Before we moved here, we lived in that rounded house. It was like a satellite dish, opening up towards a plaza surrounded by linden trees. Around the week, there would be regular market days, but as a child, it didn't interest me much. It was, altogether, peaceful.
Not so much the days, certain days every year they would gather on the plaza: skinheads dressed in black blaring aggressive music having a beer and 'commemorating' the bombing of the city in WWII. That alone, was scary. And I would come to my mother, afraid of what was going on. What these people were doing, what they wanted... because of the architecture of the house, the noise from the plaza was amplified.
Back then, she would tell me, about how these skinheads were only so brazen, because they were many; how, as the foot soldiers of their movement, it was their goal to be frightening and do the dirty work, because the true string pullers were those wearing suits. And true enough, the suits were also there, speaking to the throng of skinheads with their megaphone.
I couldn't make them stop, of course. I was a 11 year old child. But at least I had my mother who comforted me, while I had to witness the goings on down there. At least we were together.
This memory. It means a lot to me. Because at one point, my mother decided she wanted to join them down there - that it was worthwhile to be with the crowd she used to caution me against. The very people she told me, hurt so so many.
And being up here alone, is scary.
