I lived on that very street, and that I wasn’t an undercover policeman or a journalist, as he insisted I was, his eyes flicking from side to side, unable to fix on anything for more than a second. But as I listened to his incoherent rambling I realized that my message wasn’t getting through. Everything I said only made him angrier, his words pouring out in a stream of threats, expletives, and warnings: Você é um mentiroso. You’re a liar; Ta achando o que? What are you thinking?; Agora vai se foder. Now you’re fucked.
That was when he took me away, and it was at that moment I started remembering all the reasons I had been told to never, ever, let that happen. I recalled stories of torture and disappearances never solved, and how a few weeks before a friend and I had stumbled upon the patch of jungle at the top of the hill where bodies were dumped after unceremonious executions.
These weren’t rumors or urban legends; my own eyes bore witness.
I also remembered the punishment reserved for the most serious offenders — usually informers and spies — the so-called microondas (microwave), in which tires are piled around the victim up to the neck, soaked in gasoline, and set ablaze. The human torch that resulted could be seen for miles around, a sinister beacon demonstrating just how far the overlords of Rio’s favelas were willing to go to maintain their control over the community, and through it the drug trade. The microondas was meant to serve as a warning to everyone who saw it. To this end, it was usually performed at night in the most visible location in the city – the top of the hill on which the favela, or slum, is built.
It was this last thought that stuck in my mind as Chucky turned and led me uphill, the muzzle of his rifle now pressed firmly against my back.
Read on at: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1981268
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