I walked until I lost count. I could have walked all the way to the Basílica de Guadalupe, to the Cerro del Tepeyac, but I turned back towards Avenida Juárez at the roundabout and monument to Cuitláhuac. I passed the Palacio de Bellas Artes and the lavish old Post Office building and headed down the Francisco I. Madero pedestrian street to the Zócalo. I kept seeing the same people over and over, as if my surroundings were unspooling, unfolding like a sheaf of papel picado, to my right, to my left, revealing identical, symmetrical figurines against a sterile concrete backdrop. The melody of the organ-grinders on the street corners, activated by the beggar’s tired arm turning a crank, made the city feel like a spoof of a tawdry circus. After a glimpse of the Mexican flag rippling in the Plaza de la Constitución and the white tents of protesters occupying the square, protesting the forced disappearance of the students from Ayotzinapa, I retreated to my neighbourhood, Cuauhtémoc. I took Paseo de la Reforma towards the Korean district, gazing once again at the goddess Nike atop her pillar, the monument planted in the middle of the roundabout at the intersection with Avenida Florencia. I remembered the wonderment I’d felt at my first glimpse of the gilded angel. It was like I’d been a completely different person then: someone who felt such peace on those nights, who found a seat and gazed transfixed by the goddess bathed in purple light, by the imposing shadow of the bronze lion cast onto the façades of the skyscrapers. The goddess, whose voice I’d once heard in my head, had fallen silent; she didn’t interrupt my unease or my doubts, as if that part of my consciousness had given me permission to surrender. I shot her a sidelong glance, submissively sad, too listless to be angry.