It wasn’t often that I would see my paternal grandfather. He lived across the Atlantic and would only come to Mexico once a year to visit us. I didn’t speak much to him, a language barrier and my timid temperament getting in the way. It’s not surprising I didn’t know much about him, but I do remember he would always spend a long time watching the news on his own whenever he visited. On one of many such occasions, he sat while footage of men lifting and rolling the wing of a downed aircraft played repeatedly on screen. I didn’t know what was happening or what it meant, I was only 8 years old. Much later I would wonder why a man who was reminded of war anytime he saw his scarred reflection would then go on to spend so much time watching it on TV.

That same year I would come home from school and sit in the kitchen while my mother prepared dinner and the TV chattered in the background. Often, Paco Stanley (a popular TV host in Mexico at the time) would be the source of the chatter. Every day I’d come home, and every day he’d be in the background. Until one day he wasn’t. Instead, the reason for his absence was repeated over and over. His assassination took seconds, but on TV it lasted days. It made a lasting impression on my mind, it showed me that no one was safe.

Photo by aj_aaaab

Recently I rediscovered a song which I hadn’t heard for twenty years. Back then I didn’t know the title or the name of the band, I just remember it playing on the radio while I rode the bus to and from school. Listening to it steeped me in strong memories.

Halfway through an autumn school day all the American kids in my class were spirited away by anxious parents, and all those who remained were left wondering why. Everyone relayed the little information they could get hold of, and by the end of the day the stories had become so fantastical that kids talked of fleeing the country. On the bus ride home I held my Walkman over my head hunting for a better radio signal and listened attentively. I repeated what I heard, and told those sitting around me that Islamists were likely responsible. I didn’t know what that word meant, I didn’t even know what it was that they were being held responsible for. No matter, I repeated what I heard with concern.

I got home and saw the towers falling. I remember watching over and over how the planes would crash and engulf the buildings in fire. I remember the adults around me fixated on the screens while I watched alongside them, not fully realising what it was that kept falling from the windows. These images were repeated again and again, day after day. My paternal grandfather was visiting, and this time he wasn’t alone in front of the TV.

School was different after that. After having overheard a friend tell another that “they must do something to make them pay”, I would later see them in a distant crowd chasing a Sikh boy, pushing him and yelling at him before he was able to get away. I could see rage in their eyes and a desire for revenge, even though they were only ten year old boys in Mexico. I didn’t know what Sikhism was, but I also didn’t understand why my friends thought he had anything to do with the attacks.

Less than a month later I would watch trails of anti-aircraft fire illuminating the Afghan night, a futile attempt at stopping the combined might of a worldwide coalition. A couple of years later it would be pillars of smoke in Baghdad from the comfort of my living room.

Photo by Jisun Han

I would ride the bus to and from school, watching the world rush by through the window. One time I saw a shirtless man for a split second. His body was covered in deep crimson slashes, knife lacerations which glistened in the sun. He immediately collapsed, his head bouncing hard as it hit the asphalt. Although the memory pops into my head with some regularity, I remember I didn’t feel all that disturbed at the time. I was used to watching violence through glass.