The Invisible Hero by Elizabeth Fensham

his chair, stretched, yawned and then sort of drawled, ‘Don’t know if I believe in evil, Mrs Canmore. But people do go for the dreamers. Can’t get away from them if we wanted to.’
    Macca and Co. laughed and Sam de Grekh called out, ‘Tell her she’s dreamin!’
    Mr Quayle joined in with the laughter and not even Mrs Canmore could tell them to shut it. Sam’s quote from ‘The Castle’was clever and it would look kind of sour to get all cut about it. After all, we studied the film last term in English.
    But in her polite way, Mrs Canmore had a comeback. She told Mr Quayle that if dreaming meant the way we become time travellers by reading history and good literature, then she agreed with him. She said that through imagination we get to step into other people’s shoes just like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird teaches his daughter Scout. Mrs Canmore said this develops ‘emotional intelligence’. Then she quoted this guy called Daycart (not sure how you spell that, but it sounds French) who said that a proper study of history lets us have ‘conversation with the finest men of the past centuries’. I liked that line so much that I wrote it down straight away.
    It was getting to be like a tennis match. Mr Quayle folded his arms across his chest. ‘Finest, eh?’ Which person decides who the ‘finest’ is? Then he went on and on about ‘objectivity’, ‘historiography’ (he made us learn that word in term one), ‘moral relativity’ and ‘different interpretations of history according to personal values’.
    With all these big words, I thought Mr Quayle was winning, but then Mrs Canmore said with real passion,‘So Mr Quayle, you’d stand at the gates of Auschwitz, watching the families file through, knowing they were heading for nightmarish deaths in gas ovens, and you’d refuse to judge Hitler? As limping old people and fathers holding their children’s hands and mothers carrying babies walked under that iron archway with its cruel, cynical motto, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – work brings freedom – you’d shrug your shoulders and tell people that, from the Nazi perspective, it was witty and absolutelyhonest? You’d tell the person next to you who was murmuring about how wrong all this was that they were being subjective?’
    Mr Quayle was looking anywhere but at Mrs Canmore. Her hands were shaking, but her voice was still low and controlled. ‘I quote, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And yes, I say it again, we have to name evil for what it is.’
    The class was completely silent for a moment and then the bell went for recess. Everyone was heading for the door. As he dived past me, Mustafa said, ‘Hey Ruthy, you and Mrs Canmore make a good pair. I like that cool word of yours you used last Monday – ethical. If I have to waste my life on this assignment, I may as well go for some ethical type.’
    Well that sure gave me a lift. Quite often my friends and me hang out with Mustafa and his mates at lunchtime, but he hardly ever says anything sensible or serious to me, just teases me. Not in a mean way, mind you. Just a clowning around sort of way – which is how he’s almost always like. He’s really smart with schoolwork (especially Maths sort of stuff), but he’s been one of those sports-mad boys since I knew him at the start of primary. So saying he respected what I’d said to Mr Quayle sure was some compliment coming from him.
    And another good thing. Mum was going through her mail after dinner. She opens this long envelope that has a symbol on the front left corner of a lit candle all wrapped up in barbed wire. ‘Must remember the Amnesty AGM next week,’ Mum said as she walked to the calendar that hangs over the kitchen bench and scrawled a reminder on it.
    Ever since I can remember, Mum has belonged to