While I was in exile, in Paris, my parents and my brother were in the Republican area. They did not have to go to war, for being too old and too young respectively. If I had stayed, I would have had to go to war. I communicated and got news from them via ordinary mail. In my letters, I had to pretend I was a girl, I said I was my cousin. I studied Fine Arts at the studio of a friend of mine and some of us got together there to paint. In one of the sessions they took a picture of the group in which there was a girl so I pretended that was me, my cousin. I could send the picture home so they could see me and that made my family very happy.