Blood and Tears

When I was in the car yesterday, I was listening to the evening news on National Public Radio, when “All Things Considered” came on with Ofeibea Quist-Arcton’s report on the September 28 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Conacry, Guinea.  I had heard the news at the time, with reports of  more than 160 people killed, but yesterday’s report made it clear that horrors from hell occurred that day in the stadium.  Hundreds of women were captured, raped, and brutalized in unimaginable ways by government troops in uniform in broad daylight.  The NPR report included interviews with some of the women, women from a traditional Muslim culture too modest to report to their families what had happened to them, in many cases.  When I got to my destination, I had to sit in the car and weep for a few minutes before continuing with my business.  Last night, I couldn’t go to sleep until I had made a mosaic about the event, thinking about those terrorized women, thinking about them and all the others who have gone before them into the pit.  Thinking about what happened to the little babies, nursed at their mother’s breast, who grew up to be the men in uniform who conceived the ideas that led them to act like monsters.