Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

In the days that followed, he would remember with lasting shame and pangs of remorse that he had thought as he clicked, ‘Why shouldn’t it be the Photo of the Year?’ The man with the black hood over his head was clasping his son to his chest with his wounded arm while his dirty, dusty left hand was placed on the forehead of the poor boy half-conscious from fright or fever. It was as though all the love of the world was in that thin hand with its slender fingers; so soft, like a caress, afraid to hurt … His head was bent low; one couldn’t see his lips moving, but his chin was touching the boy’s black hair that was stuck to his forehead with dirt and sweat. He was obviously comforting his son with words of love from under that accursed black hood, the symbol of humiliation, defeat and possibly death that had been thrust over his head. Perhaps he was saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, this is only a game.’ He had embraced his son closely with his heart and his wounded arm, as if trying to protect him from the world — as if this were possible — but also with the mad, hopeless grief of knowing he could do nothing. No fear, no tears in the child’s half-closed eyes, on his face smeared with his father’s blood; no reproach, no scream from his parted lips; a silence, making it obvious that he would never talk or weep again…

He kept snapping away, taking pictures from the same angle, sometimes zooming in, not thinking, not seeing. The prisoner’s face was not visible. He was blind, dumb, alone and helpless under the terrifying hood. The image in flesh and blood of the victim made a caricature of the Pietà sculptures which are among the most treasured heritage of western culture, reducing them to absurdity. The Saviour, the sacrificed son lying in his mother’s arms after being taken down from the Cross: the statue of the wounded father sentenced to death, the prisoner who cannot protect his child…

The man knew soon they would be tearing his small son from his breast and dragging him away. He didn’t know what would happen to him, himself, whether he would be shot dead with a single bullet. He didn’t know what crime they were supposed to have committed, why the troops had directed their guns at him and placed that black sack over his head. He had taken his son by the hand and they had been heading to Grandpa’s house near by to get a small cup of sugar, if there was any. When they were stopped by troops with their terrifying weapons, their shouts in a language he didn’t understand, their commands, perhaps their curses, he had no idea what they had done wrong. He had clasped his little son tightly, and the boy in terror had clung to his father in such a way that the soldiers had found it easier to throw them both behind the barbed wire rather than try to prise them apart.

For an instant Deniz thought he caught a glimpse of the captive father’s face under a miraculous light through the thick black hood. He thought if there is only one human depiction, one image to last for the next thousand years, it should be the face of that Iraqi father and not Christ on the cross. Then, from the misty mysterious depths of his soul where heart meets brain, a forgotten image came up to the cold and clear level of his consciousness and adhered itself to his eye. Many years ago, when he was still a child, a team had come from the council to their neighbourhood to put down dogs and had poisoned a bitch with puppies. He remembered how the dying dog had dragged herself over to the men when she noticed them approaching her pups, how she had looked at them with imploring eyes and tried to lick the hands of her murderers as she begged them for mercy. Deniz had shouted, ‘No! Don’t kill them!’ and had fallen to the ground, unconscious and foaming at the mouth. His mother had told him later that they had panicked, thinking he was having an epileptic fit.

While he continued to press the button on his camera as if in a trance, the indefinable grief in the hearts and the eyes of the captive father and the mother dog merged together like superimposed photographs and became one single picture. The image of the powerless father, his head covered with a sack and his small son whom he held hopelessly to his chest, was etched into Deniz’s heart and his memory and remained there, just like the imploring look of the mother dog that licked her killers’ hands to protect her puppies.

In the past few months he had taken scores of photographs without batting an eyelid — images that were unbearable to look at. He had thrown the whole lot into the black hole inside him. However, there was no room inside him for the suffering of the captive helpless father at death’s door, with a black hood over his head, clasping his small son to his breast behind barbed wire. Perhaps his black hole was not as deep as he thought, or perhaps it was now full. He did not send those last photographs anywhere, did not show them to anyone or look at them again. He deleted them from the camera’s memory card. He would have liked to delete them from his own memory, too, but he couldn’t. He considered that taking pictures of cruelty was a form of collaboration with the tyrant. He felt that photographing the murders committed in front of his eyes instead of trying to stop them made him an accomplice to the crime. He believed that to perpetuate human grief by freezing it as photographs served to make it commonplace for ever. He became disgusted by and frightened of the news, photographs and television interviews that brought as much fame and money as the blood, death and devastation they showed. The more they laid bare the cruelty, the violence, the hopelessness, the desperation and the shame of human beings, the better … They wanted him to be successful, didn’t they? Well, here was success! Was it possible to defeat the oppressors by telling about the suffering, by spreading the news and showing it? Was there no other way? He could find no answer other than to flee. Just as he had seized the opportunity of crossing to the other, the winning side, he had lost yet again. I couldn’t make it this time either; I couldn’t pay the price of success. I’m a coward; stupid and incompetent. I’ve lost again.

He knew there was another solution. He felt it deep inside; and that was to face violence, cruelty and pain instead of turning one’s back on it. He wasn’t strong enough to do it. He didn’t believe in salvation. What he had seen during his time in Iraq had strengthened his belief that mankind could not be saved and that humanity would not triumph over evil, cruelty and war. He watched with some amazement, trying to understand his peers — girls and boys, northern, southern, Middle Eastern, European, American, Australian, Japanese, Turkish, blond, dark, all those young people — who voluntarily rushed to the centre of the fire, the blood and the cruelty for the sake of solidarity with life and humanity. They were all very different, but they all had something of Olaf in them. Even if they seemed to be there for others, they were actually there for themselves.

One day he was trying to photograph children in hospital; some without arms, others without legs, all wrapped in rags, lying on top of each other on beds with torn mattresses in a ward where the walls were riddled with bullet holes, bloodstains and dung beetles and cockroaches thriving on the dirt and blood. He came across a young French doctor from the organization Médecins Sans Frontières and asked her why she was in that hell. The answer was ‘Because I feel responsible for what is going on here. Because I can’t tolerate such a world. I don’t want to collaborate with bandits, be an accomplice in crime.’

‘You are only saving yourself, easing your conscience by feeling you are of use. That’s all.’

‘Your problem is solved if you can square your own conscience with that of humanity as a whole. I think I’ve been able to do that.’