warI wasn't sure what to post tonight. There are some good things to post and then there are some bad ones. I think I need to exorcise a ghost that's been on my mind lately. Sometimes, we see images that stay with us and bring us bad dreams. This is one of those.
My list of things I've seen that I wish I hadn't #1836:
The man was crouching on the edge of the footpath, pointing his gun up the street at someone or something I couldn't see. He was using the shelter of the building next to him to duck back behind if he needed to. He kept low and fired often, he was fully engaged in his activity. The day was hot and dusty, the air was still and smelled of gunfire and the unique scent of the desert.
Suddenly, the area about the man was peppered with small spouts of dust. I heard the impacts as tiny thumping noises in the near distance. It was obvious that someone, unseen to me or the man was shooting at him. He had obviously been hit several times as he fell slightly to one side and lost his balance, sitting hard on backside. He put down his hand to steady himself.
The really shocking thing about this event, is not that he was shot or that it was a bright, sunny, normal day in Baghdad. The really shocking thing, the thing that gives me nightmares is the look on his face, the look of a man who has been surprised by death. The first peppering of bullets surprised the man so much that he looked about to see what had hit him. He knew something had knocked him off balance but he didn't know what. His face was surprised, his eyebrows raised as if he was asking a question. He wanted to know what had hit him, who had done it. He looked all about him looking for the answer and it came. The realisation that he had been shot came just an instant before a second spray of bullets rained on him.
This man had been so confident that he would always win his battles, that he would survive this war and tell his children about it, that he honestly didn't understand that he'd been shot. The understanding that he was about to be shot again and that he would die this time, came just an instant before a second round of tiny puffs of dust covered him and the area around him. He was just then trying to lift himself off his bottom to scramble to safety. He fell hard to the ground, the way people do when they are shot instantly dead (not catapulted off their feet as in the movies) and the surprised look on his face was soon replaced with the unmistakeable mask of death. The eyes half open, half closed, the mouth slack and all the facial muscles totally relaxed.
That man died in just a moment, a flash of seconds and neither he nor I saw the man that killed him. Death isn't always forwarned, we don't always see what kills us. Sometimes, we die quite unawares.
Before you get the wrong idea, I wasn't there when it happened, I saw it on a tape made by a foreign journalist but it left an deep impression on me. It's one of the tapes you probable won't see on sanitised TV
I hope I can get this out of my mind now.