What can we do for the people of Aleppo?
Say it: I DONT CARE. I don’t give a damn about the lives of these brown folks whatever they do to each other!
But say it openly and proudly, among your friends and colleagues. Sounds disturbing, doesn’t it?
Well, till you see another side.
They’re watching!
[Spoiler alert]
It’s a comedy about a bunch of good American journalists who come into an Eastern European country to shoot a stupid designer TV-show. They find that their client — a young creative artist and designer — is hated by locals, hardcore red-necks. Obviously, because she doesn’t go to church and they are closed-minded misogynists. They even call her a witch.
However, soon the journalists see that something evil does exist in the town. Kids are dying, people are missing. They start to document terrible evidence.
And their cameraman, Greg, confesses why he abandoned his brilliant career as a war correspondent.
Greg was making a reportage in Afghanistan. He was shooting in the local girl school. And then few Talibs came.
Greg felt okay, he knew them, they were not crazy fanatics. These Talibs were only beating and preaching but nothing excessive.
But this time: He saw my damn cam!!!
Their leader saw a chance to get publicity: to be aired in all American TV-channels. The chance that all Americans will watch him.
So he took one of the pupils, a 9-year old girl.
Took his knife.
And made Greg record.
At the end of the movie, they found that their client, an artist, actually was a witch. And she did kill locals and their children.
She did it because she wanted to be world-wide famous as the most terrible and powerful and cruel witch in history.
So the best way to get publicity was by killing and crucifying and torturing people for camera.
The end of a fiction story.
Non fiction:
Have you watched all these photos with killed Syrian kids? Have you seen TV reportages from funerals of dead shahids? Have felt pity and anger and hatred to those who did it?
This is the background of one of those.
2012. Nadia has been an Asad’s supporter. My friend knew her in Damascus.
She collected about 30 000 signatures in his support. Yes, that was a time when civilian Syrians believed in signatures.
She kept receiving letters with threats till one day she went out of her house and found her boy killed.
Then some people came, took his body from her, and made a “funeral promo”.
A video about another martyr of cruel dictatorship aired on the Jazeera channel.
They did not let her bathe her son’s body.
They refused her to attend the funeral.
Instead, they designed a revolutionary promo.
For you — my dear good-hearted friend — to consume.
To experience pity, sympathy, anger.
For you to click and share and write angry comments.
For you to call for international justice and humanitarian aid.
Without your pity, your weakness, your compassion, they wouldn’t have needed to use his body as a stage props.
They would have let this woman bury her son.
So how can you help people in Aleppo, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Egypt, Libya?
Choose one of the options:
1. Leave your job, go to these countries having no camera, find work there, live with these people and do what you can see you are able to do.
2. Admit that you’re weak. You cannot help those in other countries. Donation is another comforting bullshit in this case.
But though you cannot help foreigners, you’re still strong enough to help your real neighbors — homeless people.
They are not cute. They are not nice. They are not innocent. But they are suffering, nearby you. They are your real country, your real people, your real family and friends.
So be a hero — stop watching.
