Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 1 min.)

As I locked my bike up in Dublin City centre today, about to take a longish bus journey, two worlds connected around me.

Seeing a young woman collecting rubbish from the pavement to put in a litter bin, I became aware that she was the user of a nearby tent. I have to admit I was impressed with the focus on clearing of rubbish and noted an older van driver looking too.

Taking out my wallet I gave her some money with a brief word of encouragement and thought I heard the van driver giving out to me for doing so. Ignoring him, I got ready to cross the street to the bus stop. “Hey!” he shouted at me.

I turned back to him, ready for an argument.

“Did you just give that girl some money?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, (restraining myself from adding “and what of it?”). I was ready to meet aggression if it was coming but didn’t feel the need to start it.

He stretched out his hand to me, holding out a ten-euro note: “You dropped this.”

“Oh, thanks,” sez I, accepting the note, “I thought you were going to tell me off.”

He looked taken aback. “Not at all, sure I sometimes give her some money too.”

We shook hands and I crossed the road, reflecting that mine and the van driver’s world had briefly and in a small way intersected with the young woman’s world.

Outside, in yet another world, a state is carrying out genocide against a people in full view of the World, not just with western states’ compliance, as occurred with the genocide against the Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, but this time with the actual encouragement and active collusion of the western states.

End.