Word: boying
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Henry, good-humored and alert, is not so very different from Akbar, the smart-alecky mujahedin boy who in the battle zone of Afghanistan grew closer to his comrades than to his father. In Henry's insular world, his homies are his only family. It is his enemies who keep changing. Despite designer sneakers and all the food he needs, Henry is far poorer than Akbar. He has no cause, no purpose to his fighting, no dream of redemption in another life...
When "the Troubles" flared anew in 1969, children who were under 16 and too young for the I.R.A. rushed to join the Na Fianna Eirann, a group created in the early 1900s as an Irish patriot's answer to Baden-Powell's John Bullish Boy Scouts. Members did a lot more than sing folk songs and hike; they fought, and the authorities made no distinction between Fianna and I.R.A. suspects. Fianna members had their own uniform, and the black shirts, berets and sunglasses gave even small children a scary paramilitary look. The youngsters became a macabre part of the pageantry...
Seamus Duffy, a 15-year-old boy from the nearby neighborhood of Oldpark, went to New Lodge that night looking for excitement. He never came back. Sometime around 1 a.m., he and a friend were walking down a street in New Lodge, headed for the epicenter of the riot. He was hit in the chest by a plastic bullet, crumpled to the ground, blood oozing from his mouth, and died before he reached the hospital...
Overnight a shrine rose at the place where he was killed, a lace-covered altar laden with plastic flowers in vases, Madonna and Christ icons, and a photograph of the boy. Above it a cardboard plaque read, S. DUFFY MURDERED BY RUC AUGUST 9TH, 1989. Along a wall near Duffy's house, someone wrote in giant white letters, 20 YEARS ON AND STILL MURDERING CHILDREN. His funeral, a nightmarishly slow procession, overflowed with grief...
...ballistic streaks are compensation for being born with a deformed right arm. But his brother Paul says, "The only thing John couldn't do growing up was pick his nose with his right hand. He never knew he was handicapped. He just knew he was different." As a boy in San Antonio, Silber concluded it was best to attack early in a fight, a strategy that has been an article of faith ever since. "He learned that if he had to fight, it was best for him to land the first blow," recalls Paul. "If he couldn't whip...