Thursday, 29 April 2010

Late night store

As usual, even though it is a "school night" my son and his friends are in the games room. Noisy, ravenous bunch, I have come to dread the inevitable pleas for late night snacks. In better times I would always have plenty of food to hand, or enough money to treat them to pizza. But times are tight, and they have to make do with cheap biscuits and juice. It pains me to admit I can offer them less for staying at home and behaving like civilised human beings than the basiji get for swarming the streets like rabid animals.

But tonight, I dreaded their call for another reason. I hate them to see me crying, and the list of fallen workers had brought my tears in a flood. The tender age of some of these victims was just heartbreaking. Of course I thought of the boys of the same age, here in my home, playing their games, not unaware of the cruelty in this world but still only knowing it with the detached, rosy-tinted view of the young and romantic who hold their future with both hands open. I don't want them ever to face the reality of bloodshed, of seeing someone clubbed to death with a baton, of smelling the sickly metallic stench of blood, hearing the cracking noise of bone shattering. Sights, smells and sounds that you can never be free of again, that are the grave of your inexperience and the headstone of your innocence.

So I washed my face and brushed my hair and I took some of the money I got for my birthday and crept out to the late night store. I bought them the nice snacks like I used to buy, and I proudly delivered my bounty to the ever-hungry, ever-eager, ever-grateful, ever-living boys. I can't bring the dead boys back, but I can take care of the living.

Posted via web from lissping

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