I was sitting on the couch doing my emails when the earthquake struck. Apparently.

I can’t be sure but I think that this was my first quake. It was the day before the holiday to celebrate the birthdate of Benito Juárez. The news was all about the five times president of Mexico who died in 1872, alongside gossip about the current election. There were a few cars parked outside. People were getting ready for a party.

In Acapluco it was 7.4 on the Richter scale. That’s a lot of shock. A fault line not yet healed rumbles seismic layers along the country’s spine. A vibration from a repentant Malinche weeping a word in Nahuatl would sing two hundred miles and pierce the heart of Mexico City. It could topple a palace. Bury a history.

The first thing I did was get up from the sofa. My childhood comics depicted an earthquake. Artist’s impressions of people falling down a crack in the earth to God knows where. Fire, dripping blood, flailing arms - shrieking faces were running out of the sketch into my bedroom.

Earthquakes make history. The 1985 earthquake in Mexico killed 10,000 people and ignited a new urban citizen’s movement. There were reports that politicians waited for photo opportunities before delivering food aid. People snaking round in queues went crazy and organised themselves. The date is a pivot, before and after, around a cascade of misery, fallen masonry and new real estate plans. Afterwards one slice of a middle class generation resettled in satellite towns like Querétaro and Morelia. 

Memory is etched in the stone and buried in shallow graves. Walk a minute south of the metro station at Insurgentes and you can still see a set of shabby buildings with perpendiculars pointing inward: jagged teeth between shiny implants. Beneath the treacherous leaning portals dusky women sell wooden figurines and stone icons. The Cathedral in the Zócolo is slumped to one side, slowly sinking into the shoulders of the Aztec temple it tried to supplant. Screams from below do not surface.

The second thing I did was to shake my head in disbelief. It was blast furnace hot outside. My head had been crouched over the laptop for three hours in the pose crossed out in the health and safety posters. A trickle of nausea inside my ear, I must be getting dizzy, I thought. The picture of the first indigenous president of Mexico slid to the floor. A cactus spine trembled.

There was a thunderous roar from outside. Exhaust smoke was now creeping in through the half open window. The blind fluttered. I opened the front door. It was not locked. There was a commotion on the pavement, ladders scattered on the stone. Kids crying: ‘mama, mama!’

The gas lorry had arrived to fill the domestic tanks and furious shouts were taking place between neighbours about the best way to reach the supply socket on the roof. A boy in a batman shirt wheeled past and leaped the coils of rubber pipes. The gardener clipped the grass border. I closed the door and put the pan on the hob. It was time for lunch and radio.

That’s when I found out about the earthquake. Eleven people had died and there was a broken bridge in Mexico City. The civil protection force were out. There was calm on the streets. Interviews from all over about all sorts. ‘Benito Juárez taught himself Spanish at 11 years old, was president several times but did nothing for indigenous people.’ Well, thank you for that and we’ll resume with more views after the break. ‘Ring for a taxi - 24 hours a day you can rely on us!’  ‘In this election the most important thing is the participation of the people because that’s what makes a great nation.’ ‘Tonight there are traditional Nahua songs in the plaza and it’s completely free.’ Welcome back on the day a force 7.4 earthquake struck -  and now it’s time for sport -

That was it: my first earthquake. It wasn’t what I expected. The after shocks are still coming.