Now is the Time of Monsters...
She was 44 years old; she had a PhD in biology. And she had a good job in the government sector. She had four children, two boys 17 and 12 years, a daughter –aged 14 years –and a baby just about one year old.
She had lived in that city her whole life.
She knew things were bad and getting worse. For the sake of the family, she tried to underplay the violence in the streets by the police, the attacks, and the disappearances.
The country was quickly occupied by a fascist dictatorship. Her husband, a trade union leader, went out one evening, and didn’t come home. She didn’t know where he was, but neighbours told her he was arrested by the occupying force. Some said he’d been shot to death. Her 17-year-old son ran away to join the rebel force against the occupiers. Before he left, she had bought him and her each a burner phone, so they could keep in touch — but after a week or so when she called his cell phone it just kept ringing with no answer.
She tried to get her one-year-old son added to her passport so she and the now three kids could emigrate—she had a sister living in Toronto. But her request was rejected, no reason given.
Most of the grocery stores had been shut and boarded up due to glass shattered by shelling.
Her daughter begged her to get diapers, children’s aspirin (the baby was teething) and milk. But it wasn’t safe to cross town to get to a shop –perhaps still open.
Her car had been torched by a missile.
It’s hulk left still parked at her workplace where she had last left it.
Her office was closed – first they said work from home, then everyone was without a job. All the schools and daycares closed.
Back home the electricity, the internet and even the landline were not working. Water was in very short supply. But it was too dangerous, with the missiles falling and buildings collapsing, to send her older son to stand in line for God knows how long for a few litres of water available intermittently.
The occupying army set up roadblocks and checkpoints every block or two – it was almost impossible to travel around the city. She showed her ID to the armed soldiers at the checkpoint and told them she had to see her elderly father who lived across town. The shells, that had been exploding all around him for weeks on end, had aged him faster than she thought possible. He now believed his wife (dead for a decade) had run off with another man, and that she, his daughter, had robbed him. When she managed to get to his bungalow, just his dog was left wandering in the front; where did her dad go?
She had told her older children to stay in their house, and look after the baby.
But her 12-year-old son ran out just to get milk, according to the 14-year-old daughter.
When the mother returned home from a fruitless search for her own dad, she and her daughter moved the mattresses down to the main floor – just in case.
A missile struck just beside their house. Screaming at the daughter to get out, she grabbed the baby and ran out of the house, just before it caught on fire. There was no longer a fire brigade, and no police who would help.
The mother had no shoes on.
Suddenly she saw her 12-year-old son stagger near the house; it looked like he had been hit in the head by something. Blood was pouring down his face.
Someone came by in a car, the mother pushed her son in first and as she held the baby’s blanket to the boy’s head to stop the bleeding.
She handed the baby to her daughter – the mother didn’t know what to tell the girl.
The man who drove the car first took them to the children’s hospital. But it was closed; the mother saw the seriously wounded patients were being loaded into vans. Her driver, whom she did not know, took her to another hospital – in the forecourt, a medic said it looked like her son had shrapnel in his head – he was unconscious.
This sounds like life today in Gaza, in Khan Younis, in Rafah.
But it is Dublin, Ireland. The book is a very shocking testament to an unraveling world. A world run by fascists and state-terrorists. A world reduced to hell… It is a world that is brought to us in Prophet Song a novel by Paul Lynch that won the 2023 Booker Prize for fiction.
Do we blame the mother for not being able to take her children and emigrate to Canada?
Do we blame her and the schools and the collapsing government for not warning the citizens?
Do we blame her for not denouncing the older teens and young men that are throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at tanks on the streets. Do we say “You have to denounce the state’s former government?”
Do we say that England should take everyone in – all the millions of Irish that hate the occupying force?
Featured image: The Werewolf or the Cannibal by Lucas Cranach the Elder, German, a woodcut from 1512. (©Trustees of the British Museum). For more on this painting, read this.
Share this:
Related
US & Israel celebrate in Jerusalem, as the Whole World watches the Bloodbath in GazaMay 15, 2018
Hong Kong vs Gaza– Don’t touch the ‘3rd rail’September 2, 2019Liked by 1 person
Perseid Showers or the Truth about GazaAugust 16, 2019Liked by 1 person