Shot to Shame

Sometimes it rains.It then seems that god in his infinite benevolence is showering us with sustenance and faith.It seems his word is being heard as a few,if at all,raise their faces to heaven, as the tatoo of cleansing grace rises over the filth around us and washes away our sins,greatest of all is to be alive now,spectator to the rape.It seems as if the pain and anguish is come to an end and the sun at last, is going to rise.It seems that hope itself is around the corner and the nightmare of reality is finally to be brought to trial before the jury of divine retribution.It seems,just for a moment, that it is a dream.Hence it is cruel to wake up.

For as the dust settles in the aftermath of the downpour, the stench of insanity overwhelmes.It does not fail to arouse pity and tears.It does not fail to reveal humanity, as it was certainly not meant to be.

His family was murdered before his eyes;brutally,non-chalantly,his life spared by the cruelty of chance.A lifetime of turmoil and daily worthless deaths he had lived through before puberty.The scarring images of a inhuman warring nation were already his inheritance.Then,his destiny drove him to this camp where his world now revolves around the single meal he gets daily and the extra bowl of water that he can sometimes scavenge.He lacks an arm and sports an infected eye.I find it difficult to see how he can last this year here.His first.He looks up,however, as it starts raining,thinking no doubt, about his emancipation.Or the extra bowl of water.He smiles.Unaware as they pour in more misery and sorrow.

He is lucky yet;well, luckier than most in this city of a million.A million dead souls rotting in ghoulish bodies.The land has been scarred by death and destitution for so long and with such vengeance,that virtues,blessings,goodwill and prayers do not tread here anymore.

But cloth stashed over his shoulder,covering his skeletal frame,stump of a limb held limp with confusion,his prized bowl and his ghostly face,his gory past and his unfathomable future get captured in one unflattering flash of my camera.This will go into my journal.And i will be one of the many, shamelessly sterile to help,except through pointless prose and inadequate journalism.It is one shot.And that is enough to glimpse only the shamefully emasculating nature of reporting genocide.powerless to help.POWERless.utterly useless.

He is standing there still.Like all the worthless souls around him.In the godforsaken camp.Right Before me,but in the deepest dark of tartarus, on the darkest of continents.

At least it rained.