Watch

Watch, originally uploaded by From Afghanistan With Loveّ.

i have so often wanted to snap some shots of the foreign troops here in afghanistan, but everytime i see them, one of two things happen: either i don’t have my camera handy, or even when i do, i get so damn intimidated by their agression and speed (they usually come in convoys of several humvees and APCs waving their fists and occasionally their weapons -or actually throwing their half-empty bottles of mineral water- on passers by and other motorists and they have a rather bloody history of killing innocent civilians) that i do not dare stick my 70-300mm long lens towards them and go snap, snap, snap just before they go bang, bang, bang (of course with the comfortable explanation later on -i imagine- that the native male individual appeared hostile and pointed an unidentified, tubular, black object at us…)

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but then i happened to be in badaxan a while ago and while waiting at faizabad’s rudimentary air-strip (the runway is made of container steel with ridges and it does not make for a smooth take-off/landing by any means) a female german soldier caught my eyes. for all her military luggage and weaponry and all other add-ons that i could not have identified even if i tried, the woman behind them all shone through. short, blond hair, smooth -and well-tanned- flawless skin, and a non-chalant swagger and posture and style you thought she was standing by the banks of the rhine in strasbourg surveying the ripples of that storied -and litraried!- river, and not in the abandons of northeastern afghanistan, hand at the ready -in fact halfway in the fatigue’s pockets- and watching out, eying what to her could be potential hostile elements.

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and so i could not help myself. this disonance -this juxtaposition of the beauty and fragility side by side with so many instruments of overwhelming violence- was too much to resist. and lo and behold: i took out my beloved canon eos 400d and mounted the suspicious looking 70/300mm zoom lens and started going crazy. believe it or not, she stood, in a frozen pose, there till i snapped my heart out. i could not tell you though what was going through her mind. shades can conceal eyes, and in the process, so much of what a person can normally let on through their eyes. but the clenched jaw and upturned lips finally dissuaded me from pushing my luck too much.

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i did not even get to thank her. but deep down, i was secretly glad for being the native who oggled at and snapped photos of the curious and exotic specimen -in this case the western- thereby turning orientalism on its head. one of these days, i hope to be the native who also told the story of those who usually get to tell the stories of the tongue-tied native. i am telling you. reading edward said has done unspeakable things to me. it has awoken a deep discontent in me with my station and position as the seen, observed, written-about native, and it cannot be undone.

~ by safrang on September 1, 2008.