reading about something no one wants to name

... 20 men stand in a yard (...)

a computer monitor turned towards them. Faces flash on the screen: a man with his face blackened and bruised; another man, older, maybe in his 50s, with a white beard and an orange-sized hole in his forehead; and another on a green stretcher, his arms twisted unnaturally behind him.

Occasionally the silence of this daily slideshow of death is broken by an appalled act of recognition.(...)

So many bodies arrive at the morgue each day - 40 is not unusual on a "quiet" day - that it is impossible to let relatives in to identify them. Hence the slideshow in the yard outside. The bodies are dumped in sewage plants or irrigation canals, or just in the middle of the street.

Many show signs of torture. Every morning a procession of pickup trucks, minibuses and cars line up with their coffins outside the concrete blast walls of the ministry of health to pick up their cargo. One death often courts another. Many say the mourners are attacked en route. When they go to retrieve the body of a relative, family members often wait in the car clutching their weapons in anticipation...
(a hidden war)


στο καφέ της γειτονιάς 2 πεντάχρονα παραγγέλνουν babycino (!) (apparently just milk froth in espresso paper cups) και 3 ελληνίδες τσακώνονται για το ποιό τηλεφωνικό κέντρο θα δεχτεί τα sms- ψήφους για τη Eurovision (πιο σιγά βρε κορίτσια...)