Why Do Parents Kill The Children Of Other Parents?

Picture Daphne Buter. 

Once upon a time, we saw it on TV, children, about a few hundred or more, were killed by adults who believed they had a right to do so, because they just knew for sure their God agreed.

My little girl, who’s eight, walked into the living room and saw the horror on TV.

She started shivering, and I hold her.

"Why do parents kill the children of other parents?" she asked me.

I tried to explain why, so, I didn't speak a word.

My little girl, who’s bone skinny and who smells like salty flowers, went into the garden to make a bed of plants and insects. She took her music box and she lay down in our garden, framed by poppy flowers and bugs. She listened to the twinkling sounds that escaped from the box, while inside the box a tiny doll, a fragile lady ballet dancer in a pink dress, circled around on a pin.

My little girl said she had to look at the sky and that she had to think about big people, that it was why she lay there, to watch the dept of sky and to think about big people.

I watched her watching the dept of sky; I watched her thinking about parents who kill the children of other parents; her fresh eyes wide open, frozen in a frightened gaze.

After some time she asked me to lay beside her to watch the blue filled with hovering clouds and lingering birds. And we lay there, watching the clouds and the birds and the endless space behind them, where the heavens and Gods begin, and the world with all the children who ever died in the name of the many Gods who created us or we them, was our arctic nadir.

While we lay there, I feared for a moment that this world ruled by adults, isn't a safe place for children at all.