Jordan Lynch

The sun beat down hard on the zinc roofs, the heat rising in thick waves from the concrete. I sat in front of my house in Kingston, Jamaica, watching a stray dog nose through a pile of old newspapers across the street. Around here, the days roll slow, like smoke curling from the end of a cigarette.

I’m 71 now, and the past feels heavier on my shoulders than the years themselves. People who meet me these days only see an old man with quiet eyes and a slow walk. They don’t know the nights I survived by instinct alone, the corners I turned not knowing if I would see another sunrise.

When I was younger, Kingston was a battleground. Not the kind with soldiers in uniform — the kind with boys in ripped sneakers and guns tucked into the waistbands of their jeans. Poverty wraps its fingers around you and squeezes until you either break or harden. I chose to harden.

There were moments that could have ended me. One night in 1976, during the election violence, I was cornered by men who thought I was on the wrong side. I had nothing but the clothes on my back and my mouth dry with fear. One man pressed a knife against my ribs while another shouted questions I didn’t have answers for. Somehow, a bus turned the corner just then, headlights sweeping over us. They scattered.

Another time, a friend I trusted set me up, thinking he could buy his way out of trouble by handing me over. I caught the setup just in time, slipped away down an alley I knew by heart. I never saw him again.

You learn to smell danger, to hear the slight change in footsteps behind you, to read the flickers in a man’s eyes. It stays with you even now.

These days, the violence hasn’t gone, just changed shape. I grow tomatoes in my yard, I watch the neighbor’s kids kick a ball down the street, I laugh with the old women selling sweets from faded plastic tubs.

Sometimes, late at night, the memories come, sharp and sudden. I remind myself: you made it. You lived. Not everyone can say the same.