And the woman died almost instantaneously
Lúcia Sigalho

At 9 o’clock in the morning, a woman died at the gates of the kindergarten where she was about to drop off her six-year-old son. Her ex-husband, a policeman whose gun had already been taken away from him, stole the gun of one of his colleagues, drove 70 kilometres and lay in waiting for his ex-wife and child. He walked straight up to them, snatched his son away from her and, holding the child by his hand, fired two shots at the mother and killed her, then running away with his son. The mayor of Santarém told the press: The woman died almost instantaneously. Just like that. I don’t know anything more about her, not even her name, nor the colour of her hair, whether she was happy or sad, or what kind of look she had in her eyes. But this erasure, this forgetfulness that death brought to her represents the death of someone that is “killed off”. She became “the woman”, the “dead woman”. And the memory, people’s memory of her, became nothing.

In my country, at least one woman dies every week. Every week a woman is killed by a man who is, was or wanted to be her boyfriend, husband or lover. Every week, there is someone who becomes “the woman”: without any in memoriam, without any trace or history, who ceases to exist any more, just like that, changed into a number for statistical purposes.