Las Torres

I stared off of the fourth floor balcony, cigarette in hand. I was almost finished installing the maintenance updates to the network server and I wasn’t looking forward to my two hour drive home. One more cigarette wouldn't hurt. There’s always time to put off what you don’t want to do.

That was September 10, 2001. I was doing consulting work back then and living in Tijuana, Mexico. My wife is a Mexican national and we were having trouble getting her paperwork approved for her to live here in the United States. I didn’t want her to have to spend her life looking over her shoulder, afraid of la migra (immigration), so I rented us a place in Las Torres (the towers), a suburb of Tijuana until we could get everything straightened out. Las Torres was named for the huge electrical towers that were erected for sharing electrical power between the United States and Mexico. We lived almost in the shadow of those towers.

I finally finished with my updates and headed out to my car. I took the time for one more cigarette before jumping in the car and making my way to Interstate 5. The distance between the office where I was working that night and our driveway down in Tijuana was just a hair under 100 miles, but due to the condition of some of the roads I had to drive on once I got across the border, it would take between two and two and a half hours for me to get home. The trip home was uneventful, just one of hundreds that I would ultimately make between Southern California and La Frontera .

I arrived home about a quarter after three, dead tired, and I slipped under the covers and cuddled myself in close to my wife to steal some of her much-needed warmth. In an instant I was asleep. I went to sleep in a peaceful predictable world and woke up in a chaotic and brash one. It was my wife’s voice that lifted me out of my slumber.

“Tomas, Las Torres, Los Americanos son muriendo.” My wife said to me while I was still half asleep

I heard Las Torres, Americanos, and muriendo, the Spanish word for dying, and in my barely-awake state, I thought that there had been another American tourist found murdered near our house. I was mad, both at the death and at my wife for displaying so much fear in her voice, and I said to her, “I am not going to live my life in fear. I am not going to stay inside all day just because a few people down here in Mexico don’t like Americans.” My outburst of righteous indignation brought me out of my half-asleep state.

“No entiendas. Las Torres, Las Torres, muchos han muerto. Aye Tomas, mira la tele, Y entenderas.” My wife said to me, pointing at the tele (TV), frustrated that I wasn’t able to comprehend what she so desperately wanted me to understand.

I clicked on the TV in the bedroom. There was footage of people running in the street, dust and debris chasing them down the byways of some very modern looking city. I don’t remember the byline on the TV, but it didn’t take me long to realize that this was New York I was witnessing. My mind reeled. What happened in New York to cause such intense panic? My question was answered slowly, with clips of footage and sound bites interspersed with commentary and eye witness accounts. The import of what my wife was trying to tell me finally sunk in and I found myself pining for the days when the words dying, Americans, and Las Torres simply meant a tourist had journeyed to far from the relative safety of Revolution Boulevard in Tijuana, Mexico.