An average of forty-one violent deaths a day in Mexico. On the bloodiest days, sixty-nine. Sixty-nine names. Sixty-nine stories. How many orphans, how many partners, how many relatives? Each person’s friends. Each person’s grief. The repercussions of the loss in their daily life. The effects, the fears it unleashes. Sixty-nine stories a day that set off, stampeding, kicking up dust, for the red kingdom. Meanwhile, a politician tells his children – while they’re eating their bedtime cereal in the kitchen – that he’s had a tough day at work. The story of that politician, one of the stories that belongs to the insect kingdom.

This is a country that’s waiting. Waiting for peace on the streets, peace at bedtime. Here people are waiting for safety – is that too much to ask?

Waiting, you say? Waiting for what, man?

Yeah, what are we waiting for, man?

What was that, man?

I was asking you, man – what are we waiting for?

But that’s what I asked you.

Don’t mess with me, man, I asked you.

I was hoping to be out of there as quickly as possible. In the first stage of the recovery process, I had a tube in my mouth that stopped me from speaking. I wrote on a little pad of paper to communicate simple things like ‘Tell me about your day, go on’. For a couple of weeks I couldn’t say anything. One of the few decisions I made was not to let people turn the TV on. I didn’t want to watch the news, or series, or anything like that. I wanted to know about the people who came to visit me, how they were, what they’d been up to. So all I could do was listen, think and write brief notes as a way of interacting. I couldn’t physically read, and I didn’t want to either, I wasn’t even interested in reading. To hell with all that. During those days it was as if, despite all the reading and writing I’d done before, I was having the most beautiful linguistic experience of my life. A relationship beginning anew. Turning thirty, never questioning it, and then all of a sudden, right there in front of me: words in the full splendour of their everydayness, which can be used to sing a Shakira song, or so someone can tell you about their day. Words there, for listening to, for singing and telling. Listening; what bound me to those people and to everything else. Telling; what binds us together.

I’ll tell you something, Jonás: today I went to the supermarket. They don’t stock your favourite granola any more. It’s true – I checked with the manager. I thought I’d take the opportunity to try something new. I bought a local brand of granola, in an eye-catching packet. It looks really delicious.