A True Story in Prose to Ponder: An Eye for an Eye

Donte: A man has two houses on a large parcel of land; he divided it into two. One is dilapidated, while the other is a beautiful, income-generating edifice on better land. One day, another man from a powerful country (known as the foreigner thief), aided by his influential friends, forcefully stole and evicted the man from the superior part of the land. For years, he tried to reason with the foreigner thief, who had stolen his home and land, making it his family’s abode and source of profit. The thief refused to return the home. The man attempted to involve other governments, but they declined and enacted laws legitimizing the foreigner thief’s actions.

Renaldo: The man and his children suffered for years, occupying only the less fertile and deteriorated portion of his land, watching the foreigner thief and his family prosper in what was once his beautiful edifice. He and later his children made feeble attempts to reclaim the house and land, but the thief, with the support of his influential friends, proved too powerful. After several unsuccessful efforts, the powerful friends and the thief reached a settlement to alleviate the suffering of the man and his family and to prevent further attempts to regain their home.

Donte: The agreement allowed the man and his sons, to: visit THE part of his own land that was stolen, access aids and loans with high interest rates to repair and improve the part of the land that he currently occupies, granted them a title for their portion of the land, and established dividing lines between the stolen side of the land, that the foreigner thief now occupies VERSUS the man and his sons side; while offering additional protection to the foreigner thief for the theft, further entrenching the foreigner thief’s theft.

Renaldo: The man was disheartened but vowed that one day he would reclaim his house and land. He spent years planning and strategizing, until his sons formed alliances and gained the strength to attempt the recapture.

Donte: In fact, the man grew increasingly agitated because the thief had recently allowed his children to seize more land. The foreigner thief appropriated more land from the man’s dilapidated property and distributed it to his sons, who eagerly accepted it.

Renaldo: The man could tolerate it no longer, and he and his sons concluded that the only way to halt further encroachments and to regain their house and land was to confront the foreigner and his sons, all of whom they believed were guilty of theft and shielded their wrongdoing.”