The Day The Tanks Came Read online

The Day the Tanks Came

  By Kashif Thomacz Richardo

  Copyright 2015 Kashif Thomacz Richardo

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends.

  This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes,

  provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favourite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you

  for your support.

  We laughed as he announced his plans for the top job in the world. No one could believe that the campaign was to be taken seriously. We laughed at his outrageous comments and his farcical plans. We were fairly safe on our sceptred isle, just across the channel from France. Even if the Americans were stupid enough to elect the idiot they would realise that he wasn't suited for the role and we'd have someone more moderate in a few years. It wouldn't affect us; it was a US problem.

  We stopped laughing as his support grew. I hugged my wife longer each night. On some level I’d guessed what was coming, but denied it on the outside. To the world everything with me was normal, I still played with my son, I kissed my wife goodbye as I left for work. Most damning, I ignored the stares that were given to my neighbours, it was just some idiots listening to another idiot on TV, they'd get over it.

  Then it happened, the Presidential Primaries were announced and he had become a bona fide candidate. Rather than a fractured support network, now he had his party's complete support. With that came extra media coverage and money. Not that he needed the former; he’d risen to fame on a tide of extravagance and inherited wealth that led to his own television show. Without that he would never have had access to the notoriety he now assumed. Our twin US and UK cultures, and tendencies to make people famous for the sole reason that they were already famous had come back to haunt us. It was only meant to be entertainment; we weren't supposed to take them seriously.

  The jesters had taken over, we had risen these fools above others for they were mindless parodies of all that we hated about the society we resided in. More and more of these people came forward to endorse the growing campaign. Perhaps they were more canny than we gave them credit for. Knowing what I know now, to save my family, perhaps I should have done the same. Instead we poked fun, memes distributed via social networks and the internet. We parodied the parody, instead of weakening him it just made him stronger.

  I should recap. His mantra of hatred had been based upon sheer unadulterated racism. In a world divided by poverty and inequality, a world where white people had been masters of their planet but a few short decades ago. This resonated with their sense of entitlement and loss of identity. He offered back what they had lost, gave them a scapegoat for all they now suffered instead of telling them they should not expect a free ride based on a poor education. We had fostered the entitled, rich and poor alike and tolerated their bigoted notions as protected by free speech.

  Then the attacks came. At first, it seemed like they came from outside our borders, but then they began to come from within. Those who had been shunned and marginalised by overt and implied racism lost their faith in our systems and began to be radicalised. They said it was in the name of God, but their actions showed no similarity to the message they said he preached. Peace was their way, but their way was signposted by guns and knives, every pitfall lined with improvised explosives. The flashpoints, as always, were centred in the past and the Middle East. Outrage at the Jewish Nation, hereditary pain felt from the Crusades and a sense of loss at the proud traditions of the region in the face of colonisation. Extremists harkened back to the glory days of the Caliphate, convinced that their illiterate rule and hatred of intelligence would lead to a golden age of philosophy and enlightenment. Their creed was to send the vulnerable and gullible to their deaths in the name of a God who would surely disown them for breaking the most sacred of his tenets. Their threat, although real and though they recruited from amongst us, seemed distant and unreal. Sooner or later they would run out of children to blow up, surely?

  Like a wind to a flame, the atrocities uttered by the Presidential hopeful fed straight into their campaign, he was at once their greatest threat and truest ally. As London and New York burned again, we all hugged our families tighter and longer, pulled the covers up higher; restless sleep came harder every night. The bombs started in earnest. Children, both victim and perpetrator, ushered into the hereafter, fuelled by preachers of hate. Our police, security forces and armies struggled to stem the tide, a thin line against the oceans. They failed as riots broke out across the entire United States, shops were burned, innocents dragged out into the streets and beaten. This was not the work of the Islamic militants, however; this was the work of others, fuelled by distrust of those with a similar appearance to the militants. Those innocents were victimised over a long terrible weekend of pain and suffering. We watched helpless as the television broadcast these scenes of barbarism into out homes.

  My wife turned to me that night, fear in her eyes. She didn't have to say anything, but she looked at our son and I knew what she was thinking. What kind of world had we brought him into? Will he end up twisted into a brute by a radical fear monger? I couldn't say anything, I didn't know. Perhaps that was part of the problem, we didn't say anything. We watched, convinced someone would do something. I just squeezed her hand harder and blinked back the tears.

  We went to work that Monday as though nothing had happened. We ignored the graffiti on the wall, spreading dissent and lies. It was the same old rhetoric that had failed before. "Send them back where they came from," "Islam out," "We don't want Sharia Law" and "Kill the Ragheads." The slogans burned into the minds of the impressionable and disenfranchised, the illiterate and stupid. We saw more shaved heads from that day. More big sturdy boots, red braces.

  Marches happened on a weekly basis. Our government, already Right Wing, started to look moderate in comparison to the new groups. Their appeal was to the Right Wing and so they lost ground politically, votes went against them in Parliament and a hodgepodge of policies were implemented as a result of Private Members bills. Some were progressive, some oppressive. The laws swung one way and then the other depending on how the newspapers reported peoples’ beliefs. Knee jerk reactions dominated politics both here and in the US. A riot would result in progressive legislation on hate crimes, a bombing in new security measures directed at Muslims. We bought new locks, not to replace the ones we already had on our doors, but to augment them.

  A new fear arose, the fear of words. Words such as "sympathiser" took hold, becoming a synonym for conspirator and collaborator. We took to circuitous routes to avoid being seen near mosques and areas mainly populated by Islamic people. We were afraid to point out that the idea of "sending them back where they came from" was idiotic as many Muslims were born in the UK and US. Part from fear of being branded a sympathiser and part from drawing attention to this issue, for without somewhere to send those born here what could be done with them?

  My wife and I were shopping when our son pointed to an Asian gentleman in a turban and uttered the word "terrorist." He was too young to know the pain he caused, or even what the word meant. We could only shush him. We couldn't explain that the man was not likely to be a terrorist probably having lived here for many years. We couldn't explain that he wasn't even a Muslim, turbans being a sign of the Sikh faith. This fact was brought home to us when a group of skinhead youths gathered around us congratulating us on our parenting skills. I cried that night with shame, as did my wife. It was just a word he had picked up either at nursery or from television. Kids pick up the damnedest things. Why did it have to be that?

  Television was relegated to after our son was
asleep, but it would often be shut off at the slightest sound from upstairs in case he came down and learned some other hurtful remark. It was all we could do to try and stop the infernal influence. We learned from other parents at nursery that the vilifying of Muslims was even happening in children's programming, not overtly but it was an underlying theme. He would be too young to join the gangs roaming the streets, but how long before he would want to sneak out of the house to beat some poor woman to the ground for wearing a hijab?

  Even shopping became a political issue. I noticed it first when going to the checkout buying chicken. I was stopped by the checkout assistant.

  "You realise that chicken is halal right?"

  "Oh, I didn't realise. Erm… Can I put it back and choose another one?"

  "Sure, you know you can tell by reading the packaging?" he asked.

  "Sorry, I didn't think."

  "That's okay, I'll wait."

  I walked back through the store the eyes of the