At a Loss for Words
When photographs of Daniel Pearl were released by his captors in 2002, I downloaded one of them from the Internet. Imaging software is great. It is used all the time to airbrush imperfections. People also play with it to put famous people alongside ordinary people or to mix up heads and bodies. What I did was erase everything except Pearl’s head. Then I put a blue wash around it. What I was trying to do was imagine him free, surrounded by a healing blue light.
I’m not a very good magician. Despite my new-age efforts to free Daniel Pearl by erasing his shackles, he was beheaded in Pakistan after being abducted January 23 en route to interview a fundamentalist Muslim leader. His death was announced in the United States on February 22. Soon thereafter, I took down my picture of Pearl that included lines from a Psalm for good measure. The blue swirls I had added were looking too much like a halo.
A few months later, after everybody in my family was asleep, I got on the Internet again and downloaded the infamous video of Pearl being beheaded. It’s not easy watching a person being beheaded. In fact, since I had never seen such a thing in my life, I didn’t really have the cognitive structure to see, really see, this murder. I’ve seen violence. I’ve been the victim of violence. But nothing prepared me for Pearl’s execution. I can’t even say that I have a visual memory of Pearl’s beheading today, either because there was no place in my brain to store that data or because I have blocked it.
When given the opportunity to see a video of Nicholas Berg, I took it. I decided beforehand, however, that I would close the video before I saw the beheading. I had no interest in seeing this young man’s execution. I can say this much. I saw a man in orange seated at the feet of five hooded men, one of whom read from a prepared speech. As I listened to this speech, I heard muted sirens in the background but held no hope that these sirens belonged to a patrol car speeding to the rescue. Having read a translation of the speech, I knew the gist of what was being said.
No translation can do justice to the accompanying vocalizations and sound effects. Just as the speech was ending, while the speaker was saying his last few words, other people called out with passion and jeers. At that point, I imagined that the men were executing Berg in front of a group of people. Forget for a moment about virtual voyeurs. Think instead about the real, live human beings who stand there and praise God while a young man is decapitated, screaming all the while.
Just as Nicholas Berg’s image disappeared from my computer screen, I thought of his hopes and his dreams and his inevitable regret at being in the wrongest place possible at the wrongest time. Downloading the video to rewind his life to a month earlier, or even editing it to take back the actions of the killers, was not an option. Erasing the cries of any bloodthirsty bystanders would not change history.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has written about the stages one goes through when facing death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I want to add another stage. I just don’t have the right language for it. It’s quite possible there are no words to describe this stage. Sadly, if there were, the people who could help us understand just the right words have been silenced.
Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 19 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.
I’m not a very good magician. Despite my new-age efforts to free Daniel Pearl by erasing his shackles, he was beheaded in Pakistan after being abducted January 23 en route to interview a fundamentalist Muslim leader. His death was announced in the United States on February 22. Soon thereafter, I took down my picture of Pearl that included lines from a Psalm for good measure. The blue swirls I had added were looking too much like a halo.
A few months later, after everybody in my family was asleep, I got on the Internet again and downloaded the infamous video of Pearl being beheaded. It’s not easy watching a person being beheaded. In fact, since I had never seen such a thing in my life, I didn’t really have the cognitive structure to see, really see, this murder. I’ve seen violence. I’ve been the victim of violence. But nothing prepared me for Pearl’s execution. I can’t even say that I have a visual memory of Pearl’s beheading today, either because there was no place in my brain to store that data or because I have blocked it.
When given the opportunity to see a video of Nicholas Berg, I took it. I decided beforehand, however, that I would close the video before I saw the beheading. I had no interest in seeing this young man’s execution. I can say this much. I saw a man in orange seated at the feet of five hooded men, one of whom read from a prepared speech. As I listened to this speech, I heard muted sirens in the background but held no hope that these sirens belonged to a patrol car speeding to the rescue. Having read a translation of the speech, I knew the gist of what was being said.
No translation can do justice to the accompanying vocalizations and sound effects. Just as the speech was ending, while the speaker was saying his last few words, other people called out with passion and jeers. At that point, I imagined that the men were executing Berg in front of a group of people. Forget for a moment about virtual voyeurs. Think instead about the real, live human beings who stand there and praise God while a young man is decapitated, screaming all the while.
Just as Nicholas Berg’s image disappeared from my computer screen, I thought of his hopes and his dreams and his inevitable regret at being in the wrongest place possible at the wrongest time. Downloading the video to rewind his life to a month earlier, or even editing it to take back the actions of the killers, was not an option. Erasing the cries of any bloodthirsty bystanders would not change history.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has written about the stages one goes through when facing death: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I want to add another stage. I just don’t have the right language for it. It’s quite possible there are no words to describe this stage. Sadly, if there were, the people who could help us understand just the right words have been silenced.
Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 19 May 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.
posted by Felicia Mitchell | 7:24 AM
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