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was merely visiting my sister in a nearby town and had become lost. There was nothing more to it than that. In any other village, I would have been directed to Bishopstown and simply gone on my way... but not have ended up at Keppelberg! The inhabitants didn’t want to be dragged into the twenty-first century and they did all they could to prevent anyone from forcing them to do so. But why were they so sensitive to strangers... as though they had something to hide? What was their vulnerable secret? Or were they innocent of any secrecy and just wanted to remain the same for time immemorial? More importantly, why were there no elderly people here? There was no one over forty years of age. It bugged me and I felt I had to find out the answer. Were they ashamed of them and hid them in some other part of the village clandestinely so that no one could see them? There had to be a reason for it and I meant to resolve the problem. The meeting was to be held at eight o’clock and I made a point of being there to listen to the proceedings.
    I left the building and walked a short distance away to the edge of the village boundary line. It wasn’t long before I came to another large building which didn’t need to be identified. It was a church the size of a cathedral. I reckoned that all the people in the village could have been housed here for the services held on Sundays. I cannot imagine what I expected to find inside but it was clear that no one stinted when it came to their religion. I opened the exclusively carved wooden double doors to enter the building, becoming astonished at the elegant sight before me. The church was decorated magnificently, far better than any other church I had seen in Britain... not that I had visited many during my period in the military. It was drenched with a variety of wonderful wooden carvings, beautiful fresco paintings and pure golden artefacts and structures. Perhaps this was the reason why strangers were not welcome to the village, in case they stole some of the items from the church It was an Aladdin’s cave of remarkable treasures with an inestimable value. The place glittered with gold, silver and bronze items with a wealth that embellished the inside of the building beyond all dreams and they had clearly taken many years to accumulate. Mosques, churches and synagogues throughout the world prided themselves on their gold and precious paintings yet some of them were definitely less than this church in terms of quality. I approached one of the paintings of the Virgin Mary holding the baby, Jesus Christ. It had to be at least three hundred years old. So who painted it? I walked around the church in disbelief examining the gold and silver artefacts There was a large effigy of Christ in a precious metal... a lectern made of pure silver... beautiful stained glass windows... an altar with a golden surface... the list was endless! I sat in one of the wooden pews crafted so delicately by experienced craftsmen facing the figure of Christ behind the altar. Nothing had been spared. It was the holiest of holies! I stared up at the pulpit imagining the priest preaching his sermon to eleven hundred worshippers listening to his every word. The effect of the place, with its wonderful aura, was devastating. It led me into conflict with my conscience for after seeing such awful death and destruction taking place in Iraq I had become an atheist. I could not fathom any reason why a God, or Gods, could allow human-beings to inflict such pain and suffering on each other whether it was part of a gigantic plan for humanity or not.
    As I sat in one of the elegant pews at the back of the church I took in as much beauty as my eyes could see when I heard a light whimpering sound coming from the front. I rose and walked down the aisle cautiously. In the past I had held a machine-gun in my hands to protect myself. Now I felt vulnerable at having no protection at all. As I arrived at the front pews, I saw a