war
of the many many disturbing photos i've seen now from fallujah, this is one one of the ones that has especially gotten me. in case you can't tell, this is a child clinging onto the shoulders of a dead adult male. the child appears headless. the accompanying bbc news article says that these bodies in fallujah have been laying in the streets, rotting, for 3 or 4 days now. and in fact, cats and dogs have begun eating the corpses.
i cannot help but wonder about this child and this adult. were they trying to flee and escape only to be shot down? were they father and child? did they have a chance to exchange any last words with each other? was the father wounded and trying to comfort a scared child? or perhaps the child had been searching and found the father already dead in the street, and laid down on top of him to grieve until the child too died from artillery.
i force myself to ponder these images. if i have any patriotic duty at all then, it is this, to make these images of war real even if they are thousands of miles away.