The Boy

I keep thinking about the video. Two and a half minutes of a body—thirteen years old, face purple, covered in cuts and burns and bullet holes, genitals mutilated—with someone describing each wound. His name was Hamza Ali al-Khateeb. He was arrested at a protest in southern Syria in April 2011 and disappeared for a month. When his family got him back, he was like that.

When a body shows up that destroyed, it becomes something else. People started screaming his name in the streets. We are all Hamza Ali al-Khateeb. Facebook made him a martyr. He became what every uprising needs—a body so obscene that it can mean everything to everyone fighting back.

I understand the logic. I understand how some things are obscene enough to crack something open in people that won’t close again. But understanding and watching aren’t the same thing.

What got to me wasn’t the politics. It was the moment right after. I closed the video, scrolled to the next page, and there was Google’s Doodle for International Children’s Day. Something bright and colorful and happy. A celebration of childhood.

I was done after that. I didn’t have anything.