Let me warn you, reader, in advance: If you have a
squeamish constitution, please do not read this piece. Just stop here and flee,
for the story I’m about to tell is terribly ugly and disturbing. It is bound to
leave you horribly unsettled, disturbed. In my career as a columnist I have
written few essays that galled and upset me more. It is a piece I wish I didn’t
have to write, but one that I feel compelled to write. A grandmother in my
novel Arrows of Rain warns her son, “A story that must be told never forgives
silence.”
I’m writing this piece in that spirit; it is a story, I
believe, that must be told. It must be told despite its ugliness, or, in fact,
because of it. Flee now, dear reader, if you can’t handle it.
