Well, This Is What I Think

This is a photo of a young Syrian girl, taken by Arab photojournalist Nadia AbuShaban.

The child was terrified that the camera was a weapon, and “surrendered” by pushing her little hands to the sky, in a heart-rending exposition of what life is really like for so many children, throughout the Middle East.

As of March 30, AbuShaban’s message had been re-tweeted almost 9,000 times and favourited another 4,000 times. Her Twitter profile has also been flooded with messages.

It has since also been shared to other social media platforms, attracting millions of views and thousands of comments on Tumblr, Reddit and other popular sites. And now this blog.

We are reminded of the famous photo from the Vietnam conflict of the girl running down the track, naked from a napalm attack. and we suspect that AbuShaban has taken another of those impromptu, heart-rending photos that can change attitudes and opinions.

If the look in that child’s eyes, and the quivering terror of her clenched lips, do not melt some hearts on all sides of the various conflicts raging in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Israel and elsewhere, well, then we have no hope.