The idea that I put forward in this essay is not, in its immediate content, a happy one. The three-year old Aylan Kurdi, lying face down in the sand, on a Turkish beach; the immobile figure of a police officer beside him, like a powerless sentinel. This small body washed up on a beach. Other pictures emerged of the boy with his five-year old brother Galip [also dead], laughing and holding a teddy bear in a pink dress; another with Galip’s arm around his brother. These pictures gripped the whole world in early September 2015, for several days. They were ‘extraordinarily powerful images’ (The Independent, 3 September 2015). It appeared like a revelation to each of us that millions of people were trying to escape from their camps, villages, dead places where no future could be invented any more. The image of the boy’s body was an emotional shock. Why him? Why now? Surprisingly, these pictures created carnal connections, as if we knew the boys and their family because they acted like any boy: laughing, playing with teddy bears, and… with sand on a beach. But did we really care? … [Read More]
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