Two of them leaped the wall into the backyard where my friends were having a hang: bandits with pistols already drawn so that no one would do anything courageous. Even on the CCTV footage, through which I and everyone else would later see the unfolding, time seemed somehow warped to the surreal pace of small tragedies, where ultimately no one is harmed, no one killed, but the lingering weight of such possibilities makes even the clocks struggle to move. Both the assailants wore bandannas around the lower half of their faces, like highwaymen. My friends relinquished their cell phones and jewelry. Then the bandits had them keep a distance and scaled the wall again with an ease and fluidity that was not absent of grace, and were in and out in what had arguably been three minutes, but which for all of us watching—for those boys I knew from school now forever preserved in the soundless archives of victims—was certainly far longer. I haven’t made a habit of stopping by that backyard in the time since.
At 6 p.m. this afternoon, the government of Trinidad and Tobago was overthrown. The prime minister and members of the cabinet are under arrest. We are asking everybody to remain… calm. The revolutionary forces are commanded to control the streets. There shall be no looting.
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