The Desert and Its SeedThe Desert and Its Seed opens with a taxi ride to the hospital: Eligia's face is disintegrating from acid thrown by her ex husband while they signed divorce papers. Mario, her son, tries to wipe the acid from Eligia's face, but his own fingers burn. What follows is a fruitless attempt to reconstruct Eligia's face first in Buenos Aires, thereafter in Milan. Mario, the narrator, becomes the shadow and witness of the reconstruction attempts to repair his