The war

A little girl, maybe five or six years old stands on dirt or concrete, or dirty concrete, a floodlight drawing a faded-edged circle around where she stands. Her black hair is cut short, curling around her earlobes and thick bangs ride above her brows. She wears a stained shift dress, beige, and it's splattered in blood. The blood of her family members, who had been shot and killed only seconds or minutes before the photo was taken. Her face is contorted in fear, pain, and confusion. The tracks of her tears under horrified eyes glimmer in the light. The boots of two or three soldiers stand on either side of her, dust-covered black leather roots that keep them away form her. A tip of one rifle visible, pointed down, away from her. They did not or rather, more hopefully, could not, kill her as well.

This image comes to me, a full year or so after I first saw it in an article, whenever it pleases. I'd say I was haunted by it, but that's maybe too dramatic. She flashes whenever I hear anything about the wars. She comes to me in my dreams, immobile, frozen and devastated. When I'm getting drunk sometimes, and I forget for a minute or an hour or a night what a ridiculous privilege it is to go out drinking and dancing. Once, when I was making love, and she made me cry then, because such bliss is so arbitrary, and there should be no reason I wasn't born as her. But I wasn't.

I wonder about her now. Has she smiled since then? Does she dream happy things ever? Is she with relatives not killed by those soldiers who are reportedly defending my freedom to get drunk and have sex and not think about little girls in Iraq or Afghanistan splattered in their family's blood? Whoever is caring for her, are they mending her, or trying to?

And of those soldiers, who stood there, looking on as her world broke apart: How are they? Are they haunted by that experience yet (yet, because I don't believe one can witness such suffering and not be haunted)? Or have they coped by assuring themselves and each other of her family's insurgency? Did one of them eventually scoop her up and whisper, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again in her ear? Do any of them cry at night when she comes to them? Who cares for them when they can't hold their own daughters without hating themselves for what they did or saw?

And the photographer: How did you achieve such professional detachment? Stand there and snap pictures and not go to her? Did you resist and urge to hurl damning profanities at the soldiers? Or are you a soldier yourself? The one that documents. The one that needs a pictorial record for the superiors, but also yourself, because words cannot express the gravity of these moments. How does she visit you now? I know she must. I know others must as well. So burdened with thousands of images of the war. I have this one and she weighs a ton. How do you manage? Who cares for you when you cannot shake them from your head?

For me, I cannot abide war, for any reason, and though I've felt this way since I remember articulating it first in my sixth grade school speech contest where I argued against the use of nuclear weapons, this little girl, this seconds long snapshot of her life, holds everything I need to know about war's complete futility. Because this terrified girl, totally bereft, covered in blood, visits me and before I can get to compassion, a murky, disgusting desire to kill the people who did it to her flashes through me. And that? That is the cycle of violence that can never be stopped by more violence. If I, a peace-abiding girl, feel murderous for even a second when her face floats in front of me, I can only imagine how the girl's surviving relatives must feel.

I say none of this to sanction terrorism or insurgency; but only to illustrate that all war is terrorism and can only beget more terrorism. I don't have the answers; I don't know how to get the US out of the business of war. I don't know if anything I can do here will make a difference. Sometimes, all I can do is bow my head and pray for her, and all the other children like her, and all the soldiers who have killed, and those who've been charged with documenting it all. Other times I can sign petitions, phone my representatives, donate to aid organizations helping kids in the war zones, or write about images that haunt.