But It's Not Fair

Why is Mengistu living on a private ranch in Zimbabwe? Of course, I know why - Mugabe lets him and nobody can get him out, despite the Officially Conviction of Genocide. But isn't it bizarre how - just sometimes - somebody can do something so atrocious and get to live on a private ranch at the end of it?

I had a Ethiopian student once who told me he and his family had "suffered a lot" at the hands of Mengistu's Dergue, though didn't go further than that. By coincidence, in the same group there was a Ugandan who hadn't been much liked by Amin and a Turkmeni, formerly from Ashgabat, who had got himself roughed up for accidentally misquoting from the RUHMANA in a business meeting. It had been a grammatical mistake rather than one which changed any sense of meaning, but even so, it got him into a bit of a jam, he said.

None of them elaborated further on what had happened, and I never found it quite right to ask, but after that conversation there was a tangible sense of understanding between the three. And all of them, when I knew them, held calm and convinced religious beliefs. When you consider Amin's death in a Saudi hospital, Niyazov's heart attack while still happily in power and Mengistu now strumming away on his ranch, I supposed faith in some ultimate come-uppance must be your only refuge against self-destroying bitterness.

J and J were outraged with me earlier when I said no to them getting out of bed and randomly eating ice cream, even though the prince in tonight's bedtime story had done it, and treated me to a properly enraged and indignant bellow of "BUT IT'S NOT FAIR". To which I responded, tired and snappish and conscious of my evening time being hijacked, with the stock-pile answer that "Life Is Not Fair".

With them finally off into their aggrieved sleep, it occured to me while cleaning up the muck of a million wellingtons that I don't think that they, or I, ever spoke a truer word.

There's nothing new in that. But what I want to know is - how old do they have to be before you start trying to get that across?