Well I Might As Well Be In Jail
a moving contemplation of war photographs and grief.
This is a piece I was sent by a man called Harry, which I wanted to share, with his permission. Thanks Harry.
This is a piece I was sent by a man called Harry, which I wanted to share, with his permission. Thanks Harry.
Impotence, you'd have thought, would be the one affliction that Western Man had truly conquered. I can't check e-mail without being offered cut-price Viagra, and the phenomenal rise in web-based porn means I'm lucky - or unlucky, perhaps - to get through a day without being treated to sights that would have probably made me faint when I was 14.
Mind you, I nearly fell of my chair yesterday, and I'm ashamed to admit it was the result of surfing to an X-rated picture featuring a child. But before you phone the Vice Squad, or gather a few neighbours for a lynchin', I'd better explain that she wasn't being abused. Well no, that's not right - she WAS being abused.
The picture purported to have been taken in Basra, on March 23 2003, and I've no reason to doubt that claim. The scene, a low pile of bodies - indistinguishable individually, just an outstretched, pale arm here or a stiff leg there. The reason you couldn't make out too much of the background was the bloke, heavily bearded and with a turban, standing in front of this impromptu mortuary. He was stooped by the weight of the young girl cradled in his arms, her head resting on his right forearm and her shattered legs dangling over his left. Her right foot was destroyed, a wreck of flesh dangling by a flap of skin and only recognisable in context. Her clothes - modern, colourful - spotted with blood and what might have been shrapnel entries. Her face was pale, eyes closed and mouth a thin line.
Of course, I've seen grotesque things before. That film of the soldier shooting that kneeling Vietnamese kid in the head. The photograph of the Iraqi soldier, burnt to death at the wheel of his vehicle on the Basra Road in Gulf War 1. Margaret Beckett. And, of course, I've seen plenty of photographs of mutilated civilians, because war is never very far away when the Internet spans the globe. The thing that made this picture so different, the thing that won't go away now, was that she really could have been my daughter.
Oh, sure, my daughter's maybe a year or two younger, and her hair's fairer, and, and, and. But she would have chosen comfortable, pull-on leggings just like those, and a feathery boa-like wrap just like that one. And if she'd been where this girl was, she'd be just as.. well, there's the other thing. You can't tell for sure whether the girl's still alive. It doesn't look like it, more as if the man - her father, maybe, or just a stranger - has picked her up from the pile of corpses behind him, unable to leave her there like a bright flower amongst the drab clothes and pallid flesh. But maybe she's just unconscious, as if that would make everything alright. A million people in Basra are without clean water or electricity, and the entire Country is under a ferocious attack, so what would her chances of surviving be?
So, that's where I am: sitting in a room, writing to try and get the pain out. But that won't happen, because I'm completely impotent. I can't do any of the things that I so desperately want to do; I might as well be in jail. I never could have prevented her from being horrifically maimed or killed, and I can't prevent it from happening again, and again, and again.
And each time, it'll be my daughter.
Mind you, I nearly fell of my chair yesterday, and I'm ashamed to admit it was the result of surfing to an X-rated picture featuring a child. But before you phone the Vice Squad, or gather a few neighbours for a lynchin', I'd better explain that she wasn't being abused. Well no, that's not right - she WAS being abused.
The picture purported to have been taken in Basra, on March 23 2003, and I've no reason to doubt that claim. The scene, a low pile of bodies - indistinguishable individually, just an outstretched, pale arm here or a stiff leg there. The reason you couldn't make out too much of the background was the bloke, heavily bearded and with a turban, standing in front of this impromptu mortuary. He was stooped by the weight of the young girl cradled in his arms, her head resting on his right forearm and her shattered legs dangling over his left. Her right foot was destroyed, a wreck of flesh dangling by a flap of skin and only recognisable in context. Her clothes - modern, colourful - spotted with blood and what might have been shrapnel entries. Her face was pale, eyes closed and mouth a thin line.
Of course, I've seen grotesque things before. That film of the soldier shooting that kneeling Vietnamese kid in the head. The photograph of the Iraqi soldier, burnt to death at the wheel of his vehicle on the Basra Road in Gulf War 1. Margaret Beckett. And, of course, I've seen plenty of photographs of mutilated civilians, because war is never very far away when the Internet spans the globe. The thing that made this picture so different, the thing that won't go away now, was that she really could have been my daughter.
Oh, sure, my daughter's maybe a year or two younger, and her hair's fairer, and, and, and. But she would have chosen comfortable, pull-on leggings just like those, and a feathery boa-like wrap just like that one. And if she'd been where this girl was, she'd be just as.. well, there's the other thing. You can't tell for sure whether the girl's still alive. It doesn't look like it, more as if the man - her father, maybe, or just a stranger - has picked her up from the pile of corpses behind him, unable to leave her there like a bright flower amongst the drab clothes and pallid flesh. But maybe she's just unconscious, as if that would make everything alright. A million people in Basra are without clean water or electricity, and the entire Country is under a ferocious attack, so what would her chances of surviving be?
So, that's where I am: sitting in a room, writing to try and get the pain out. But that won't happen, because I'm completely impotent. I can't do any of the things that I so desperately want to do; I might as well be in jail. I never could have prevented her from being horrifically maimed or killed, and I can't prevent it from happening again, and again, and again.
And each time, it'll be my daughter.