The photo of that woman in the burned-out house. She was crying desperately, you could tell, and the photo caption made it clear how much reason she had for it: her husband and two children were kidnapped by Hamas, her mother, whose house this is, and a niece were murdered.
The photo accompanied the opinion piece by the Palestinian Rajaa Natour who wanted to say out loud that ‘we Palestinians’ also kill. That’s true and in the grand scheme of things it’s important to say things like that, but that wasn’t what made the biggest impression. That was that photo, which was so well chosen because it showed the suffering of an individual.
On television I saw a Palestinian family drawing endless amounts of water, returning to the remains of their home in Gaza, lighting a fire from debris, walking through what was supposed to represent their home – windowless, crumbling walls. The son said that he always slept so well in ‘this was my room’, but now that was no longer possible.
The daughter tried to be brave, but when she told her that all her toys were gone, she burst into tears. The toy seemed like a pars pro toto to me, like in that poem by Wilfred Smit in which a city child writes to her grandfather who has moved away and whom she misses: “It’s worse with my doll/ since you live outside of it.”
Our crazy preference for numbers. So many Israelis, so many Palestinians. Compared to that, things in Ukraine are not so bad, as someone recently wrote or said, by God. Yes, if you put suffering on your plate by the thousands or tens of thousands, you won’t miss two plums.
I say that indignantly, as if I were completely different. But I also listen with dry eyes to the news about thousands of people around the world who have fled violence after relatives and fellow countrymen have been killed and I say helplessly: ‘How terrible.’ ‘How terrible.’ And I drink my coffee like anyone else.
Recently I was walking through Paris (more about that next time) on the way to the bakery that had deliciously light pain au chocolat, and for a moment I pictured a Ukrainian in a half-destroyed city, snow and a cold apartment building, children abroad left, meager groceries in her bag, and that she tried, but failed, to imagine that people in Paris were simply walking down the street and entering heated shops.
And then we say here cheeringly: “But at least she’s still alive.” As if nothing matters if it kills someone. As if it is not about that life, that one life.
Judith Herzberg wrote a little play a few years ago, Excavated, in which all you see are two people packing. They say those half-finished messy things from which you understand everything: “Better two bags, I think, / no suitcase. A suitcase stands out.” Gradually, or rather quickly, it becomes clear that these are the parents of a young child who has just been taken by someone to save it. To save it, but it’s gone. The mother says that the woman who came to pick up the child should never have said, “Are you sure?”/dammit! of course not!!!”
Rarely have you been so close to what it is, survival. Give a child. Go into hiding yourself. And later we only talk about enormous numbers and great horrors, and we say: how terrible.
It’s also terrible.