When I read the story behind this photograph of a Syrian child refugee by Turkish photojournalist, Osman Sağırlı, I too was moved like a million others who shared and reposted this picture over the last week since it first appeared online. Hands raised in show of surrender and a fear so apparent in large luminous eyes, one can only imagine the trauma of a child in a war-torn region. Even in a refugee camp, a place considered safe for war victims and the displaced, the threat of attack is a subconscious reality.
The photojournalist was visiting a Syrian refugee camp where he pointed his telephoto lens to a child to take a picture when she, Atmeh, instantly lifted her tiny arms high above her head, perceiving the object to be a weapon. The act of surrender is bitterly synonymous to the surrender of innocence. I, myself have been a refugee, making it to my first birthday before the invasion of my birth country, Kuwait by Iraq. While I cannot remember anything from the events when my family abandoned our home in Kuwait and made it safely out of the country with the help of the Red Cross, I still reckon it to be, the most terrifying episode in my life yet.
We all know that war disrupts the lives of so many, who have lost, lived and hope to start afresh. Yet the scars remain and for all its worth, we still find ourselves moving towards more wars and destruction. Our leaders live out their fantasies of power and wage wars in the name of this very power.
My Bluntkut: A fool with power is like a gun without a safety on.
