I wrote this awhile ago. It was a much longer piece then but over the years I have kept cutting it back. I think I wanted to make it more universal in the sense that while it is just one encounter between two people in a specific context, the image I wanted/want to explore is the complexity of war for all involved, at whatever distance, for whatever their reasons. Maybe it does this. Maybe not. I thought about it while running this morning because a flight of F-16s flew over head, their approach heard before they were seen. Even in the peaceful morning rain, the terror that is implied in war planes overhead was palpable. I came back and looked at this and said what the hell, maybe time to put it out there.
A War Story
When I saw her this morning I asked her how she was. She is a graphic artist from Yugoslavia and she works in the office downstairs.
“How was your weekend?”
She said she watched CNN just like she does every night since the Peacekeepers started bombing Belgrade.
In that moment she looked like someone Picasso might have met on the outskirts of Guernica.
Photo Credits
Photos are © Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved
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The absence of any direct connection with the civilian suffering that accompanies war on one’s home turf, among the majority of the American population, definitely has repercussions for our foreign policy.
When the war in Chechnya broke out our family was hosting a high school student from Turkmenistan, who was good friends with a Chechen girl. Poor Zarema went for two months watching the carnage of national news and having no news of her family., and when it came time for her to return home there was no home to return to – fortunately for her she had relatives in Moscow but most people were not so fortunate.
Indeed. Horror. Helpless. Most of us here cannot understand it…the closest thing we have is waiting for our soldiers to return from battle.