In July 1974, not long after the military coup but before the shelling started in earnest, I was peeking out of a south-west window of our apartment on Nikodemus Kitiou Street in Famagusta. I had recently turned sixteen. I was secretly observing a group of men who had been deliberately and noisily defying the curfew for several hours. A national guard tank approached from the direction of Odysseus Street and, after a heated altercation, sprayed machinegun fire across the terrace where the men were gathered drinking. Those who were still standing rushed to help those who were not. The party was over. I fled the room shrieking in a blind panic. Our beautiful world had gone mad.

Many decades later, in a hotel room in central Birmingham, I was looking down on a gang of youths, one of whom was lying inert on the pavement. A police vehicle parked diagonally across the footway and paramedics followed. It triggered deep-rooted memories. My camera was on the tripod in the room and I decided to make a series of photographs of myself at the window. Setting the camera release to automatic, I performed something that was part dance, part fall, over and over