Pictures of Horrible Things 

Images break me sometimes. In elementary school, I remember our teacher sitting the class down to watch some documentary about a humanitarian crisis I’ve long since forgotten, and the narrator told a story about a five-year-old girl who had died in a cardboard box on the side of the road. I remember my vision going all funny, my lungs not inflating, and other kids looking at me funny when I raised my hand and told them that my sister was five, too. 

In high school, there was an assembly presentation by one of the history teachers about the Syrian refugee crisis, and there was this picture of a little boy, about two years old, who had washed up on the shore, his head pressed gently in the sand, his little body all limp. He could have been sleeping, but he wasn’t. I remember how small he looked and how he was lying in the same position my infant goddaughter liked to nap in. That image was seared into my mind for months, and every time I saw it again, I got dizzy and had to sit down. It made me want to be a doctor, to help people, and to do things that mattered in my life. I had a Doctors Without Borders map on my wall for years. I looked it up, and the boy’s name was Alan Kurdi. 

After the earthquake in Turkey last year, I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a picture of a man in an orange jacket perched on the rubble of his home, holding the hand of his 15-year-old daughter who had been crushed under a slab of concrete. She was gone, but he wasn’t ready to let go. He was comforting her, holding her hand so gently, the same way my dad holds my hand when I’m sad or scared. I bawled in the car with my dad about it a couple of days later, trying to explain how all grieving fathers feel like my father and how every good man in the world has his eyes. 

In college, I studied medical history, flipping through old photographs of wounds, surgeries, mass graves, children littering battlefields, and humans treated like cattle. And I try to see my loved ones in those photos as well. I search for human beings with hopes and dreams, whole worlds reduced to limp bodies and waxy features. 

I know I am not alone. As human beings, we are built to empathize with each other. We understand the importance of these images, even if they hurt so much to see because they are how we stop people from being statistics. We remain human ourselves by seeking out the humanity in others.

But no images, no books, no understanding of the world that I have glued together for myself over the last two and a half decades prepared me for the staggering inhumanity in response to the active genocide happening in Palestine. The inability or unwillingness of the vast majority of white people to see our friends, family, neighbors, or even human beings in the faces of Palestinians is mortifying. It is a symptom of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy, and it is unequivocally evil.  

Since October 7th, I have seen so many pictures of dead children that my brain doesn’t know how to process what I’m seeing anymore. I have seen videos of parents grieving over the broken bodies of their babies or collapsing onto the rubble and trying to dig them out of what remains of their homes. I have stared at my ceiling all night, thinking about all the people who are trapped, alive, in the dark, who will never be dug out in time. A couple of weeks ago, I saw a video of a newborn baby who had been turned to dust: just ash, limbs, and the echo of a face. 

We are drowning in evidence of genocide, and the people with the power to stop this still aren’t listening. And all I can think is: how fucking dare we look away from this? How is my own culture so broken that it expects me to be okay with this? 

Why are we comfortable mourning those who have died as a result of natural disasters but refuse to see the humanity in those murdered with the blessing of our own government? How can standing with Ukraine be a righteous act, but standing with Palestine “sympathizing with terrorists?” How can you see your child in the face of every victim of gun violence in America but not the victims of US “military aid” in Palestine? Is a dead child not a dead child? How are “thoughts and prayers” suddenly good enough? How can you say you stand for peace while refusing to call for a ceasefire? Or are you only calling for peace because it’s more savory than justice? Because justice would involve admitting our collective complicity. 

An ideology that does not condemn ethnic cleansing is worthless. A government, an education, a world that does not condemn genocide is worthless. I am not afraid of alienating people when it comes to Palestine because the love of someone who does not see Palestinians as human is worthless to me. 

I am angry that I’m paying for this, that I voted for this. I am angry that I was born into a world where my body and soul are hooked into a capitalist machine like the fucking Matrix; my money, my vote, and my presence in the world as a consumer used to perpetuate this system. This white supremacist garbage.   

I have screamed on social media. I have called and emailed my representatives. I have donated to every organization that promises to help. I have signed every petition. I have yelled at my university for censoring students educating about Palestine and gotten others to do the same. I have blocked old friends who should never have been my friends in the first place and made sure to check on those who need to know that I love them. I have protested in every way that I am physically able, which is not as much as I would like. And I’ve been praying, even though I do not believe in God, because there is nothing else I can do. I may not have a god, but Palestinian’s faith at this moment makes it harder every day to believe that they do not. 

I make sure to look at the dead and grieving, to examine their faces until, in them, I see someone I know. I search for my friends and family, neighbors, or old classmates until they are not only human but tangible. Because the day I look at a dead child and see a terrorist is the day that I have died. I refuse to look away from this. I refuse to have the empathy burnt out of me by this stupid fucking world.