A missile over our heads

Can you blame someone for being afraid? Can the innocent be accused of cowardice for running in terror in the middle of lunch? Who has not ever felt an indefinite terror when pulling up the blinds and believing they saw a flickering speck on the horizon? Can a person be blamed for experiencing a vague feeling of horror? By perceiving a strange tremor under the feet, for example, or noticing an extravagant aroma wafting through the grimy air vent. Or finding that the morning light has lost part of its radiance and is now grayish, dramatically ashy. Or when observing the unusual fluttering of the little birds, suddenly busy with erratic tasks, crying out when they sense something ugly. Can anyone be blamed, perhaps, for putting all his vigor and start screaming with unbridled fear?

That ugly thing that the little birds sense is, specifically, the arrival and the subsequent blast of a missile. A hell of a backfire in the middle of the square, between the tobacconist's shop and the nut shop. Thus, without warning, on any given Tuesday, without giving one time to shave or finish breakfast, which with the bombardment is going to spoil, mainly the toast with avocado. It is the permanent fear that some ordinary people keep in their stomachs, no matter how much they try to cope with the anguish with a beautiful smile painted on their face, perhaps withered by a long string of heartbreaks. It is the continuous apprehension that has managed to provoke in some citizens the disgusting noise of certain abominable characters, who use the media to amplify their threats and mortify the population. It is that we have already represented the missile above our heads, inevitably, as a symbol of all possible human misfortunes, as a grotesque and cylindrical insignia of the end of the world.

Detailed evacuation plans and orderly penetration into the shelters are already circulating, under cover. Women, children and those on the right first. If the bomb falls, it will catch us inside. and confessed

Who doesn't have a neighbor, a good friend or a brother-in-law who dedicates every Sunday without exception to dig in the foothills to widen the bunker and make it deeper. The foresight and calculation of certain individuals are admirable. They are guys worth two. They do not ignore even the smallest detail, and put real emphasis on the valuable list of belongings that they intend to accumulate in the underground shelter: candles, cans of food, hammers and cold cutters, diapers, a Bible, mid-season clothes, music from the nineties, tobacco… The bunker is tiled before the apartment in Santa Pola. Detailed evacuation plans and orderly penetration into the shelters are already circulating, under cover. Women, children and those on the right first. If the bomb falls, it will catch us inside. And confessed.

Beyond the healthy touches of sarcasm, the truth is that an immense majority tries to turn a deaf ear to that black and threatening refrain, so common now, so insistent, and tries to develop an existence free from any fear. There are people who conduct themselves in their daily lives as if all those invisible fears were not with them. It is toasted and drunk, sometimes, as if it were the last time, with a certain and premonitory melancholy, and we cannot help but recognize that it has some charm. “Keep your voice down, darling,” one jokes, “because I can't hear the whistle of the bomb.”