The Bad in the Cupboard. Part 1 of Three.

Five children, aged between 7 and 10, playing, laughing, enjoying a day full of sunshine. Two live there, three are visitors.

One of the three comes accross a well, this is a cause of great excitement. He has never seen one before, and calls the others over. Between them they manage to lift the lid, and peer down into the gloom, unable to see the bottom. It is 120 feet deep.

One older boy gives one small girl a shove, she looses her balance and starts to fall. The girls sister, 2 years older, grabs frantically at her clothes, unable to gain purchase. Finally, she manages to hold on to a foot encased in a sneaker, her little sister dangling precariously over the edge. Both girls are screaming for help. The other children do not come to help, they stand mesmerised, staring. As if in slow motion, the shoe and the foot part company.

There is no initial splash, just a dull series of empty sounding thumps echoing, as the small girls body bounces from one side of the shaft to the other. Eventually, after what seems like many minutes, there is a loud thump, and a small splash. She has reached the bottom of the well, and the end of her young life.

A little after 2 hours, her body was recovered and bought to the surface, smashed to pieces like a broken porcelain doll. The skull in 3 pieces, with one beautiful eye completely missing.

The parents identify the body. It is an horrific sight. The father suffers complete nervous collapse, and has never spoken of the event since. The grandmother blames herself, as she was minding the two girls. She still cries every night. The sister's life is never the same again, she blames herself because she let her sister fall. The event will haunt her to the end of her days. The family are never able to live in the house again. The well was their water supply. The eye is still down there. The marriage dissolved under pressure.

Finally, we get to the mother. She was working that particular day, satisfying the craving for money, to support her Western lifestyle. She also blames herself, of course.

This event was I hope, done in the innocence that comes with childhood, in a land where there is no war.

It is bad enough a child dies, let alone being killed in war.


To be continued.

Slaying Angels

There have been other times in history where genocides have largely been ignored by the Christian West. This story has been told to me by my Assyrian Grandmother many times. God rest her Soul.

Assyrian lands were hemmed in by ring after ring of Christian hating Kurds, who in the past had often made armed incursions into their lands. In spite of this and because of benefits to both sides, certain trade routes had remained open. Now, one by one, these routes were being barred. Outgoing goods never reached the markets. Incoming goods never reached their intended recipients, being either filched or confiscated. Tea, sugar, flour, kerosine for lanterns, and ammunition for self defence, or hunding of wild game, and for protection of their flocks from wild beasts. All gone.

Turks, the overlords had never seen eye to eye with the fractious Kurds, except in times of Jihad. This was a constant worry to the Assyrians. At this time the Turks and Kurds had a blossoming friendship, a joining ot the two, making very strange bedfellows indeed, all in the name of Jihad against the infidel Christians, even though these Christians were in their own land.

Thousands of rabble had taken up the cause against the Christians. The Turks and Kurds were well armed, the ring around the Christians was tightening slowly, with ululating voices chanting "Jihad, Jihad". The Assyrian lines grew thinner and thinner, until there were only mostly women and children left. A lot of them chose to jump over the side, and die, taking their children with them Those that did not jump, were disposed of when Turk and Kurd had no further use for them.

Around this time, a million and a half Armenian Christians were massacred in Turkey. When the lust for Christian blood and cooled down a little, thousands of mostly old men, women and children were driven like sheep into the harsh Anatolian desert and made to march without food or water, until they dropped from sheer exhaustion.

No apologies or acknowledgements have ever been made, by either Turk or Kurd regarding the Genocide of the Assyrians. No compensation has ever been made to the Assyrian clans for the green lands they had carved out with such care, from a once barren land.

All appeals to Western Powers have been ignored, as Turkey is a valued ally to the US, these days.

As for the Poor Kurds, 'victims' of the so called 'wicked' Saddam Hussein, they carried out yet another Assyrian massacre, this time with Arab help, wanting to finish off once and for all what their kin had failed to do in Turkey in WWI. When Justice and self interest come into the the equasion, we all know which side is the winner.