I was speaking at a church about my experiences in Afghanistan, showing some of the hundreds of photos I took on that trip. Near the end of my talk I had a photo of a little girl holding on to her father. A typical photo – one that could be taken of my daughter as she suddenly becomes shy in the company of her parent's strange friends. With that image on the screen I said one thing I had learned from Afghanistan was that despite all the differences in culture, locale, history, economics and much else, at the heart of us, we share a common humanity. That children cling to their parents when strangers come to the door, partially curious about the big world out there, while holding on to the safety of the domestic circle.
A maudlin conclusion perhaps; and one I shared last month in this column after watching 32 movies at the Montreal Film Festival. Certainly one woman at the Afghanistan talk thought it was a silly punch line. Without missing a beat she said, "Yeah, till she grows up, does something he doesn't approve of and he kills her."
I was, rare for me, speechless. My first response was a rush of anger, which I hope I didn't express. Hadn't she heard my presentation? Hadn't she read my article? Or, had she heard the presentation through a particular filter? I never thought she was being racist, but as I calmed down (a little) I realized she was expressing the arrogance of a media watcher. She knew for a fact, because she had heard the stories, that honour killings happen over there. In Afghanistan.
Various human rights organizations broke that story a few years ago – approximately 200 girls killed in Afghanistan in 2006 for "inappropriate relationships." A powerful story.
But is that story representative of Afghanistan? Is it representative of fathers and daughters? Is it the story of Muslims? Yes, it's a powerful story, but does it illustrate Afghanistan?
During the Summer of SARs in Toronto my sister-in-law in Langley, B.C., called to say we should move in with her for the summer. She had been hearing stories of people dying in Toronto and assumed we were all in a state of quarantine. From her vantage, across the country, it seemed Toronto was shut-down because that's the only story she was getting from the city.
I made the same assumption on September 11th, 2001, when I forgot Manhattan was a really big island. I finally spoke to a friend who was then living on the Upper East Side who said he had as much a relationship to the fateful events as I did. His work and home were so far away, he too was watching it all on TV.
In our 24/7 media world we think we know the truth but we know very little. A news story is at best only a metaphor for conditions in the village, city, country from which it has been filed; at its worst, which is most of what we get, it is often a complicated mixture of cultural biases and it-bleeds-it-leads cynicism.
I could argue, from my limited experience of being there, that the photograph of the little girl holding on to her daddy is the true story of Afghanistan – a story of culture, tradition, community and hope. But based solely upon an unscientific survey of stories from Afghanistan, that is not the story we – you and me, the consumers of media, the ones who pay for it – want. We want stories of hateful ideologues, ignorant families and dead soldiers. That is Afghanistan to us; and Somalia and Sudan, and many other such places, caught in civil wars and filled with non-Canadians.
The onus is always on us to discern what we consume. Because consume is what we do best of all; often smugly, judging the world in our shadow. Superciliously sitting atop Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs. Forgetting our shared humanity in the face of the never-ending news-cycle. And we must discern in favour of our shared humanity.
The photograph mentioned appeared in the October 2007 issue and can be found on the Record's website.
