No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Thank God, when I thought about this story, there were so many thousands of my experiences coming to my mind like shooting stars. So many, that I don’t know which one to talk about. Still I have to choose and I picked a very private one. One- which is one of these things between me and my fiancé. I am working in a job that I have sometimes night shifts in. I go to work late and I leave my office at around 7:30 in the morning. When I am alone, when my man is not around and when I go to our house, everything seems so cold, so empty and so loveless.

When my fiancé IS home it is a different house. I love my night-shifts because when I come home everything smells like heaven, and when I peek into our bedroom, I can see him sleeping in our bed, having one leg and one arm on my side. His face looks like the one of an angel and after I took a shower and sneak into bed, his arms automatically raps around me. He pulls me as close as he can and his head lies on mine, his warm feet touch my cold ones and heat them up. His hand is holding my belly and he breathes in deeply, so deep that it seems he takes enough breath for the next two days.

You might be wondering what I am talking about, but I am sure you will understand.

Then I fall asleep. After some time I can feel a soft and tender hand in my face and soft lips touching mine. When ever he is around no matter when, I wake-up to the words: “I love you”, I go to bed with the words “Don’t forget I love you”, he passes me and his hand is touching my back, I sneeze and he tells me he wants to grow old with me instead of- bless you. I don’t even have the time to ask for what I would love to do, have, see, hear or feel and before I finished my thought, it is already there. I know the man that I have next to me is someone really extraordinary and I am not trying to say he is the solution for everyone, although I know his light is strong for many of us, but what I am trying to say is:

Love is stronger than hate, respect is more powerful than humiliation and tenderness goes deeper than cruelty. Hate, humiliation and cruelty are a sign of intellectual poverty, the landmark of a bigger ego than the size of your backbone or spine, it is the symbol of insecurity and the overestimation of ones own capabilities. Torture is the expression of helplessness and rhetorical inferiority. I know that all this doesn’t help but let me give you another example, one that nobody can miss the point, I am trying to make.

During my teaching period I held these theatre-classes and one of them was about psychological torture whilst war. I was teaching an uninterested class of teenagers. One of these kids was having a swastika on his shoulder. I asked him what it is on his shoulder, he told me a symbol of his race and a warning for the once that need a warning. I asked him to get up and show me how he would defend himself when he is scared.  He told me to shut-up; he called me names and tried agitating the rest of the class, which was not really hard to do. I stopped my lesson for a break and told them to think of their actions. I think everyone can imagine what they did while break. When I came back into the class room, I asked the same guy to try something new with me. He was of course still being very cool but curious so he joined in. I gave him some scotch-tape and asked him to deform his face as much as he can. Outside I told him to think of something that is really important to him and tell the class about it. He came back into the room; his face defaced to the utmost and started talking about soccer. Everybody was laughing at his outlook, nobody listened to him. His face was the centre of attention. After some minutes I asked him to take the tape off and sit down. His face was mad, he was frowning. I asked him how he feels and he started telling me how much he hated me and my behaviour, he told me I should go to hell. After his anger was said out loud I asked him who told him that he was not allowed to take the tape off, his eyes filled with tears. Then I queried what the ones that he is warning have to take off so he would respect them. I haven’t seen this boy in my class for 4 weeks. After these 4 weeks he came to class with a T-shirt without sleeves and the swastika was gone.

These moments, this respect, this explosion of joy in your life can happen to you once in your life, when you are lucky.

Obviously twice when you are me (thank you my love!)

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