Everything can change in an instant. Sounds like a lie, but it’s the purest reality. It’s a normal, quiet day, people walk in opposite directions, totally alien to what’s going to happen. We are back in Barcelona. In September the holidays are over and a new one starts the year. This year is so unique that for many it starts in September [in the northern hemisphere, summer holidays end in September].
I try to walk slowly so I don’t wake her up. He doesn’t like the heat that the sun still imposes at that moment from above, in the sky. We’re lucky to have shadows. Everybody seems to be looking for them, looking for a truce. My bracelet is wide and dances on my wrist. I remember the last walk on the beach: the sand was burning, the air not so much.
- A message is written on each face: you may have left your home.
- Hotel.
- Boarding house or apartment very early.
- From a friend’s house.
- The whole world seems to be represented around me.
- A world distracted by storefronts.
- Parks or balconies willing to host.
- For at least a few minutes.
- A conversation in any language.
This street seems to unite Spain with Europe, but also with America and the enigmatic East. For Hemingway, the most beautiful route his eyes have contemplated, with or without shadows. And as love walks next door, in different ways, a cry breaks the tranquility, like lightning that precedes any storm?
A van travels where it shouldn’t. Very fast, destroying lives, causing pain and leaving bodies lying on the ground that will never walk any continent again. In an instant, what is reflected in all faces is confusion, then panic. I run, the child wakes up, cries and screams because just like the others don’t know what’s going on, which may have woken him from his sleep. In the air you do not breathe the sea or salt, but the blood and fear.
Everything can change in an instant, and at that moment everything changed.
Do I run holding the car tightly, as if there wasn’t a tomorrow?”Who knows if there will be?” a truth that, because it was ignored, rarely made me feel chills, with a rapid heartbeat and a shrunk heart. I just want to get out of here. Suddenly, something hits me and I fall, a dull noise, the car keeps running and gets lost while my eyes close, the distant echo of the last desperate screams resonates in my head, love has collapsed because no one else takes you by the hand. He broke a thousand pieces.
Do all the roses, in an instant, turn black?
I notice that people dodge me and as a dull noise runs through my body, it’s very hard to think. I try to order my eyes to open, but they do not obey me, I ask, and then I plead, I want to be able to save this hope that has escaped me in the midst of horror.
The sound of sirens stings me like daggers in the siens, pain is no longer the pain of a nightmare and becomes real even for the most unbelievers. Someone’s trying to drag me with difficulty, but they can’t. Leave me on the floor, now two people are trying. One has small, soft hands, the other seems to have traveled the world lifting many anchors.
I’m trying to tell Amaia, as if I’m going to pronounce a magic spell, to come back, I feel like we’ve come to a safe place because they don’t touch me anymore and someone holds my wrist carefully. pulse, barely noticeable, despite the tension around me. Someone’s talking, trying to wake me up. They punch my face and repeat my name.
I also want to go back there because there, somewhere, there’s something more important than me, it’s the day you become a mother. On this day, you feel that you will never be the first, besides discovering many fears, a long list, which is scary if you think about it in detail, but I had no idea that I could be the one in this place surrounded by gangs and cops, in which a tragedy just happened What at one point could I lose so much?
I open my eyes and the pain increases. It’s my arm, but it’s also my hip, my back and my right leg, I try to catch my breath and then I say Amaia, that’s my answer, the only one I have at the time for my name. I don’t remember what happened, I’m just looking for that blue sky with white dots. I’ve always hated that cart I want so much to find now. I close my eyes and it gives me a push. Deep down, I see it. . I point at him and someone runs and brings him closer: one of the wheels has broken and the car is struggling.
Amaia, I gave it this name because I saw the same freshness and life that I see in a beautiful landscape of the Basque Country, green, intense, rainy and mysterious. I can’t hear, I just look with my eyes, everything seems too far away. They let go of my hand and I push the floor. The blood in my throat slows my efforts.
I want to look and then I hear him scream. This cry asks me a question, how am I going to explain to Amaia, when she’s older, what happened, how I’m going to tell her that someone tried to kill her before she could even make her first mistake or utter her first word.
But should I understand before I commit many?And that at that moment everyone seemed too small for what they might have lost in the blink of an eye, which they could now close in peace.
Amaia?