Yasadikca yaslanmazsiniz, yasamadikca yaslanirsiniz.

Insanlara belirli bilgileri empoze etmenin adi propagandadir, insanlarin hayal guclerini buyuleyerek bilgi aktarmanin yolu ise egitimdir.

Hicbir sey karanlik bir odada siyah bir kedi aramak kadar zor degildir. Hele odada siyah bir kedi yoksa.

Ya bir yol acin, ya bir yol bulun ya da yoldan cekilin.

Uzaklasan dalgalar midir, kara
karasina baka baka bicilen, uzak
dalgalar midir

en buyuk
unutkanlik
olan denizden baska
kim bilebilir siginmasak da
beklettigimiz bir ada oldugunu
cikmak istedigimiz baska bir toprak
kalmayinca
eteginde dalga, eteginde kara, eteginde
her yere uzak
bir baslangicin yoklugu
gitmek kalmak olmek icin bile
mumkun degil olmak
hic!

ben coktan geldim, o varmis midir?

As I looked at these boys who were the age of my students, I wondered how many people they had killed, and what their future would be like. Did they think about the people they shot? Would they think about them as they grew older? What effect would it have on their lives? Would they become compulsive killers? Here they were, escorting us, looking as though they could piss on a land mine and disarm it. I estimated that at the time they entered the bush, they must have been no older than thirteen. They had grown up in the bush. How were they adjusting to barracks life? They loved the power they had. I could see the swagger. They had been promised things, but what would happen if those promises were not fulfilled? I was more afraid of these kid soldiers than of their adult counterparts. The older soldiers seemed corruptible, a bit more cognizant of the problems of life: you could negotiate if you had something to offer them. These kids seemed addicted to obeying orders.

I was becoming more convinced that the afterbirth of war was in ways worse than the actual fighting itself, and that winning the peace was harder than winning the war. Now the guns were silent and the howling of ghosts had taken over, interspersed with the sighs of the survivors, most of whom could not wait to reclaim their land; but the gaps in the silence were punctuated with a sense of anti-climax, a certain lack of direction.

The white man, thinking that he was God, came, subjugated the land, imposed his laws and way of life on the people, and sat back to relax and enjoy the fruits of his iniquity. He had Indian assistants to help him milk the resources of the nation. Together they shared the milk and honey God gave this nation. They made laws to protect themselves from the wrath of the people. They built bigger and bigger castles. They built higher and higher monuments. They amassed deadlier and deadlier weapons. They flaunted their political, economic and social power. Until God decided that enough was enough. He stirred the formerly docile people. He turned the white man's black collaborators into his worst enemies. He cut the white man with his own sword. He crushed his huge empire in His fist. White men started looking over their shoulders as they drove through the city, as they walked their dogs, as they went to their godless temples. The white man was no longer absolute master. The white man was no longer in control. The white man had been defeated by Jesus' words: he who gets much will have much demanded of him. He finally turned tail and absconded like a thief in the night.
The Indian, imprisoned in his greed, did not heed God's warning. In 1971, God raised a new sword, flashing with a new wrath. A year later, the Indian was bleeding, whimpering, wallowing in his sorrows. God took away his home, his security, his peace of mind. God turned his former ally, the white man, against him. Suddenly nobody wanted him. He was kicked from border to border like a dirty ball. The black man rejoiced: God had judged in his favor. Instead of learning a lesson and turning to God, the black man took everything for granted. He took over the booty left by the Indians. Muslims and Christians took to eating, drinking, fornicating and indulging the flesh like the white man and the Indian before them. Castles built on sand never survive big storms. The house built on godlessness was shaken by internal storms, and by the wrath of God's sword, Idi Amin, and it fell on its occupants. From within the ruins, people cried out for salvation, and God heard them. In 1979, the sword was dislodged.

Everyone knew that the first weeks after the war were more dangerous than the last weeks of the war itself.

The sudden, unbelievable absence of the tyrant and the convenient reluctance of our liberators to assert their authority, lest they be associated with the men they had ousted, increased the power vacuum gathering force in the land and empowered the masses in the worst way possible. Suddenly everyone, if they were forceful enough, could become inquisitor, judge and executioner.

Apart from their color, what had they added to priesthood? Had they expanded the vision of life and spirituality? Had they combatted suffering or added to human knowledge in any special way? When they opened their mouths, they merely regurgitated rotting Church rules, worm-infested dogmas and slimy platitudes created in the burrows of the holy armadillo. They were just perpetuating the stink-old order: white, nuclear-warhead-privileged priest over the black, shit-scared peasant priest, who was above the shitty-assed peasant nun, who lorded it over the wormy peasant faithful - man, woman, child. Hundreds of years of Catholic dictatorship later, ninety-five of them home-grown, had come only to this! What a waste!