Flash Back

After a hot afternoon of photographing the dead, my darkroom mind printed a life size picture of three men riddled with bullets. One of them, Guy Malary, the justice minister, fifty years old.

I flicker my eyes to erase memory, but the visions remain. Bodies spread on the sidewalk with blotches of blood on their clothes and the pavement.

I cannot cope with this grammar of hate, syntax of violence. Yet, I am pulled by this senseless savagery. The soldiers with their machine guns, I with my camera. Fingers on the triggers— We shoot.

The people are frenzied birds surrounded by metal. I watched them flutter toward the port while the outstretched mouths of police guns spat bullets, struck five. Dead.

In the distant horizon, dark clouds of dust rose as street merchants hurried hands grabbing baskets pregnant with fruit and sun-bruised plantains.

I quickly switched focus when an angry mob of military attachés spilled out of an army truck like wolves descending on prey. They dashed toward the port and some toward journalists. Huffing raw liquor.

I snatched my PBS badge from my neck, packed my camera and melted in the heat of slaps, kicks and swinging gunbutts.