"The story of a quiet and deeply religious German man ended with the sound of rocky dirt being dumped over his grave in eastern Turkey, in a murder case that has drawn attention to the plight of Christians in this Muslim country.
Tilmann Geske, a shy and hardworking man, lived almost 10 of his 46 years in Turkey. He and two Turkish Christians were found dead last Wednesday, bound hand and foot and with their throats slit, at a publishing house that distributes Bibles."
"On Friday, after Tilmann's funeral, his wife Susanne discussed her husband and her future in an interview at her apartment in Malatya."
"I feel this is my place," Susanne said, vowing to remain in Turkey with her three children.
"He didn't have the idea of tossing out Bibles," Susanne said of her husband. "If you knew Tilmann, he was never like that. He was very shy, he would never do that.
"This was his dream — not to be just a Christian worker, but to be a part of the world," Susanne said. "He wanted to work like the Turks, not just to be a foreigner who gets money from abroad. He wanted to show that you can be both a Christian and a normal worker."
"Tilmann's body was lowered with ropes into its grave. Throughout most of the ceremony, only the smallest girl, Miriam, broke down in tears. But as rocks and dirt thudded down and Tilmann's coffin began to disappear, the family collapsed into a tight little circle, blocking the sounds out with their sobs."
A murdered German missionary highlights Christian insecurity in Turkey - International Herald Tribune
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