Athena's Choice by Adam Boostrom

Author:Adam Boostrom [Adam Boostrom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: na
Publisher: Thinker Books
Published: 2019-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

The NAU Times

August 7th, 2094

Project Lazarus: Our Greatest Mistake

Full Transcript of the speech delivered today by Mirza Khan before Congress

Warning: The following contains mature content

considered unsuitable for younger readers.

Ladies,

There has been a lot of talk about how “wonderful” it will be to have men back in the world. On walks through the city, I often overhear young women speculating about what activity they’d like to do first once men have returned to our lives. Take a couples cooking class? Go on a trip? Make love? It all sounds so delightful and innocent. There’s only one problem. None of these women have ever actually met a man. They have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t know what malice lies in the hearts of the demons they fancy. They’re too young to remember what the devils were really like. But, that’s ok. I remember. I've met lots of men in my life.

My father was a bread-maker and a good man. He used to bake all different kinds of loaves of bread and sell them in our small village in Syria. Every morning, I used to overhear him waking up before dawn to put the dough into the ovens. By the time the sun rose, our entire house smelled delicious.

Then, one night, there came a loud banging on our front door. I thought perhaps it might be some hungry customer who couldn’t wait till morning for their tasty loaves. In that way, I was like the women of today: young, foolish, and completely naive.

When my father opened the door, he was met by a dozen men in masks carrying long guns. They burst inside, bloodying his face in the process. They shouted at him, called him an infidel and a devil-worshipper. They said that their God had granted them the right to do whatever they wanted to him and his family. Then they tied him to a chair and beat him with their fists, never stopping until he was dead.

My father’s body was still tied to that chair when the men brought my mother and my sisters and I downstairs to look at him. I didn’t even recognize him at first; his face was so badly beaten. Then the men turned their angry, lustful gazes toward us, the women and girls left behind. They said their God required them to rape us all, repeatedly, and that we should prepare ourselves. I was nine years old.

In the decades since that night, I’ve asked myself more times than I can count: why did those men do that to my family? But the answer is simple. There’s no complicated mystery. That’s who men are. That’s who men have always been. When a man can get away with taking something he wants, he takes it. The men that destroyed my family were not ‘radicalized terrorists’, nor ‘mentally-ill sociopaths.’ They were just plain, ordinary men filled with anger, and vengeance, and lust, and greed. They saw an opportunity to take what they wanted without any consequences, so they did.

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