In 1988, a peculiar rock formation in the Namib Desert called Mukurob—the Finger of God—collapsed. What made the sandstone structure, in what was then South West Africa, so fascinating was the fact that its base was considerably narrower than its peak, much like a triangle balancing upside down. Fifty thousand years of erosion had meticulously crafted this work of art, standing at twelve meters and weighing four hundred and fifty tons.
The Nama people, indigenous to the barren south-central region of today´s Namibia, told many legends about the rock. As the sun rose, shining on the dead man’s face, Jack, exhausted from the difficult task of consoling Marie until she fell into a restless sleep, tried to keep the flood of fear and grief at bay by sharing one of those stories with David.
“There was a Nama prophecy that the white man’s power would end once Mukurob collapsed. Nobody knows why, Father, but the rock fell just a few weeks before the South African, Angolan, and Cuban governments signed the New York Treaty, ending the Afrikaner rule over Namibia…”
History is indeed a repertoire filled with surprising facts, thought Father David Callaghan as he listened to Jack, “and yet humans still awe at their occurrences.” Both the Nama people and the resilient citizens of Newcastle West in his distant Ireland should know that a rock of such magnitude does not fall in one day, nor in a split of a second. Its descent is foreseen the moment of its creation, through the force of wind on its surface, slowly removing soil and little stones of sand, carving the clumsy structure.
At a specific moment… bang! The giant rock blasts the ground just like dazzling insights tear age-old ideas apart. To some, David’s quest to understand the brutal fate of his own kind will unveil the protagonist’s failure to absorb reality and accept human nature as it is. Conversely, and hopefully to many of you, the character’s response to a world deprived of braveness may be anchored far beyond his religious beliefs, revealing a battle that eventually relates to us all.