For ten years he lived completely alone in the Amazon forest, convinced that his family had been exterminated. Then they called a young man to translate his words. When he saw him, he discovered he was his son.
It was called Karapiru and belonged to the Awás, an indigenous people of hunters and collectors of the Brazilian Amazon forest.
His story began with a massacre.
In the 1970s, some settlers attacked the group he lived with in the state of Maranhão.
Karapiru lost almost all his family.
His wife, daughter, mother, brothers, sisters and many other family members were killed.
He was hit too.
A bullet entered his back, but Karapiru managed to escape and disappear into the forest.
He didn't know if anyone was still chasing him.
He only knew that stopping could mean dying.
The bullet was there. He couldn't even reach the point of his back with his hands.
So he continued to walk.
What should have been a few days' escape became a ten-year solitary existence.
Ten years without a family.
Without a community.
No one to talk to.
Karapiru lived through what he knew about the forest. He was nourished by honey and small birds, looking for shelter between the vegetation and sleeping between the branches of the copaiba trees and the orchids.
But he couldn't afford to feel safe.
Every noise could announce the arrival of someone who had found it.
That's why he kept moving.
Year after year he traveled about 650 kilometers, leaving behind the Maranhão and arriving to the State of Bahia.
It was there that he ended his loneliness.
He met a farmer.
They didn't speak the same language. Karapiru couldn't tell him who he was, where he came from or why a man only appeared from the forest.
But they didn't need a lot of words to understand that he needed help.
The farmer offered him a place to live.
After a decade spent practically without human contacts, Karapiru had someone next to him again.
But there was still a problem.
No one could understand his language.
The authorities and anthropologists tried to communicate with him. They eventually decided to look for someone belonging to the Awás.
They found a young man named Xiramuku.
His task seemed very simple: listening to the unknown and translating what he said.
Then Xiramuku arrived.
He watched Karapiru.
And the story changed completely.
That young man wasn't just someone who could speak his language.
He was his son.
Xiramuku had survived the same massacre.
For about ten years father and son had lived believing that the other was dead.
Karapiru had fled into the forest, bringing with him the memory of a family who thought he had lost forever.
His son, somewhere, was still alive.
They weren't looking.
They didn't even know the other guy was still alive.
To gather them was an extraordinary coincidence: the need to find a person capable of translating the words of a man who appeared from the forest.
After reunion, father and son could return to Maranhão, among the Awás.
Karapiru had crossed about 650 kilometers of forest, had survived a gunshot wound, hunger, fear and ten years of loneliness.
But perhaps the most incredible moment of his journey came when someone finally managed to understand his words.
Because that person wasn't just an interpreter.
He was the son he thought he lost ten years earlier.