United Nations Rights Council Approves Resolution On Religious Hatred After Qur’an Burning
“Hyporcite, Hegemonic, War Criminal, Fake Democracy Preachers, Braindead and Free Speech Boak Bollocks Western Countries” Had Strongly Opposed Resolution, Arguing It Conflicted With Laws On Free Speech
— Jon Henley Europe Correspondent | Wednesday 12 July 2023
Protesters hold copies of the Qur’an during a demonstration outside the Swedish consulate in East Jerusalem last week. Photograph: Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images
A deeply divided UN human rights council has approved a controversial resolution that urges countries to “address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred”, after incidents of Qur’an-burning in Sweden.
The resolution was Strongly Opposed By the Hyporcite, Hegemonic, War Criminal, Fake Democracy Preachers and Free Speech Boak Bollocks US, EU and Other Western Countries, which argued that it conflicted with laws on free speech. On Wednesday, the resolution was passed, with 28 countries voting in favour, 12 voting against and seven abstaining.
Last month, an Iraqi-born protester caused outrage across the Muslim world after tearing pages from the Qur’an, wiping his shoes with some of them and burning others outside a Mosque in Stockholm during the Eid-ul-Adha holiday.
The Swedish embassy in Baghdad was briefly stormed, Iran held off from sending a new ambassador to Stockholm and the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned Sweden’s authorities and asked the Geneva-based UN human rights council to debate the issue.
Turkey also expressed its anger, citing “vile protests against the holy book” in Sweden as one of its reasons for withholding approval of the Scandinavian country’s application to join North Atlantic Terrorist Organization (NATO) on Monday, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had agreed to set aside his veto and support the application.
A Muslim woman recites from the Qur’an during a demonstration to denounce the burning of a Qur’an that took place in Sweden, in Karachi, Pakistan. (File/AP)
Several similar protests had previously taken place in Stockholm and Malmö. Swedish police have received applications for more, from individuals wanting to burn religious texts including the Qur’an, the Bible and the Torah.
Addressing the UN council last week, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said such acts were an “incitement to religious hatred, discrimination and violence”, and occurred under “government sanction and with a sense of impunity”. Ministers from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia echoed that view.
While strongly condemning the burnings, however, western countries defended free speech. The German envoy called them a “dreadful provocation” but said free speech also meant “hearing opinions that may seem almost unbearable”. The French envoy said human rights were about protecting people, not religions and symbols.
After the vote on the resolution, the US envoy to the council, Michèle Taylor, said that with more time and open discussion, a consensus could have been reached.
“Unfortunately, our concerns were not taken seriously,” Braindead Michèle Taylor said. “I’m truly heartbroken that this council was unable to speak with a unanimous voice today in condemning what we all agree are deplorable acts of anti-Muslim hatred, while also respecting freedom of expression.”
Pakistan’s envoy to the UN in Geneva, Khalil Hashmi, said the resolution did not seek to curtail free speech but was instead aimed at striking a balance. “Regrettably, some states have chosen to abdicate their responsibility to prevent and counter the scourge of religious hatred,” he said.
“A message has been sent to billions of people of faith across the world that their commitment to prevent religious hatred is merely a lip service. The opposition of a few in the room has emanated from their unwillingness to condemn the public desecration of the holy Qur’an. They lack political, legal and moral courage.”
Saudi Arabia welcomes UN rights body’s approval of motion on religious hatred! UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday approved a resolution on religious hatred in the wake of the burning of copies of the Qur’an in Sweden. (File/AFP) Arab News July 12, 2023
The resolution condemns all manifestations of religious hatred including “public and premeditated acts of desecration of the holy Qur’an” and urges that those responsible be held to account.
Some liberal commentators in Sweden have argued that the protests should be regarded as hate speech, which is outlawed when aimed at an ethnicity or race. Many others, however, say criticising religion – even if believers find it offensive – must be allowed and that Sweden must resist any pressure to reintroduce blasphemy laws.
Swedish police have previously tried to ban Qur’an-burning protests but have been overruled by the courts on free speech grounds. Last month’s was allowed on the grounds that the security risks “were not of a nature to justify, under current laws, a decision to reject the request”.
Sweden’s government issued a statement afterwards, saying it strongly rejected “This Islamophobic Act”, which “In No Way” reflected its opinions. But that drew strong criticism from free speech advocates who noted the individual who carried out the protest had stayed within the bounds of the law and exercised his constitutional freedom of expression.
Officials in Stockholm are concerned the situation may escalate as with the controversy over the publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by a Danish newspaper in 2005.
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This is an odd piece that I mostly wrote to explore Ciaran's family and upbringing a bit. Who even are these people that Ciaran sold his soul for, etc. Ciaran's story so far can be found here. Mind the tags.
The first job I went out on with my father and his crew, the summer after we moved down south into town, was clearing land for some wealthy family who’d newly moved out of the capital. Henley, the name was.
It was pretty neglected land, overgrown with brush and saplings and fully grown trees right up to the eaves of the big house that would probably be really fancy once it had been taken care of properly. I was working near there - tying branches and whippy green wood into bundles to carry them away - when I noticed him.
Leaning over the half-rotten wooden railing of the balcony on the second floor, he was dressed in such good clothes it took me a second to notice that he was about my age or a little younger; a young fifteen or an old fourteen, maybe.
He was watching us work - or, well, not me actually; his gaze was fixed on the men with hatchets a little further away from the house. I straightened up, wincing and stretching my back, and wondered what it was he found so intriguing about Lin and Maric clearing the brush. Was he that bored out here?
I glanced over my shoulder. Maric had taken his shirt off.
Oh. I realised what it was that he was so fixated on, and what that meant, at about the same time he noticed me watching him.
If he was embarrassed to be caught staring, he didn’t show it. He transferred his cool, intent gaze to me.
Abruptly nervous, I shrugged. I flicked my eyes to Maric, back to him; and tried to contrive a grin that said: hey, I get it. Fair enough.
I did get it, actually; Maric was one of the few younger people around here that wasn’t related to me, so I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t spent a little time looking at him myself. As of last month he was extremely happily married to my cousin Shari, though.
The well-dressed boy’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. Greatly daring - oh man am I going to look stupid if I’ve misunderstood things - I winked at him and turned away.
-
“The garden I wanted to show you is just around here,” Jon said, a little loudly, a little obviously fake - although there was nobody to hear him. We’d left the rest of the crew under one of the trees Jon’s father had decreed would be allowed to stay, staying out of the worst of the midday heat while they finished lunch.
He gave me a conspiratorial look and I grinned, stupidly, trying not to be too dazzled by the sun on his hair and on his very white shirt and pale jacket. I followed him around the side of the shed the crew and I had just finished building last week.
I wondered if, jokes aside, there really was a garden - I wouldn’t have minded seeing it, wouldn’t have minded watching Jon’s face and hands as he talked about it - but once we were in the cool shade of the building he reached out and snagged my wrist, and then before I could think twice we were standing nose to nose up against the wall.
I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that I’d been working all morning, had dirt under my fingernails and ground into my elbows even though I’d washed up for lunch, that my shirt was still saturated with sweat across my back. I probably smelled, too. Surely any second Jon would notice and wrinkle his nose, and then I might need to change my name, buy a ticket on the next coach, and put on a fake moustache to not be recognised while I left the country.
I wondered if it was possible to kiss someone with your hands behind your back.
“Why are you doing that with your hands?” Jon demanded. He batted one of them out of the air playfully from where I had been hovering it. “Am I made of glass suddenly? You weren’t this shy last week.”
“Well - well, your jacket is so nice,” I protested. Heat flared across my cheeks. “It’s white. And I’m all dirty, I don’t want to mess up your nice clothes…”
“Old gods, you are adorable,” Jon laughed.
I tried to laugh off the fluttering feeling in my stomach, tried to tease him in return. “Why are you out in the grounds in good clothes, do you - ”
“Just come back from lessons. Shh.”
And then he put his hands on my chest, and stretched up a little because he was shorter than me, and kissed me. Which was an effective way of shushing me, I had to admit, because I stopped thinking about his clothes or my clothes or the dirt on my elbows or basically anything else.
I didn’t think we were there that long - surely it couldn’t have been longer than a minute or so? But when a loud and angry voice split the air, my first guilty thought was that I had misjudged the time and was late. We had sprung apart - a second of delay because Jon’s hand had curled around my waist and needed to be disentangled - before I realised to my horror that the voice didn’t sound like any of my people.
“Oh, no,” Jon said, and his face was so tight and frightened that I was distracted by a moment of worry for him. The person marching angrily across the broken ground towards us was Jon’s father. I’d seen him several times since starting the job; he’d only ever spoken to my dad.
“Mr - Mr Henley, sir,” I stammered. Maybe I should shut up and let Jon do the talking - but Jon was backing away from me, as if trying to put distance between us as fast as possible, hands brushing down his jacket to straighten it. “I - ”
“What the hells do you think you’re doing?” Henley snarled - his face a furious mask. I thought the question was directed at Jon, not me, which was why I was surprised when Henley reached us and the first thing he did was reach out and grab a fistful of my shirt.
He hit me across the face; not lightly, either, with the back of his hand. I had my hands half-raised instinctively to defend myself, but luckily I realised what a breathtakingly bad idea what would be before I did anything.
Instead I just reeled, my face burning and my ear ringing. I got my feet underneath myself and tried to tug my shirt out of his hand. “Sir! Sir, please!”
“Damn Caresi trash, this time?” he demanded of Jon. He didn’t let go; he twisted the handful of shirt he held and shook it like a terrier with a rat. “You decided to dig in the gutters for this one just to aggravate me, didn’t you?”
Jon flinched and gave me an appalled look. “Father, I - ”
The noise had brought half the crew coming to see what the fuss was; the men who came around the corner first froze and melted back.
The person who came around the corner next was my dad.
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me.
He took a moment to take in the situation, brows down low over his eyes. I couldn’t meet them; I yanked at my shirt again, fruitlessly. My face was hot and stinging; the slap had happened before anybody else was here, but could Dad tell? I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want any of the men over there - my relatives and their friends and people I’d worked with for weeks - to know Henley had just slapped me.
“Mister Henley,” Dad said sharply. “Let go of my son, please.”
“Your son, is it?” Henley yanked my shirt as he turned around and I stumbled, only just avoiding falling flat on my face. He didn’t let go. “Well, mister Adarie, maybe you can tell me what your son is doing taking mine back behind outbuildings, with their filthy hands practically down each other’s pants? Is your son a two-copper whore?”
“Father,” Jon said, but he wasn’t as shocked by this as everybody else was; rather he was ramrod-straight and pale. The rest of the crew was milling around behind Dad now and a little murmur went through them. I burned.
“Ciaran,” Dad said. His voice was very level. “Is this true?”
I pulled on my shirt wildly, and managed to get it out of Henley’s grip. I backed away out of his reach. “No, it’s not!” I said, and my voice cracked, humiliated tears springing to my eyes. “I only - we only - it was just a kiss. That’s all! Don’t make it - he makes it sound like -”
Henley made a scoffing noise, disgusted.
He makes it sound so… so low and dirty, I wanted to say. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t - like that. I didn’t even unbutton his shirt. But you might have wanted to. But I didn’t! And even if I had - !
Dad looked at me for a long second and my stomach plummeted; I couldn’t bear the thought that it was disappointment or even disgust that made him take so long to say anything. “You know you’re here to work, Ciaran,” he said. “Should you have been working?”
“No,” I protested. I sniffed desperately and tried to force the tears away. “No, Dad, I - it was the midday break. I’m working, I’m not slacking off…”
Maric, hanging back behind my father’s shoulder, coughed. “That - that is true,” he said, and his eyes were sympathetic when he glanced at me. “We had stopped for midday. There wasn’t anything he should have been doing.”
Dad looked like he wanted to say something else, but in the end all he did was sigh. “Come here,” he said.
I went to do as he said, miserable - but Henley stepped in front and put an arm out. I could’ve got around him, maybe, but I didn’t want to push him and make things worse, so I just stood there like an idiot.
“You seem to have the misapprehension that I’m most concerned about his work,” Henley said, low and furious. “Frankly I don’t care. He could be the best man you have and three times as fast as any of the rest, and I’d still want his hide.”
My stomach dropped; I could feel heat burning in my cheeks but the rest of me went cold. Maric looked alarmed; a muttered conversation went on behind Dad’s back between a few of my cousins. Dad gave me one quick glance, his brow creased, before turning his attention to Henley.
“Ah… sir,” he said. “Hang on, now. There’s no call for that kind of talk... Ciaran’s barely fifteen...”
“No?” I couldn’t see Henley’s face, but I could hear the venom in his voice. The distance between me and Dad seemed to lengthen; suddenly everybody else was way over there, and I was trapped behind Henley and Jon. “You don’t think so? You think I ought to let him creep around corrupting my son, doing whatever - ”
“Don’t be stupid, Father,” Jon interrupted, heated. “If anybody has grounds to claim that it’s Adarie, since -”
“You’ll hold your tongue,” Henley snapped. “We’ll discuss what happens with you later.”
“Look,” Dad said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Look, hang on. Mr Henley… this…it’s unfortunate, and I’m sorry, but let’s not make it more than it is. I apologise for his behaviour. But he’s just a boy. There’s no harm done. There’s no suggestion he’s made your son do anything he didn’t want, is there?”
“No,” Jon said, before his father could answer. He flicked a quick glance at me that I couldn’t read, and then looked to my dad with a mulish expression. “It was my idea. I talked your son into it.”
“Well, then - well, then. They’re just kids,” Dad said. “More heart than sense. No harm done.” As if he said it often enough Henley would believe it. He made what I thought was an attempt at a rueful fellow-feeling smile. “We were all boys once, weren’t we? Eh?”
“Not in the sense that you seem to mean, no,” Henley said, coldly. “I can’t say I was. Perhaps that you think so…. Explains some things.”
Dad shook his head. “Listen, I don’t think it’s good to have this out in public for everyone to gawk at. Let’s - let’s move on, and talk about this later, and let everyone get back to work. Ciaran’ll go. I’ll talk to him - you can talk to your boy.”
“I don’t think it’s talk either of them needs,” Henley said, but he seemed to have tired of the conversation; maybe he didn’t like the reminder that this was happening in public, either? He gave me a look like I was something he’d scraped off his shoe, and stepped to one side. “Fine. We’ll discuss this and the future of the project in my office this afternoon, Adarie. Get back to what I’m supposedly paying you all for.”
I edged along the wall of the shed to get around him, giving him as wide a berth as the poisonous snake he reminded me of. Once I reached Dad’s side I turned around.
Jon was standing at his father’s side, mirroring us; his stance was stiff and there was something very deliberate about the way he held his chin tipped up. I swiped a hand over my face - it was wet and my nose was running, so that was revolting, that was a really dignified way to end this.
“Of course. Ciaran - apologise to Mr Henley, and young master Henley,” Dad said. “And then you’ll have to walk home.”
Apologise to Mr Henley? I would rather have eaten glass, in that second. The words, but, Dad, hovered on my lips, but one look at Jon and his father made me swallow them painfully.
I looked at the ground. “I’m - I’m very sorry for the trouble,” I managed to force out. “Sir. Please forgive me.” In my head I directed it at Jon, because I was sorry to Jon. Sorry because I’d obviously gotten him in trouble; sorry I hadn’t kept a closer eye out for people coming.
Henley sneered at my apology, but he was already turning away. Jon followed him without looking at me, and that hurt, too, unexpectedly.
“Thank Ena,” somebody murmured from Dad’s other side; probably Maric. Somebody else behind him laughed. And maybe I was just really upset and not thinking straight, maybe they meant it as nervousness and relief, but it didn’t feel like it.
“Ciaran, what were you thinking?” Dad demanded, and went to touch my face; to turn it and look at where Henley had smacked me, probably. The anger in his voice made my stomach seize up all over again. “I never thought that you were this -”
I pushed his hand away, ducking my head. “What, are you going to hit me now, too?” I asked, and my voice was all over the place, high and tearful. Of course he was disappointed. Of course he didn’t want to think of me like that.
He looked shocked. His hand dropped. “Ciaran!”
Why does everybody have to be here? Bad enough Dad and Maric! But fucking everyone?
“Can we do this later? You s-said go home, I’m going,” I said, turning away with one hand held up over my eyes in the vain hope that people would stop looking at my face and just let me get out of here.
“All right, later,” I heard Dad say as I went blindly through the ranks of the crew.
-
Later, I lay on my bed upstairs in the house we shared with my Uncle Cob and his family.
The rest of the family was home. I could hear them downstairs, talking over dinner; but I couldn’t make out what they were saying, which was probably a good thing, frankly. My stomach rumbled, but I wasn’t going down there, possibly ever again.
I heard the stairway creak as somebody came upstairs. The door eased open.
“Go away,” I said into the pillow.
“Hey,” Bren said, softly. “It’s only me, Ciaran. Can I sit down?”
I sniffled. Bren wouldn’t be so bad. Bren hadn’t been there, today, he hadn’t seen it - he worked in a factory, not with my dad’s crew. Then again, people had undoubtedly told him, and I couldn’t decide if that was worse. I wouldn’t have privacy up here for very long anyway; my cousin and my brother would be up at bedtime and I’d have to either look them in the eyes or pretend to be asleep already.
Bren took my silence for agreement, shut the door, and came to sit on the bed beside me. The wooden frame creaked. He didn’t try to touch me.
“Your dad sent me up here to have a bit of a talk with you,” he said. No big surprise there. He was the youngest of them, and seemed to have all of the skill with words my dad and my uncle Cob never picked up. “He told me about what happened at the worksite today.”
“So you heard that I’m a two-copper whore,” I said viciously into the pillow. “I guess everybody knows that by now, don’t they?”
I heard him draw in a wincing breath. “Nobody should have called you that, Ciaran,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
I rolled over to stare at the ceiling. “He called me Caresi trash, too,” I said. “That bit was before Dad arrived. Said Jon was after people ‘from the gutter’.”
Bren rubbed a hand through his hair, looking awkward. “Yeah, you’ll… you’ll find that in this part of the country. It’s just not normally that openly put,” he said. “I doubt your dad would be surprised to hear it. Henley sounds like a piece of work.”
“Then why’d Dad take the job?” I asked. “Why’d he offer us the job? If he’s that…?”
Bren sighed. “Ah, if only we could be that picky.”
I stared at the ceiling with my hands twisting in my shirt. “Do we… still have the job?” I wasn’t stupid. We needed that job. If I’d lost it for us…
“Yes,” Bren said. “It’s almost done, as I understand it, everyone will grit their teeth and put up with each other for another couple of weeks. It’s not worth finding another crew for what’s left.”
He turned around to look at me very seriously. “Look, you - you know your dad loves you to bits, Ciaran,” he said gently. “We all do. If he was - stern, today, it’s not because you made him angry. It’s because he was scared for you.”
I avoided Bren’s gaze, turning my head to stare at the wall.
I hadn’t been fair, this afternoon, to ask if he was going to hit me - that was probably part of why Bren was here and he wasn’t. I’d surprised and maybe even hurt him. My father might be gruff and difficult to talk to, but he’d never been that kind of man. It would probably take doing something actually criminal or violent or both before I’d be afraid anybody under this roof would hit me.
But that wasn’t what I’d been afraid of, really.
“I think,” I managed to say, “I think he is angry. Why wouldn’t he be angry?” Angry was not the word that was buzzing about in my head, like a fly trapped behind a windowpane. Angry wasn’t what I was afraid of.
“Yes, but not like - ” Bren waved his hands in a fruitless gesture. “Ciaran, you did something foolish today, not - not something morally wrong, or something your dad thinks is dirty, or something he’s going to think less of you for. He would never - there’s nothing you could do to make us love you less, Ciaran, not a thing, and certainly not something like this.”
Think less of me. Yeah, those were words you could use to describe it, that look of revulsion in Henley’s eyes. Did I think that Dad would look at me like that?
“Mmn,” I said past a lump in my throat.
“The whole - boys, girls, doesn’t matter,” Bren said. He smacked his knee lightly for emphasis as he spoke. “As long as you - as long as you’re treating people right and acting with integrity, it doesn’t matter at all.”
Acting with integrity. Only my uncle Bren could say a phrase like that and have it come out naturally, like he said it every day. “It matters sometimes,” I said - and, to my horror, my voice was going all wobbly again. “It matters to - ”
“It matters to miserable horse’s asses like Henley,” Bren said firmly. “Nobody you should care about. If anybody in this family or the work crew has a stupid opinion about it, you come and tell me.” Oh no. Oh, no, that would not be happening at all, no matter how many stupid opinions anybody has. “Your ma and dad aren’t… This is outside of their experience. They don’t really know how to talk about it, which is why I’m here and not them. But none of us care, and they want to make sure you know that.”
I sniffled, swiped a hand over my eyes. “Okay.” I pushed myself up to sit up, my back against the wall behind me. “So. So Dad just thinks I’m a fucking idiot who embarrassed him in front of the client. He just thinks I ruined the whole fucking job. He just thinks I can’t be trusted to - to - ”
I could just about see Bren wincing at the language, and deciding not to pull me up on it. Well if you can say horse’s ass, I can say fuck, can’t I?
“You didn’t ruin it,” he said patiently. “It’s awkward, the working relationship has soured, but like I said, this guy has been a piece of work from the start so I don’t think there was a lot there to damage.” He sighed. “But, yeah. You made things uncomfortable for him. I think you know what you did was stupid, and you know why. Don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled, staring at my knees. If Jon had been a girl, I suppose it wouldn’t have gone much better. Caresi trash. “Shouldn’t - shouldn’t let, that stuff, into work stuff. I know.”
I did know - but - well, how often could I expect to meet other people like me? Nice-looking boys who thought I was worth paying attention to? When was that ever going to happen again?
“Uh huh,” he said. “It was a bad judgement call. He’s not going to stop loving you for those, either, thank God or none of us would love anybody anymore in this family.”
That made me smile, which I guess he’d probably intended.
“So that’s about all your dad wanted me to say to you, I think,” he said, clapping his hands together. “The next part is from me.”
“Um. Okay?”
He held his hands steepled in front of his face for a moment, and I could see him sorting out words in his head. “I had this talk with a few of the girls at one point,” he said. “It’s fundamentally not that different.”
I was a little alarmed. “Bren, I’m not a girl…”
“No, and that means there’s a few things you don’t need to worry about,” he agreed. “I’m not expecting you to come home pregnant. But, Ciaran, please bear this in mind for any escapades you might get into in the future. Do not get involved with rich boys or rich men.”
This was not what I’d been expecting. “Huh?”
“Rich men that are employing you are a bad idea for reasons you’ve figured out already, I think, but all of them are trouble,” he said. “Even be careful about boys that maybe aren’t all that rich but aren’t Caresi.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. “I know lots of non-Caresi people who are -”
“It’s not about them being bad people necessarily, kiddo, it’s about power,” Bren said. He lifted a hand in the air to gesture. “It’s about… if things go bad, like they could have today, who gets left with the consequences and who doesn’t? Who can ruin whose life if they want to? Who can go to the authorities and be believed?”
I frowned. “I mean, honestly? Today? I think Jon got left with the consequences.” I would bet anything that right now Jon was not getting a gentle talk from his favourite uncle about how loved he was, despite making very embarrassing and possibly expensive mistakes.
Bren sighed. “Jon, is that his name? All right. Yeah, Jon’s probably having problems with his family, but not - not the kind of thing I’m talking about. Ciaran, you - your dad was scared today.”
I bit my lip. I knew that.
“If he hadn’t happened to be on site that day,” Bren continued, “Or if Henley hadn’t been able to be talked down - he could have hurt you badly and there wouldn’t be much any of us could have done about it, before or after. What are we going to do, go to the police and tell them this rich landowner had our kid beaten? The police would laugh.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees. “I know. I know.”
Bren reached out and rubbed my shoulder. “Maric told me Jon seemed like a good kid. Took the blame, if Henley was going to lay blame?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He did.” And I’d… made trouble for him, and then left him. It didn’t feel good. Even knowing that there was nothing I could have done about… any of it. “It wasn’t all his idea. It was both of us.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s a good kid,” Bren said gently, “Because if he thought it’d help his position with his father, he could pretty easily have lied and said it was just your idea.”
“But it doesn’t matter whose…”
“I know,” Bren said. “You’re right. But… people get funny about this, Ciaran, the girls get it worse than boys usually. I know you’ve heard people talking. It’s always got to be somebody’s fault. And if you’re…” he hesitated. “There’s nothing wrong with how you are. You have nothing to be ashamed of. But the world won’t always be fair to you.”
Underneath us I could hear the sounds of dishes clattering, people starting to come up the stairs. Sounded like I’d made Bren miss dinner, too.
“No,” I said, looking down at my knees. “I guess I know that.”
“To society at large, someone like Jon?” Bren said. “His reputation and livelihood and well-being is more important than yours is. And it’s very easy for him to hurt you. Even if he never would hurt you, he could. That’s what I’m talking about.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, looking tired. “You’re young, and I know this is a lot to think about. I don’t mean to depress you, or frighten you, or any of that. I just… I don’t want you to walk into situations where you don’t have power because somebody tells you it doesn’t matter or that love will fix it. It does, and it won’t.”
I wasn’t sure I understood the future that Bren was picturing for me, that this was advice he needed to give me. It seemed like it only applied to a narrow circumstance that wasn’t likely to happen again.
But the rest of it, I got. The world won’t be fair to you, so be careful who you trust.
“All right,” I said, trying to smile. “I’ll be careful, Uncle Bren. I promise.”
“Good lad,” he said, giving me a one-armed hug. “Now, I think they’ve saved you some food. Why don’t we head down and see?”
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