I look out the bus window and start to notice the landscape changing. The ochre tone of the horizon, the red of the sky that burns the skin like fire. Everything is dry around here: the vegetation is thirsty and low, the animals are so thin that we can see the shape of their bones. A cloud of dust hangs in the air as our vehicle charges, and, after that, everything returns to silence. I am more than two thousand kilometers from my home in Rio de Janeiro, heading to the city of my ancestors in the interior of Brazil. A journey that began when a few weeks ago I received a lace veil as a family heirloom. Or perhaps it began even earlier. Much earlier, before my birth, when this veil, which I now am carrying in my lap, was laced by my ancestors. I feel the relief of the sequence of stitches at the tips of my fingers. Together, they tell a story of violence. The first women of the Flores family were skilled lace makers and created a lace code to communicate in secret and save a dear friend who was promised to a powerful and violent…