Innocence, displacement, war, and Hudea the 4-year who broke and keeps breaking my heart.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 4 APRIL 2015. BLACK SATURDAY. N2.
Innocence, displacement, war, and Hudea the 4-year who broke and keeps breaking my heart. 

I HAVE SEEN her picture more than a week ago. 

I do not know how to make to of her innocence, and I prayed to God in the silence of my heart that would that this child see the light of day in the border of Syria and Turkey, she becomes the voice of peace, heals others, and announce the gospel of justice as the basis of human and social order, not the quest for profit and more profit as is the gospel coming from Manhattan, London, Vatican, and all the stock exchanges all over the world preys upon the sweat, labor, and dignity of all working class peoples all over the world. 

Anyone who does not understand this must slap themselves. 

And on Black Saturday, those people must slap themselves until they realize that they have been hoodwinked into believing that all is well in the world.

It is not. 

In December 2014, Osman Sagirli, a Turkish photojournalist snapped this picture of Hudea, the innocent, four-year old Syrian refugee taking temporary refuge in a camp in Atmeh, a place close to Turkey. 

Hudea thought that Osman's telephoto lens of a camera, those protruding apparatus of better and more professional photojournalists, was a protruding barrel of a high powered rifle (or its equivalent) and so she raised her arms in surrender. 

It was one of those automatic, almost-kneejerk reactions of children who have seen a lot of things that they are not supposed to see, like war, like evacuation, like the constant report of guns of all kinds from capitalist countries counting their monies from profits of arms production and arms sale. 

I cried seing Hudea's picture. 

You must too. 

Here is the account of Osman on this, from his lips. "I was using a telephoto lens, and she thought it was a weapon. İ realised she was terrified after I took it, and looked at the picture, because she bit her lips and raised her hands. Normally kids run away, hide their faces or smile when they see a camera. You know there are displaced people in the camps. It makes more sense to see what they have suffered not through adults, but through children. It is the children who reflect the feelings with their innocence."

Now, now: let us weep for all the Hudeas of the world. 

HON/