Travels with my Family by Marie-Louise Gay, David Homel

said, as if people shooting their guns at us were the most natural thing in the world. “Happy New Year, kids!”
    And he crawled over to my mother on his hands and knees and kissed her.
    A couple of bullets passed right overhead. I guess that made the moment more romantic. The goat was smarter than my father. He’d gone and hidden in his house.
    â€œDon’t worry,” I told my brother. “Tomorrow we’ll have iguana flakes for breakfast. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”
    â€œI can’t wait,” he grumbled.

EIGHT
We nearly get caught in
the latest Mexican revolution

    When it comes to danger, Mexico has got every other place beat. After we survived New Year’s Eve in Tehuantepec, my parents wanted to head farther south, towards San Juan Chamula. That’s where we got caught up in something even more dangerous.
    From Tehuantepec, we had to drive up into the mountains. Even though we were going south, the air was getting colder by the minute. The people we saw were wearing bright wool ponchos, but they were barefoot. I guess if you don’t have any shoes, your feet get used to the cold. At least, I hope so.
    Clouds were beginning to gather around the tops of the mountains.
    â€œDo you think it’s going to snow?” I asked.
    My father didn’t answer. He was too busy. With one hand on the wheel, he was squinting at the map and grumbling, as if it were the map’s fault that he couldn’t read it.
    â€œLook,” my father said, “this road ends at Chenaló. At least, I think it does. Let’s go and have a look.”
    â€œWhat will we do when we get there?” my little brother asked.
    â€œWe’ll come back,” I told him.
    â€œI don’t get it,” he said.
    â€œYou will when you get to be my age.”
    As usual, I started to read the guidebook. My brother won’t, because he doesn’t like to try and say all the foreign names. My father was busy driving, and my mother gets a headache if she tries to read in the car.
    â€œHey, look at this! It says here that the Tzotzil Indians don’t like to have their photos taken. They think it’s like stealing their souls. Some tourists got killed trying to take pictures.”
    â€œWow!” my brother said. “But how will we remember what we saw?”
    â€œWe can remember in our hearts,” my mother told him.
    â€œDo photographs really steal your soul?” he asked.
    â€œThey do if you think they do,” my mother told him.
    My brother was very quiet. A little while later, he said, “I think I’ll skip my next class picture.”
    It was too bad we couldn’t take any pictures, because the countryside really was pretty. There were tall green hills covered in forests, with fields built on platforms up and down the slopes. The platforms were called terraces, and they had been built centuries ago.
    â€œLook at those trees,” I said to my brother. “Real bananas are growing in them.”
    â€œI thought bananas came from the store,” he said. I think he was just joking, though you never know.
    The road climbed up one side of a hill, and was about to coast down the other when my mother said, “Look at that view! It’s so beautiful.”
    â€œWe’ll stop here,” my father said.
    He pulled off the road. We all got out of the car. My father put rocks in front of the tires, just in case the brake didn’t work. The green hills seemed to go on forever, with higher mountains in the distance, and clouds stuck on top of them.
    â€œThose clouds look like big fluffy hats,” my mother said.

    â€œThere’s no one around,” my father decided. “Nobody’s soul to steal. We can take a picture.”
    â€œDon’t,” my mother told him. “Remember, these people take that seriously.”
    My father took out his camera from his pocket anyway. He aimed it at the hills and