It was in 1966 when we carried the house, the memory of the small town, the affection of the neighbors and the sound of the river on our shoulders. Dad’s new job uprooted us from our own country and settled in the capital. Chagras lost, disoriented, speechless in front of so much beauty. Quito opened up to us like a huge new world. We liked everything we looked at. Imposing Pichincha, its colonial city, its grand avenues and those huge houses whose elegance and beauty made them forget their country. Each neighborhood had its charm, its harmony, its shop and its friendly neighbor.

Ice cream shops were nearby, you didn’t have to travel to Salcedo for colorful ice cream or La Avelina for creamy, no, they were there!

Iñaquito, La Mariscal and the People’s Committee concentrate the largest number of crimes committed in Quito

Today, Quito is a strange city for me. The feeling I have is the one when, after years, I ran into that wonderful boy who cheated on us. See him and confirm that he is uglier than the Hulk. Green was already there, but now his sweaty, ill-dressed and hulking presence compels us to open our eyes as if he were a ghost. We forget even the name, the view towards the folds that surround it is inevitable. Knowing that he is so uncomfortable, he makes the worst face. We want to run away, stop seeing him, erase him forever because we don’t care anymore. Especially since it no longer belongs to us. So that’s the only way to see Quito. It is a terrifying confirmation that there is nothing left of her beauty, kindness and grace. And that’s what a city that shows its worst face feels like: the most polluted, dirtiest, messiest and noisiest.

There is no street that does not suffer from a tangle of dirty cables; there is no neighborhood that does not clash with the houses and businesses that are embedded in general; there is no view that is not obscured by a hideous building or the black and pestilential smoke of a bus; there is no Quito, there is disobedience that hurts, that stings, that cuts.

Noise pollution in Quito

Where have the trees gone? Where is all the greenery? The wind doesn’t know, dog poop on the sidewalks is even more ignorant, maybe some irresponsible builder knows where the trees died, where he killed the greenery, but he keeps silent and continues to cut the little that has grown on the ground.

I don’t know if it’s my fault for this mess, I don’t know who should take care of this noisy, chaotic and ugly filth. Can it be avoided? Property owners, big-minded builders, petty mayors, all of us, average citizens, was it in our interest to avoid?

The rehabilitation of the Patria Avenue road has been postponed until July 10 in the north center of Quito

And that’s where he lives, that is, he survives.

And yes, maybe the misplaced one is me. The one who remembers only backwards.

“Well, that’s what happens when you live backwards,” said the queen; and very condescendingly added: “You have to admit that at first you get a little dizzy…

– Living backwards! repeated Alice, in utter perplexity. I have never heard such a thing!

– The advantage it has is that the memory works in two directions.

– My memory just works

in one,” assured Alicia. I can’t remember things that I haven’t already

it happened.

– How bad is a memory that only works backwards! (OR)