A history class 50 years from today…
Today, kids, I am going to tell you the story of the country that disappeared for trivial reasons:
This country was full of endless cruelties, injustices, persecutions, and massacres. Even its foundation had rested on the massacre of other people. For hundreds, even thousands of years, some of the people that lived on these lands had been sent on death marches, some had been poisoned in caves like insects, and some had been forced from their homes as their property was plundered.
In the name of one nation and one flag, the founders and leaders of the country inflicted terrible suffering on those who objected to the persecution of people who fell outside of this “one”. Coups, massacres, forced migrations, imprisonment, death … this is how the years passed.
In the 1980s, the children of the country’s dark folk started an uprising. Villages were cleared, homes were set on fire. The dark folk living in villages trudged barefoot to city slums. The dark children of the dark folk left their mothers, their children, their loved ones, and went to work in the factories of the big cities. Others went to the fields.
The dark children of the dark folk harvested hazelnuts and cotton; they laid bricks, built ships, and produced t-shirts for export.
Perhaps country that disappeared for trivial reasons could continue like this for some time. But the regime that came to power at the beginning of the 21st century accelerated its path to disappearance.
In the name of “Allah”, the brigades of the new regime bombed the towns of the dark folk, and left their remains on the ground. The bodies of the dark folk’s children were kept in refrigerators. Cruelties unprecedented in human history began to arise. The dark folk’s houses were infiltrated, and their beds were defiled.
Soldiers, supposedly brothers of the dark folk, painted jeering graffiti on the walls against which the dark folk’s children had been burned. Even doves living in the land of the dark folk were shot.
Only a handful of people heard the cries echoing throughout “Dark”istan, and those that tried to respond were silenced. The media played a big role in this cruelty. It presented the victims killed in the land of the dark folk, from three-month-old babies to 80-year-old grandfathers, as terrorists. Everybody grew silent. The regime had found its strategy. Crying terrorist was the easiest way to bring people in line.
After a while, the regime added traitor to its accusations. People became even more afraid. Now, not only the dark folk were at risk, because anyone could be a traitor. Your teacher, your doctor, your neighbour, your lawyer, your judge, your brother or sister … anybody and everybody.
Without due process or regard for their rights, hundreds of thousands were fired, and hundreds of thousands were thrown in prison…
The prisons filled up. Some babies grew up in prison cells, and others drowned in the Maritsa River trying to flee the country. Shedding tears for these treacherous babies became grounds for being labelled a traitor.
Most people chose to see no evil and hear no evil. They assumed the regime must have its justifications. Where there was smoke, there must be fire.
Some people did react to these cruelties. Those who resisted, who rejected the injustice, who demanded equality, who declared that children should not die, were fired, thrown in prison, and silenced. Some decided to save themselves by leaving country that disappeared for trivial reasons.
But this was not enough. The regime hated the dark folk so much that it set its sights on the dark folk’s children abroad. It did not even hesitate to side with murderers and executioners in order to oppose the dark folk.
With their support, thousands of women were raped and thousands were buried in communal graves. Beautiful cities, thousands of years’ of history, magnificent olive trees … their branches were broken and their roots dried up.
Evil seeped through and surrounded the entire country. Acts that no human should commit against another were committed. Then the animals followed. Cats were sexually assaulted; dogs had their legs butchered. Violence, evil, incivility, vulgarity, and remorselessness spread everywhere.
The country became a cesspit. Though some tried to stay afloat in the cesspit, everyone was sullied by the filth.
The country was swiftly sinking like the Titanic. Alarm bells sounded frequently. The currency lost all its value. Inflation grew and grew. But the regime saw all of this as political machinations.
Kids, I should also mention that the country that disappeared for trivial reasons had a special quality. It loved showing off.
As millions struggled to find food, the country boasted of its ability to build the biggest airports and the tallest skyscrapers, and to buy the most fancy planes. It loved “mosts”; prestige mattered more than anything else.
Instead of writing about the number of workers who died during the construction of the biggest airport in the world, newspapers preferred to write about “mosts”. Five weeks before the opening of the biggest airport in the world, the airport workers revolted.
Their wages were not being paid, they were suffering lethal accidents in unsafe working conditions, they were sleeping with bedbugs, and they were forced to work in inhumane conditions. If they complained, the boss would beat them. When the revolt grew, the workers were labelled traitors and terrorists. After all, most of the workers were dark children of the dark folk.
Neither I, nor history remembers the names of the “journalists” who sucked up to the government and took part in these cruelties. They were quick to publish headlines: Five weeks before the airport opening, workers revolted for trivial reasons. The workers who had been dying for years were just doing it to cause problems for the government.
See kids, the country continued citing “trivial reasons”, until it finally disappeared…