Babalu


It must have been very early in the morning when we heard the shots. I remember that it was still mostly dark and it was very, very cold. The time of day when I would imagine my mother going out jogging while I stayed in my room, warm in the bed sheets, dreaming away. Too cold to go out.
	At this time we lived in a little made up cottage in the backyard of our apartment building. My mother was an architect and interior designer and she was very fond of redesigning everything continually ("This bed would be great over there!", "What if we knocked down this wall, then pulled the piano to the left…"). Every time she had one of these ideas I would shiver, not knowing what new mess was about to be created.
She had designed the building originally and created a cottage in the back, probably intended for the gardeners. But when she got divorced from my Dad she came up with the idea of completely reinventing it as our new home.

After a lot of dust and worries, the cottage had turned into a little hideaway, behind the main building, away from the street.
It was also surrounded by the garden, which made it specially mysterious for me.