Dear Roberto

They took us from the prison two days ago. In the broad light. Exhausted, filthy and hungry. They pushed us outside the gate. The crowd was screaming! Faggots! Queers! Fucking poofters! Poofs! Benders! Nancy boys! The crowd was screaming and throwing stones at us. Throwing whatever they had prepared for scums like us. Something soft hit my face. I was not sure what was that. I was adamant it stunk like what hell would smell like, tough. Like a human shit wrapped in the tissue paper. “We are not worthy”, they said. Not worthy to live. We were an abomination which needs to be eliminated from the new society. Society in which, there was no place for us.

The crowd was like a sea of blackness. A sea of angry, bearded men accompanied by women, dressed up modestly in black. In black from head to toes. They were everywhere. Bloodthirsty, filled with hatred. Blinded by their faith. Maybe blinded by their governments? I could no longer say. Too scared to look at them. Too afraid of what was to come next. Hopeless, tired and resigned.

They put us on the cargo train. Hundreds of us, shoved like cattle onto the carriage. Too many of us, in each, to be able to sit down. They gave us one empty, plastic bucket and told us to use as a provisional toilet. They shut the door. I heard people screaming. I heard people crying and praying to their gods. Their damn, merciful gods, which abandoned them. Gods, which were supposed to bring them a sense of purpose in life. Fucking gods, which were laughing at us from their heaven, playing the sadistic games on us. The dirt, the bug in their video game, which had never had a right to exist. We were the virus in the system. Glitch, which was supposed to be getting rid of at the next system update.

I was not praying. God and religion had never appealed to me. I didn't remember what was in my head at that moment. I remembered only the massive pain in my chest. Pain which deprived me of oxygen. I was being suffocated by the surrounding people. By fear. By unknown. I wanted to die. I wanted to have enough strength in me to end up the misery I was in. But I couldn’t do it. Pathetic me! Petrified of what was to come, yet too afraid to just sink my teeth in my wrist. Deep enough to rip my veins apart. Just an easy ride to the other side. Quick bite. Game over. Freedom.

The train took us on a long journey from Aberdeen to London. Long 12 hours journey in a bitter cold winter weather. The food ration was not enough. The stench of piss, shit and vomit was overwhelming. The narrow gaps by the roof, were not enough to ventilate the carriage. Everyone was trying to get closer to them just to breathe a bit of fresh air, creating the pressure and crushing the one who had been already there. I saw some of us fainting and the others stamping on them. Total chaos. Survival of the fittest. Why did we bother? Did we believe that at the end of this journey, the one who survived would be granted redemption? Free pass to the gay land where things would be as they had used to be? A warm welcome by the authorities in London and apology for the mistreatment?

We got to Kings Cross at night. They opened the door and told us to get off the train. I saw bodes lying on the floor. Motionless bodies with the sinister grimace on their faces. They ordered us to take them out and pile them on the platform. When we finished, we started marching. They took us out from the station. We were walking towards the centre. Through the narrow streets of London. The alley and buildings were decorated with black flags with sword and new moon on them. To my right, I saw what had used to be Soho. No longer colourful. No longer vibrant. Just a carpet of rugs, padding Dean Street. Such a symbolic statement of the change. We stopped close to the Trafalgar Square. They opened the back door of the National Gallery and pushed us to its basement.

I lost the count as of how long we were there. Probably a week. Maybe 10 days, but no longer. At some point, they opened the door and told us to follow them. We came out through, what had used to be a main entrance to the gallery. When I walked-out, I did not recognise the place. There was a stadium like structure build around the square with the two fountains as a central point of it. Two massive screens were positioned on two sides of the stadium. I could only see something in Arabic being broadcasted with a black flag on the background. The same one I had seen in the streets of London, when they marched us to the National Gallery.

Thousands of men were sitting on the constructed benches. They were chanting something I could not understand. It felt like a mixture of anger and cheering at the same time. The guards started pushing us towards the fountains and forced us to create circles around them. There were maybe two or three rows of us in front of me. Someone got on the platform where the Nelson’s column used to be, and the spectators went quiet. That was the moment when I realised what was about to happen. I saw it, but my brain was rejecting it. Inside one of the fountains I was standing next to, I saw a man. His body was buried in three quarters in the ground and his face was covered with the white piece of fabric. The man on the platform gave a speech about the righteous god who is looking at us from the sky. A god who requires us to follow his gospel and reject all the earth temptations as that was the only way for redemption and gratification in the afterlife. Afterlife where the true believer would be granted a place, made of sapphires, with seventy rooms in it and in each room, there would be a throne surrounded by seventy colourful beds. On each bed there would be the most beautiful girl, virgin, who would never be tired, would never get pregnant, would always be ready to have sex with the true believer.

The crowd went ecstatic! Started chanting how great their god was. Demanding punishment for us, gathered by the fountains. The man on the platform made a sudden move with his hand, and the spectators went quiet. He told them about the sodomites, partially buried in the fountains, and the only punishment they deserved. The noise which happened after that was unbearable. Kill! Death to infidel! Death to sodomites! I could hear it coming from every single angle.

Soldiers which had brought us to the square pointed their guns at us, and the man on the platform told us to start the ceremony of stoning. The fear and confusion in our eyes contrasted the hate and anger in the eyes of soldiers. They despised us with every single fibre on their bodies. They stared shouting at us, ordering us to grab the prepared stones and start throwing them at the buried man. The rain of stones started coming down, toward him. Some of them landed just by his body, the other managed to hit his chest, his shoulders. One of the stones hit the man in the head. I was close enough to hear the crack of his skull. He was screaming. The horrifying scream I wished I had never been exposed to. Blood started pouring out from the created wound. Red, fresh, oxidising blood was spreading fast on the white cloth on man’s head. The whole spectacle was shown on the screens. The crowd went frantic. Screaming. Demanding justice. I kneeled to grab a stone. Stood up and thrown it as hard as I could. At that moment the time stood still. I saw the stone getting straight into the man’s head, accompanied by tens of other stones coming from every possible direction. I saw it landing on his head. Not only that, but I saw his head being stone pummelled. He kept screaming. I wanted him to die. I wanted him to stop this massacre. I grabbed another stone and thrown it at him, wishing for this one to end his misery.

The entire ceremony lasted maybe ten minutes, but it felt like centuries since we had been brought to the square. The man on the platform ordered us to stop. Someone brought shovels and told us to dig the body out. I grabbed one and went inside the fountain. Blood was everywhere. I got closer. We got closer. We started digging him out. Motionless cadaver. Twenty or so minutes of further mutilation of it. We put the body on the stretcher. I looked at it. Just at glance at first. I looked at it again, drawn by the reflection of the light on the piece of jewellery, hanging from the man’s neck. Was that the heart-shaped locket I gave you for our anniversary?