Anniversaries
It’s Hiroshima Day again. Iris is twenty-one years old.
In his office, my file was already on his desk. He sighed and gave me the bad news.
“I’m afraid this was a positive test,†he said. A clever circumlocution which neatly avoids any reference to the patient. The test is positive, not you. A kind conceit.
I don’t recall what I thought at that moment, but as my heart leapt into my throat I suspect I knew one thing: everything had changed. Forever.
Where will it end?
“Israeli PM rejects call to end Lebanon war” is the lead story on ABC News this morning. I half-expected the next line to read “We’re having too much fun!”
Wars are always terrible but the current batch seem particularly inhuman, one-sided and cynical. The arabs are painted as the enemy, as terrorists, but they are really the victims of state-sponsored terror on an unprecedented scale.
One doesn’t have to take sides in this rolling series of wars – no side occupies the moral high ground. But whether the fighting is taking place in Iraq, Palestine or Lebanon, overwhelming force is being used to kill innocent civilians, many of them women and children, for what? I can’t even tell you any more.
(Photo above: AP/Yahoo/Kevin Frayer)
