Martyr
By
Jeremy Linnell
Helzma: Did you know the word martyr
originally meant witness? That never made sense to me. What can you witness
when you’re dead? We’re told you go to heaven and get your reward so I
just figured it meant witnessing that, getting to see the afterlife sooner. Or
maybe being able to look back on your life, witness it as it was, not as you
wanted it to be.
Then I moved
here. The first question people always ask is “why did I come?”. I always felt
it was obvious. There’s good hospitals. Good social structure. A place I can
make a living. Freedom to keep my own culture. People act like these are bad
things to want? Like you shouldn’t be proud of a country that can support its
citizens, that welcomes us and doesn’t force us to be something we’re not. You
should be proud. Proud that I can come here with my family and still preserve
my heritage. Would you not want the same?
Yet there is
no pride. Only distrust. I am asked if I hate women because I married the most
beautiful woman in the world and she chooses to keep her beauty only for my
eyes. I am told my way of slaughtering animals is cruel, yet you push them
through machines that grind them for you, removing you from every death. Where
I have to look in the eyes of each creature I kill and thank it for its
sacrifice so that I may live. That I must feel its blood drain and know that it
is on my hands. There is hypocrisy at the heart of your culture.
So leave.
That is the common reply. But my problems lie not with the structures that have
allowed my family to thrive, but the people. The ideologies. The hatred for my
way of life. And all of it could be solved. Our lives are free of the worry and
hatred that drives so many of yours. Our laws are simple, and honest. They
would help you. That is what I always believed. My old country suffered because
there was no unity. No strength. And here I see the same, with a different
coat.
It’s
frustrating. Seeing your life fall apart. Eroded from outside. I want to get
on, but everywhere I turn I meet hostility and frustration. There has to be
another way. A better way. I can feel it crumbling around me. Your…no MY
country needs a statement. Something to show strength. That people do still
believe in something.
That is why
I am doing this. Not to punish. Not to cause pain. But so you can see the
strength that comes from within. The strength needed to die for beliefs. How
strong those beliefs are. Not one of you has that strength, possesses an ounce
of that belief. How could you. Your way of life could not sustain it. But I
know, in my heart that doing this will show that my beliefs are right. For they
give me strength where you have none. Now I am the martyr and you will all bear
witness.
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