Rifiuto: Non Miriena
The summer holidays had finally arrived, and with it, the violence that had started a week prior- shootings, beatings, robberies, kidnappings. Kids were told by their parents to stay inside, and if they did go out, they were to go out with friends and stick together. The shooting in Clontarf had been the match that lit the fuse; the double murder, the fuse that caused the dynamite to explode. Tim and Ziva did all they could to keep things normal for the kids, but it was hard.
"Ima?" Ziva looked up one warm July afternoon from her baking.
"Ken, my songbird?" Zipporah licked her lips.
"Can I go to the library?" Her mother stopped kneading the dough, and looked up at her daughter. Tim was in the living room, teaching Liron- who had begged his father- how to play chess, and Asher was curled up by the window, his head buried in a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. Asher had taken to writing in his 'nightmare' journal daily, filling page after page with his fears and memories of growing up those first eight years of his young life in Israel. By the beginning of the summer holidays, Tim and Ziva had gotten him four more journals, all of which he'd filled to the point where he was even writing on the inside covers.
A moment passed, as Ziva brushed a strand of dark hair off her forehead, leaving a streak of flour in its place. "Not by yourself, Zipporaleh." The girl sighed. Her mother only rarely used the diminutive for her name- removing the 'h' at the end and adding the 'leh'.
"But Ima-" Ziva returned to her kneading. Over the last several weeks, Ziva had turned to baking as a way to relax and calm. All the reports on the news and in the papers were making her nervous, and a part of her itched to reach for her gun and go hunting the lowlifes who'd decided to wreak havoc on their quiet coastal town. Both she and Tim- being former government law enforcement- were allowed to keep handguns, as long as they were locked up in a safe, which they were. Ziva's head snapped up.
"No! You are not going out alone! Not with the way people are acting!" The child pouted, stamping her foot.
"That's not-"
"Zipporah!" Ziva sighed, turning to her husband. "Will you talk to your daughter?" Tim looked up as he entered the kitchen and filled a glass with water.
"So when she acts up, she's my daughter?" He asked, pressing a kiss to his child's head. Ziva rolled her eyes.
"Of course she is. I carried her for nine months, I gave birth to her. I did the hard part. It's your turn now." Tim shook his head, gently ruffling his daughter's hair.
"You can go-" The child let out a shriek of excitement, throwing her arms around her father.
"Toda, Abba!"
"But, your brothers are going to go with you."
"Abba!" Tim raised an eyebrow, but Zipporah didn't stamp her foot or do anything but glare.
"I'm sorry, Zipporah, but it's too dangerous for you to go out by yourself. Your brothers are going to go with you, or you won't go at all, are we clear?" After a moment, she nodded.
"Ken, Abba. Clear."
Tim sighed, standing at the doorway, as Zipporah tugged her brothers out of the front yard. "I have a bad feeling about this, Zi." She joined him, leaning against his side. "A very, very bad feeling about this."
"Why? She will be fine, Timothy. Her brothers are with her, Asher and Liron will not let anything happen to Zipporah." She replied, pulling away and going back to the kitchen. Tim sighed, following. He watched as his wife removed the bread from the oven and set it on the wire rack to cool.
"I know, I just... I just remember listening to Penny's stories about the Troubles when I was kid." He took a seat at the table, propping his head on his hand. Ziva set a steaming cup of coffee in front of him before taking a seat beside him with her own. "By time I was born in Munich, they were already conducting peace talks between Ireland and England, but I still remember spending my summers here and going up to Northern Ireland to visit friends and..." He rubbed a hand over his face. "And seeing all the makeshift memorials left for the people that died." He caught the confusion in Ziva's gaze. "Sarah and I delighted in our summers with Penny, because it meant for a couple months, that we were away from our parents and loved." She nodded, sipping her coffee.
"Um, Tim, what..." She bit her lip. "What are the... the Troubles?" He returned his head to his hand, and turned to look at her.
"You want the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition or mine?" She shrugged.
"Both, I guess." She replied. He sighed.
"The definition in the dictionary is 'the political violence in Ireland during the 1920s or in Northern Ireland between the late 1960s and the late 1990s.'" She nodded, drinking in the information.
"Oh... and what's your definition?"
He thought a moment and then got up, going into the living room as he spoke. "The Troubles started in Northern Ireland in the late nineteen-tens, continued through the Irish Civil War in the twenties, came to a boiling point in the seventies and eighties, and finally," He came back with a scrapbook and a few books on the subject, setting them on the table as he took a seat. "came to a stop in the late nineties." He opened the scrapbook; Ziva leaned close, surprised to find newspaper clipping after newspaper clipping on the subject. "Penny always said it was important to keep articles in regards to the fighting because it was a part of our past, a part of my and Sarah's heritage."
"So... this happened all through Ireland?" He shook his head.
"No. The southern half of Ireland-"
"Where we live?" He nodded.
"We live in the Republic of Ireland. It's a sovereign state, but there are still people who consider it part of Britain. The Troubles were in Northern Ireland only. It was between the Protestants and Catholics, the Republicans and the Paramilitary Loyalists, the British Security Forces and the Irish Republican Army, and various civil rights groups. The Irish wanted the British out of Ireland, the British wanted the Irish to bend to British rule. Both Catholic and Protestant tried to claim Ireland for their own and shove the other group out; civil rights groups were claiming abuse..." He waved it all away. "You get the picture." She nodded. "The point is, thousands- and I mean, thousands- of people were killed, innocent people, mainly. Men, women and children who had no part in the fighting were killed by both sides. Cars and houses were bombed; I remember once, Penny took Sarah and I to the sight of McGurk's- it had been a Catholic bar that was bombed by the UVF; it was a... loyalist group that favored the paramilitary movement- and it killed fifteen and wounded over seventeen. Penny lost a friend in that bombing." He sighed.
She leaned close, looking through the scrapbooks. "Rubber bullets?" She'd heard of a lot of ammunition, but never this.
"Aye. They were supposed to be non-lethal alternative projectiles used for riot control. Problem is, they kill. They aren't supposed to, but they hit just right, and they're fatal." He glanced at the articles. "I remember seeing them on the street and rushing to collect them because I thought they were so cool. I didn't know the history behind them; Penny never told us. She let me keep them. I was kid, I didn't know any better, and I didn't know why they were there until I got older and studied the Troubles in school. I kept them, but I've never looked at them the same way since."
"So... what exactly are you afraid of, Tim?" He sighed, reaching over and taking her hand. "If the Troubles were in Northern Ireland, then... then that means they weren't here, which probably means they won't be here." He shook his head, squeezing her hand.
"That's what I'm afraid of, Zi. Just because the Troubles were in Northern Ireland, doesn't mean they won't make it to the Republic. What the kids witnessed, it could just be the start..."
