In An Instant Everything Can Change

It’s a quiet, normal day and we’re surrounded by people walking in different directions. They are not aware of that one moment when everything will change. We have been to Barcelona before. Next week the holidays will be over and a new year will begin. The specific year that starts in September for many people.

I try to walk slowly so I don’t wake her. She doesn’t like the heat, and the sun still burns so hard. Fortunately, there are places with shade. It seems like everyone is hunting in these places, looking for enlightenment. The bracelet is too big for me and bounces on my wrist. I remember the last walk along the beach: the sand was burning, but the sky was not.

The same message is written on all their faces: you left your house, hotel, hostel, apartment, or maybe your friend’s house too early. It seems like everyone is represented all around me. People are distracted by shop windows, flowers and terraces, the invitation to participate, for a moment, in a conversation in any language.

This street seems to connect Spain with Europe, but also with the Americas and the mysterious East. According to Hemingway, it was the most beautiful sketch his eyes had ever seen, with or without a shadow. And as I carry love in my hands, which I hold in many different ways, a cry breaks the calm, like lightning before every storm…

In a moment the fear pushes the calm away

A van is driving somewhere it shouldn’t. Very fast, across lifetimes. I see pain and bodies left on the ground, bodies that will no longer visit places. In an instant all I see is confusion, then panic. I run and my little girl wakes up and cries and screams because like everyone else she knows what’s going on, what woke her up. There is no more ocean or salt in the air, just blood and fear.

In an instant everything changed…

With a firm grip on the stroller, I run like tomorrow doesn’t exist. “After all, who knows if tomorrow will exist?” This is a truth that has never made me shiver before for ignoring it. I just want to get out of here. Suddenly it hits me and I fall, a dull sound, the stroller continues to roll away and get lost in the crowd as my eyes close. All I hear in my head is the distant echo of the last desperate screams. Love has fallen to the ground because no one holds it in his hand, and it broke into a thousand pieces.

In an instant, all roses turn black…

What happened to me?

I feel them turn around and I hear a dull sound run through my body. It’s so hard to think. I try to open my eyes, but they won’t listen. I ask them and then beg them. They must open up so that I can save that hope that slipped from my hands in the midst of fear.

The sound of the sirens digs into my temples like knives. The pain no longer feels like a nightmare, instead it becomes real and feels completely unimaginable. Someone tries their best to lift me up, but can’t. They put me on the floor and now there are two people trying. One of them has small, soft hands. The other seems to have carried anchors all his life.

I’m trying to say Amaia, like I’m reciting a spell, so she’ll come back. I suspect they have reached a safe place because they stop moving and someone is gently holding me by the wrist. They measure my heart rate, which is very weak even with all the tension around me. Someone says something, they try to wake me up. They punch me in the face in shame and repeat my name.

One moment to see again, a lifetime to explain

I too want to see again, because somewhere, there somewhere, something is much more important than me. It’s something that happens to you when you become a mother. That day you know that you will never come first again and you will start to have fears. A long list of fears, terrifying if you think about it too deeply. But I never imagined this, that I would be the one in that place, surrounded by security tape and police. That place where a tragedy has just happened. I never thought I could lose so much in a moment…

I open my eyes and the pain gets worse. It’s my arm, but also my hip, my back and right leg. Trying to catch my breath I manage, I say Amaia, that’s my answer, the only answer I have now for my name. I can’t remember mine now, I’m just looking for light blue and white dots. Always hated that stroller, but now I want nothing more than to see that thing. I close my eyes and force myself. And then I see him. I point to it and someone runs and brings it to me. One of the wheels has broken and he is having trouble getting it to me.

Where is Amaya?

amaia. I gave her that name because I saw in her the same freshness and life as in a Basque landscape. Green, intense, rainy and mysterious. I don’t listen, I just feel with my eyes. Every sound seems far away. They manage to free my hand and I push against the ground. The same blood that fills my throat makes me slip.

I want to sit up and then I hear her scream. That scream raises a question in my mind, how am I going to explain what happened when she’s older? How am I going to tell her that someone tried to kill her before she could make her first mistake or even say a single word.

But she’d probably think differently, that she’d just made a lot of them…and in that moment they seemed so small to her compared to what she could have lost in one moment, the eyes she could now close in peace.

amaia…