Killed my people, took me from my home, made a slave of me, and then they called me a barbarian. If all I had known was pain then life would not seem so bad, but I was old enough to remember my mother’s lessons and my father’s stories. I can still see their faces.
Their pristine marble splashed with blood, their people crying for mercy, their city burning, and now they call me a barbarian. I am what they have made me and worse. The same for all of us. Our sons will not understand us, they will think us mad. But they will live only in a time when there was pain, going into an era of peace, because of what we have done.
Paddy Dobson
7th January 2023