There are memories that return first as light. Not faces. Not names. Not even fear. Only flashes against the darkness.

When I was a child during the Salvadoran civil war, I used to climb onto the roof of our house in San Jorge at night and watch the war unfold across the mountains. I know how strange that sounds now. Children are supposed to fear war completely. Adults imagine that bombs, helicopters, and gunfire exist only as terror in the mind of a child. But childhood does not always understand horror immediately; sometimes it mistakes destruction for spectacle first.

From the roof, I could see the distant slopes near the volcano glowing beneath the flashes of explosions. Helicopters crossed the sky like giant insects made of metal and fire, their searchlights sweeping across the darkness while tracer rounds stitched brief lines of light through the night air. The earth trembled beneath the house. Tin roofs rattled. Dogs barked wildly from faraway farms hidden in the dark.

And still, I watched. Part of me was afraid, but another part could not look away. The war looked unreal from a distance—beautiful in the same terrible way........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)