A.R.Yngve
IN MEMORY OF...
Friends, Russians, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury the children, not to praise them.
The evil that suicide bombers do lives after them;
While the good in the innocent young is trapped in their bones;
So let it be with these dead children. The noble mullahs
Have told you the dead were killed not by the killers,
But by the just grievances which drove the killers.
If it were so, it surely was a great grievance,
And grievously have the children of Beslan paid for it.
Here I come, not yet threatened by the priests and their fatwas
For a mullah is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men --
Come I to speak in the children's funeral.
These were children like those I know, innocent and good,
Murdered by men who shouted "God is great" as they shot
And stabbed and blew up children.
But the mullah says his faith is a religion of peace;
And the mullah is an honourable man.
The children went to school;
Did this seem evil?
When the children were shot in the back as they fled, they cried...
Evil should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet the mullah says that the killers' faith is a religion of peace;
And the mullah is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what the mullahs have said,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all have loved people like these children, or these children themselves;
What cause keeps you then, from mourning for them?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the bodybag there with that dead child,
And I must pause till it comes back to me.
But yesterday the word of that child might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there in his bodybag.
O grieving parents, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do the mullahs wrong, and the oil princes wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here's a transcript of a mullah's sermon to the faithful:
Let but the common people hear this speech --
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read--
Lest people would accuse me of lying.
Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not well you should know how the mullahs speak of you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;
And, being men, bearing the memories of those dead children,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad:
'Tis good you know not what the mullahs think;
For, if you should, O, what would come of it!
I fear I wrong the honourable men
Whose sermons guided the men who shot and blew up the children.
I will not read the speech; you may find the transcripts
At www.memri.org.
Do you remember the children?
How they screamed and bled and fled?
And before that, men and women who fell to their death
Or were crushed underneath toppling towers
Or were burned alive.
Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To a sudden flood of mutiny.
They who called for these deeds are honourable:
What private grievances they have, I know not,
That made them encourage it: they are wise and honourable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal your hearts:
I am no orator, as the mullah is;
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
who loves good people.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, nor power
To stir men's blood;
I tell you that which you already know;
I show you the children's wounds, poor dumb mouths,
And ask them to speak for me.
But if I were the mullah,
And the mullah myself, then there would be a preacher
Who would ruffle up your spirits and put a voice
In every wound of the children to move
The peoples of the world to rise against terror's tyranny.
In Beslan was a school full of children - will there be another?
(c)A.R.Yngve 2004. This work of fiction is a pastiche of Marc Anthony's speech in the play JULIUS CAESAR, by William Shakespeare. Its intent is satirical.
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