The Satire

Chapter 3 - 2001

" In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" is how my Parents started their days off. Family prayer is a luxury that I was blessed with. Naturally, as I grew up I developed an actual relationship with God but let's stick to little me. As you can probably tell , my Parents are Christian, Catholic to be specific. Growing up in  Catholic household is actually hard. Imagine seeing pictures of a man you've never seen before all over your house. I grew up thinking Jesus was an estranged Uncle of mine. It was tough but not as tough as the day the news blasted a headline that would turn all eyes to the Catholic Church.

On May 6th 2001, Pope John-Paul II became the first Pope in HISTORY to enter a Mosque. Pope John-Paul did and said a lot of things that were shocking but this was a start. He went to Syria on a visit and during his tour of the Tomb of St John the Baptist he probably thought "you know what, I'm feeling a bit spontaneous today. I'm going to enter a Mosque, yippee" and just like that he went from being a mere symbol of peace to becoming an iconic figure. Pope John-Paul II did this to help spark unity between the Catholic and Muslim communities in Syria and maybe bring the two religions together all across the globe. I'm sure we can all agree that Christians and Muslims have always been expected to hate each-other and not even be able to stay in the same room. Tragic right. Well Pope JP came through decided to abolish that and bring the two together hand in hand. I'm sure the government in Britain were tossing in their sleep. The only story they had to convince the White Racist/Discriminatory Christian Community was gone! Oh no!  See how the government thrives off our disharmony.

Back in the Adesunloye household, my Mother was in shock. Coming from a staunch Catholic background, she was most certainly rattled by the 6:30pm news. Although it's good for the Christendom that we have unity between the two faiths as it promotes peace and love but for a Nigerian Christian family, it cuts way deeper. You see, amidst all the trouble that was going on during Nigeria in 2000, Muslims were killing Christians in Northern Nigeria. So, you can't really blame my parents for having a sense of animosity. It's true we shouldn't judge but we all do it in our heads anyways.

I'm going to fast-forward to a day before my 1st birthday. The day of the 9/11 attacks. Although we are a Nigerian-British family, the event of this day really affected us a country. 11 months and 360 odd days me was most likely eating or playing with toys during this time but I know that when I recently asked my Pops how it all went down, he simply said it felt unreal. It's crazy to think that citizens on those flights didn't go home to their families that night and it was all because of some extremists. Not just one, but two towers were struck and then the fires that followed made things even harder. I really do commend the emergency services for their work that day because it must have been a scary day. My Mum said that she was just in a constant mode of prayer – she was asking God to heal and comfort those who had lost their loved ones and for God to change the hearts of the terrorists so that another atrocity wouldn't occur. When I was asking her about what went down that day, the last thing she told me was that we prayed for America that evening and asked God to heal the land.

--- This is as far as I got but I hope you guys enjoyed it ---