Got yourself a gun,
Mama always said you’d be
The Chosen One.
She said: You’re one in a million
You’ve got to burn to shine,
But you were born under a bad sign,
With a blue moon in your eyes.
You woke up this morning
All the love has gone,
Your Papa never told you
About right and wrong.
But you’re looking good, baby,
I believe you’re feeling fine, (shame about it),
Born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes.
– Woke Up This Morning, by A3
A Palestinian boy points a toy gun, which boys often play with on the holiday of Eid al-Adha, at a memorial for the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the Al Azzeh Refugee Camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Sunday, Dec. 31, 2006.
I probably could not have written a better caption for my If I Were a Reuters Photographer series. It is almost as if the photographer is trying to minimize the seriousness of the palestinian childrens’ preoccupation with guns and violence (a manifestion of the culture of death and martyrdom, to which they are exposed from a young age), by offering a justification for the boy holding the gun.
Yes, the boy is holding a gun, but don’t read into it. It is a perfectly normal custom, which young boys partake in on the holiday of Eid al-Adha.
I wonder how the photographer would caption the plethora of other photos of palestinian children holding guns (whether they be of the toy or real variety). I seriously doubt they were all taken during Eid al-Adha.
