"Talk!" She said to those who could hear. Like statues preserved by time, they too stood unmoving. Unshaken by the woman's presence.
Her son looked at her, at the crowd. His eyes begged for a kind soul. Just one. And the people looked back at him and his mother; their stone eyes looking but not truly seeing.
"Please!" The mother pleaded.
Two men were already standing on either side of her son. His arms were extended and cold steel decorated his wrists. It kissed his skin in a way that wrenched his heart, and in that moment, he began to weep. He did not do it. Who would nobody speak up?
"Why won't you help my son? Are you all that frightened to speak up?" Now weeping the mother fell on her knees before everyone.
Her tears were like rain on the parched earth beneath her. She wept bitterly over the injustice committed towards her child. Some in the crowd were moved by the tears of mother and son; yet, none were stirred to break the silence.
"I did not kill her!" The young man struggled to free himself from the man's iron grip.
"I swear! I didn't!"
And he really didn't. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And people knew that! But none dared to break the silence.
The hands of the law threw the son into a circle of curious onlookers. Red dust floated into the air.
"You all know the law of our people! An eye for an eye... A tooth for a tooth..." The oppressor declared.
The woman's wails pierced into the silence that had fallen over them. The silence had grown like a cancer. Nobody would speak.
The trigger was pulled and the bullet was fired. The young man's life force poured into the dry earth, and it drank his blood greedily. After that, everyone went back to their lives.
Lives ruled by silence.
"Strong people stand up for themselves but the strongest people stand up for others."
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