D & G The smell of blood – lots of blood – sets your teeth on edge. There was a lot of blood. In the dirt. On the knife. On us. So much blood on us. So much blood. ******* We were born after the invasion. We grew up watching our country become less our country. A colony. A certain circular irony. Our puppet leaders played the appeasement game. We listened as our parents begged us not to make trouble. Heard the scorn in the voices of the conquerors’ soldiers who loved to make us sit up and beg. We were the children of cowardice, and we were angry. Young, angry, impotent. We were scared, every day. Scared. Ashamed. Angry. It’s a deathly cycle. So, we met and drank and talked big plans of revolution, gathering in caves and gullies. We set lookouts and then … we went home and slept quietly in our beds. We got up and carried their burdens and took their slaps. We gradually began to realise that we were just one more group of gutless dreamers, waiting for someone else to do something. Of course, there were always plenty of takers for the mantle of heroic martyr. They came and went. A week, a month, a year – sometimes just a day – of violent resistance, whispered slogans and petty actions all ending in the tears of parents and lovers, the laughter of soldiers. Stripped and flayed bodies were hung in trees to remind us that we were less than human and no more trouble than dogs. The invaders were a machine, without sympathy or pity. I think they quite enjoyed the occasional bit of exercise, another chance to show us how things stood. Of course we had the religious nuts too. Calling us back to the mythical glory days, and promising victory if we would just all go back to church and set our lives to rights. Some people listened, and they ended up the same way as the political zealots. The invaders didn’t laugh at them. 93
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