BOOK & SUSANA

Julio left Paris before he finished his degree, he returned to Canton and a home ravaged by civil war. The delicate truce brokered between Mao and Chiang Kai-shek faltered and Chiang fled to Taiwan. As a sympathiser, Julio boarded the first boat sailing down the Pearl River. He arrived in Panama in 1939. His name, like two footprints, tracks his journey to Colombia (Julio) from China (Cheng). He eventually moved to Barranquilla, working for the Chinese consulate and bringing up his two boys. His son Jaime joined the Colombian navy. While Jaime was stationed in New Orleans Julio moved to the island of  San Andrés. Julio never met Jaime’s daughter – his granddaughter, but Susana gained some sense of who Julio was as a man through his books. Aged 13 she would rifle through them and it was his ‘Secretos del Cosmos’ that began her fascination with astronomy. Through Roman’s book she discovered Sagan’s ‘Pale Blue Dot’, a treatise that underscores ‘our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.’ For the young Susana there was no better vantage for a clear view of the vast cosmos than her grandfather’s remote home.

24 Mar 2013