Terrorism

A baby-faced boy with curly brown hair and soft brown eyes chased me in my dream.  He wanted to kill me and had a gun in his hand with which to accomplish the task.

As I fled, tripping, falling, running, I called back to him,”Why do you want to kill me?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, and took another shot.

I told Bobby about my dream.  “I think I’ve looked at that boy’s picture too many times on the internet. He’s just a kid.”

“He’s a kid that helped kill a bunch of people,” Bobby replied.

“I just don’t understand the twisted mind that can justify something like that,” I said.

Later, my father was telling me about getting out maps to see where the bombs had gone off. “Mom and I walked the streets of Boston together when we were dating and first married. I know that area,” he told me.

He went on to tell about bringing the maps to the nursing home to see if my mother remembered as well.  He lapsed into a reverie, and I wondered if he was remembering those walks or thinking about looking at maps with my mother.

My mother used to be the map queen.  She knew six ways to get anywhere.

“You know,” he said, “they say that the younger brother was a nice person.”

I looked at him incredulously. “Dad, nice people don’t leave bombs to kill and maim people,” I said. Sometimes I don’t believe the tripe that is out there.

“I think he was influenced by his older brother,” he said. My father has a liberal’s heart, unable to think the worst of anyone.

“Influenced or not,” I responded, “what he did was evil.”

I wrestle with this whole situation.  I don’t understand the harming of innocent people. I further don’t understand the making of excuses for those who do.