Writing Life by Andrew Dib

The Holocaust isn’t that extraordinary an event, I’ve come to understand, when looked at in the context of human history. Although it should be. It ought to be one of those things that couldn’t possibly be true. A conspiracy, an exaggeration... But it is true. It did happen.  When juxtaposed with other acts of dehumanisation and of human destruction by equivalent or lesser actors, it is easier to understand. The Holocaust is simply on a continuum of scale of dehumanisation of which every person and every nation sits somewhere along. And I believe that it can happen again, and is happening now, albeit to much lesser degrees and in different ways all around the world, and certainly has happened since the Holocaust too. Of course, the Holocaust is unique in its scale and due to the history of Jewish persecution. No question. And of course, it is a completely abhorrent thing. Mind blowingly devastating when one really thinks about it and one immerses themselves in some of it...

A human man, one day, noticed some unusual activity gaining momentum at his house's front door. The first of which was the increased bird excrement and tree kindling accumulating just beneath the fuse box that stood guard at the entrance to his home. Out of the crack at the bottom of the fuse box door was a clue as to the source of the kindling. Twigs descended from the base of the white box, standing out like bright green weeds thriving in the crack of a lifeless concrete path. The human thus suspected a nest hidden within, for this fuse box’s door had a square hole at the top with its own sliding shutter door, providing a sign of welcome hospitality. The door’s little door had always been open...well, for as long as it was this human’s home. Which wasn’t that long, considering the length of this house’s history. But this little opening was for the electricity inspector to read the meter and nothing more! The human man had never noticed the sliding shutter before. A...