I was born in a land where the dead demand justice. There were many massacres there which did not get cleared up, and although it is in everyone’s memory that they happened, there has never been any big mention of the dead specifically. Additionally, it is a very spiritual place. Pagan spiritual. Yes, not the kind of hippie pagan where you just want to get along with everyone to maintain natural order. It is the kind which involved transactions with supernatural beings.

There are many stories involving human sacrifices for some kind of success. The instructions are very underground, but you basically have to interact with a spiritual being which promises you what you want. Some people sacrifice their own souls, but I heard of stories where others sacrifice their children. Or even strangers. The bigger success you wish for, the bigger sacrifice, the more people you have to offer them up.

I have never been in the circle of people who knew everything about this kind of stuff. There was some kind of force which blocks me from it. Maybe I am not worthy enough. Or maybe I don’t have this gift of seeing those spiritual beings vividly. I did have an experience where my perception of a spirit aligned with someone who could. I have tried to confirm it to a teacher who claimed he sometimes interacted with the souls roaming the school. But it seemed that I was just being led on, so a friend said. In a dream, I was being offered a full vision if I offered myself up during the full moon at that time. Then I could be one of those people. I couldn’t get up though, so I got lazy and refused. I felt a heavy pressure on me, a very angry presence. Only some “Hail Mary”s could bring me back my peaceful night, and then later, my peaceful life.

But that experience marked my life. I changed. Some years forward, my family brought me back to the land where I grew up. I felt peace, tranquillity. When I came back to where I came from, all I heard was noise. I couldn’t wrap my head around what was different, but I dreaded being there since then. I longed for the tranquillity I felt from my second hometown. I got convinced that it was because people did pray a lot there and did not do such cruel practices against people’s souls. What else might be a good explanation? Is the current one even a good explanation?

Maybe it is connected. If people pray, sooner or later, they will pray for the dead. The dead might have been soothed there. My second hometown was also a place where many deaths occurred. But maybe they got their justice. Maybe people care about them. They might not have names, but maybe they got carried in the prayers of the living. They are not forgotten. They don’t scream for attention. They don’t scream for justice.

One day, I got an opportunity to return to the land that felt so tranquil. I could not get to my second hometown, but to some other city that on the surface did not seem too bad after all. I didn’t know that there was something worse than the screams of the dead: The absence of their voice.

There are white bicycles spread around the city. Marking sites where their riders died in an accident. Sometimes, people think of them and put candles and flowers. But that was it. Who consoled their souls, stayed there for some minutes, listened to their pleas? But in a place where God does not exist, the dead lose their voice. Where the dead lose their voice, they lose their personality, their stories. They only become fragments of memories, if there is even anyone to remember them.

Once, I passed one of those white bicycles. It was in summer, I think. I had my own bicycle with me. I saw a couple stop for some seconds and move on. I took a closer look. The police hung out a poster that they were still looking for the person who the did the hit-and-run. So I prayed. At least I wished that the family of the victim might get closure. It would be easiest if the person got identified. Then I also moved on.

Not long after I saw the news that the culprit got caught. They got their sentence and had to serve for some months or years. I don’t really remember. I smiled. “Thank you,” I then heard a soft voice say. But my spiritual director told me to not let it get over my head. Who would have thought that it was just a beginning of a peculiar journey?

Since then, I just kept praying for the dead. Every now and then, I get a feeling that a dead person asks me for prayers, so I prayed. When I visited a historical site, I felt overwhelmed by the intensity of the plea. It was as if a lot of people came to me and asked that I pray for them. I went to mass for them, and prayed more than I usually did until I felt it was enough. I taught my friends to always stop and pray every time we went past the grave that was on the way of one’s home. At least, as often as we could.

Then, that friend died. The one whose way back home passes by a grave. When we were mourning his departure, there were a lot of people. But how many did really mourn his death? When we said goodbye, how many really did so? I saw more people just use him as an instrument for justifying their political position, saying more about how he was politically aligned with them, than who he really was. I saw people who didn’t lose a friend, but lost a thing they could project on. He was not a person to them, but a mere object. A mere number. In a place where the dead lose their voice, they become mere instruments. And deep in my heart, I refuse to let this happen.

I can’t be a loud politician demanding social justice for every dead person in this land. I don’t have the right to, because I am just a stranger here. A pilgrim at best. I can’t also be a person who digs up their stories and names, because that is not my field of expertise. But at least I can give them a voice. Maybe not a voice that can be heard by the living, but at least by themselves. Because I believe that the dead are not entirely dead. In this world where people become slaves to their desires, the dead might be even more alive than we are. That is why they deserve more than flowers and candles. That is why they deserve justice, in their own way, from us, in our own ways. And I hope that some day, all dead from all lands are soothed.