I heard about it on the radio as I was making my first cup of tea of the day. I was still half asleep. I had probably been half asleep for far too long. Far too long staying quietly in a corner trying not to make a noise. Far too long not asking questions when friends didn’t turn up. Far too long not reading the wrong papers. Far too long not playing the wrong songs. I heard it on the radio and it woke me up.
They had started gathering in the early morning. Slowly making their way to the main square. They were silent. Not a word. There was nothing that needed to be said and their silence smashed that other silence that had enveloped us and filled every pore and clogged every vein, strangling our feelings and thoughts and passions.
I stirred the tea and added more milk. Since the day I was born my land had been silent and scared. My parents had protected me from political reality, and when I was finally, inevitably, faced with it, I had chosen to close my eyes. Done the right thing. Studied a suitable degree. Got an appropriate job. Things were easy if you didn’t open your eyes. Even easier if your mouth stayed shut. I had complied, ignored, evaded. I had, I knew deep inside myself, colluded.
The police surrounded them, the radio said. They had sat down, still in silence, and offered smiles.
I looked out of the window and took a sip. The street was waiting for the people to come out. Fizzling. The street knew its inhabitants. There was the family two doors down, faces still caught in the grief of an unknown loss. The man in the government job, always searching for apologies. The couple in the corner, busily pretending nothing was going on, kindred spirits. The kids who played secret police. The young students in the dilapidated flats, who had been just one year below me at university, and now looked at me with sad eyes when I walked past.
The radio advised all citizens to go to work, go to school, go to the shops. Nothing was to stop the normal day. They were incongruous. They would be dealt with.
I emptied the mug in the sink. I looked inside of me at a new feeling. I was awake this time. I didn’t want to stay asleep. I wanted to open my eyes. Splay my fingers. Sing a song. If they were there, I could be there. I must be there.
I left the house and started to walk towards the square. The students had also left their home and were carrying a banner. I joined them and they smiled. I was human again.
When we got to the square the police would not let us get to them. They looked as afraid as we were, young kids recruited from the poor barrios. The crowd started growing but somehow it had a mind of its own, and when one of us sat we all sat down, making a ring around the police.
We stayed there in silence, scared but gaining our strength from each other. I felt right. I was nervous, but I knew I was finally really doing something right.
After a while, as suddenly as it was time to arrive it became time to leave, and before the police lost their cool, the crowd started to wander off back to our new lives.
That evening the radio didn’t talk.
But the next day, in the morning, they gathered in the square, and I was there.
