There are moments when the frescoes in the Gotland churches seem to be speaking directly to us, right now. Not only addressing us, but speaking about us, and that we are part of their story.

It was also in the mid-1980s that people started looking for scapegoats. Politicians with extreme views started fishing in muddy waters, but they were not the only ones looking for scapegoats, a lot of "ordinary" people were also carried away by the fear. Homosexuals were branded the guilty party, the ones who were spreading the disease. Just as in the past it was the Jews who had been blamed for spreading the deadly plague by infecting people's wells.

So it was the homosexuals who should all be branded, especially if they were black men. All black men seeking asylum in Europe should be subjected to HIV tests. Those infected should be turned away.

When the history of Aids in the 1980s comes to be written, a lot of ugly truths will emerge with full and frightening force.

In our part of the world at least, the absolute terror is no longer with us. There are nevertheless some people still who maintain that the Aids epidemic is the wages of sin. The scapegoats exist, be they asylum seekers, homosexual men or Russian prostitutes.

15

I well remember the moment when I myself was struck by this fear. It was in Lusaka, in November 1987. I was staying at the Ridgeway Hotel. I'd just driven there from Kabompo where I was living at the time, high up towards Zambia 's north-western border with Angola. I was on my way to Europe. The flight was going to leave the following day. I was dirty and tired after the long journey and had checked into the Ridgeway.