The Photo

The picture that captivated my mother and me.

It took me some time searching the internet to find Abed Omar Qusini’s Reuters News photo that I used in my previous letter, my very first Substack entry, by the way. I wanted to add depth to my post and visual attractiveness as well. I knew I would be sharing some information about the GWB Iraqi invasion in 2003. “I think I’ll use that Newsweek(?) photo of the tanks rolling in,” I said to myself. It was framed and lovingly displayed on a shelf in my curio cabinet. You must be wondering what on earth is wrong with me. Did I celebrate this war? No! But, like my mother, I saw the beauty of the white doves in their graceful flight. (What is beauty?) I will say more about this later, but I have a long story to tell and I need to start at the beginning.

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003.

When I went to work that morning, the attitude of my co-workers was shocking. The two young conservative white men were jubilant, puffing their chest as they pointed at me and said something like, “Haha, we told you so, you unpatriotic simpleton.” My other co-worker was a young woman fresh out of college who listened to Christian radio every morning on her way to work. She adorned her cubicle with photos of our brave avenging soldiers. She had been raised in Saudia Arabia, where her father worked for a defense contractor.

During my lunch break I paid a visit to the wife of the family who were still living in the house I was in the process of buying from them. She couldn’t tear herself away from the television where our embedded journalists were sharing, blow by blow, the Shock And Awe. She was crying. “This is so terrible,” she said. “Those innocent Iraqis, especially the children have done nothing to us.” As a recent transplant to this overwhelmingly conservative place, I felt very grateful to know her.

My mother, the enigma.

Shortly thereafter, I drove to my parent’s house, an hour from mine. I walked into their living room to find my mother clipping a picture from the page of a magazine. While it was a color photo, the paper was thin, almost like that of newspapers. She folded it to fit and proceeded to place it in a nice picture frame. She hung it on the wall immediately, right next to all of her prized oil paintings and limited edition prints! “Wow,” I thought to myself. “Only my mother would do a thing like this.”

“Surely she must also love the profundity of the juxtaposition of the doves, symbols of peace, flying in front of this monstrous tank, the obvious symbol of war, destruction and death?” said my heart.

“I just think this is so beautiful, don’t you?” She asked me. “Yes, indeed I do,” was my reply. She had artistic talent that I, who actually earned a Bachelor’s degree in studio art, could only dream of ever having. Yet, she never used it beyond painting windows at Christmas for the department store where she was employed. Most of her framed art included depictions of birds. I knew about that thing which I had inherited from her: our eyes were constantly, ravenously craving visual satisfaction. I’ve had so many close calls while driving because I got caught up in the scenery. Was that all this meant to her? “Surely she must also love the profundity of the juxtaposition of the doves, symbols of peace, flying in front of this monstrous tank, the obvious symbol of war, destruction and death?” said my heart. I didn’t ask, I just smiled, I was convinced she saw that part too. When she passed away in 2022, I knew which of her possessions I wanted the most.

Time warp: an imaginary distortion of space in relation to time whereby people or objects of one period can be moved to another.

I was writing my first entry on Substack. I wanted to include the wonderful picture, but what about copyright laws? Who really owned this photo? I searched the internet using terms like “doves flying in front of tank.” All of my searches returned hundreds of results and a lot of very similar images. I think I finally succeeded by using the date and the city name Tulkarem.

Wait! What?! The photo was taken in 2002 in the West Bank by a Palestinian journalist!!

So Tulkarem is a city in Palestine, and all of this was happening two years before the start of the Iraq war… I wanted to investigate. I conducted my search two days ago, February 19, 2025, the very day that the internet was filled with news about Israeli tanks invading the city of Tulkarem! 23 years later and the headlines are exactly the same. I am devastated. I am also embarrassed as the majority of Americans should also be. Where have we been all this time? Why haven’t we known these things and why haven’t we cared? (A topic for another essay.)

Who is this brave Palestinian journalist?

I now know his name and I love him. I looked for him. He was shot in the leg on May 29, 2003. Oh dear, is he still alive, I wondered? (As of February 4, 2025, 162 Palestinian journalists have been killed, mostly by the IOF.) He is! And, he is still doing the Lord’s work! I found one of his photos in an article published January 12, 2025. Will you believe me if I tell you that it was a picture of an Israeli tank taking up a position in front of a mosque in Tulkarem? I am in awe of this man and all of the journalists who face so much danger in their mission to wake us from our slumber of ignorance.

Mystical: inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe and fascination.

Here, I share another photo of him that his sister Kloie Picot posted on Instagram. It will be the next one I will frame and treasure in furtherance of this mystical connection.

“Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.”

- Van Morrison