Lidudumalingani: “I cannot help but feel his body against mine, light and fragile”

August 26, 2016

In the past few days, this image of a boy covered in dust and blood has been making its rounds on social media.

His name is Omran Daqneesh. The image comes from a video taken after an airstrike in Aleppo, a city in Syria.

As the image continues to generate outrage against the horror of what some are saying could be a Russian-led airstrike in Syria, Caine Prize winning author Lidudumalingani posted a touching tribute to the boy on Facebook.

Ikhide Ikheloa who shared the post on his page notes that “Lidudumalingani Mqombothi’s powerful words are a camera deep into the souls of children born into wars they did not ask for.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Read.

Orman Daqneesh is only five years old. He is a year older than my own son. Orman, as he is being lifted from the rubble, his tiny arms flapping about, his petite body covered in dust and blood, appears to not know what is happening. He is too young to comprehend it. Watching, even this far away, I cannot help but feel his body against mine, light and fragile, like my son’s when I carry him but Orman has not decided that he is tired of walking and wants to be carried for the rest of the journey, he is being rescued from rubble, from a house that was brought down by a government airstrike with no care of who was inside it. You look at the women carrying him to the ambulance, you see routine on her face and not a heartbreak, but you understand that no one who rescues kids from rubble can have a heart. To do so is to commit suicide. To do so is to spent a second longer with one child whilst another is dying underneath the rubble. You want to believe that if the government knew that there was a five year old boy was inside that house, they would not have, surely they would not have, but you have seen this too many times to believe that. When he sits, with this bewildered look on his face, in the ambulance that he was taken into, staring into the distance and then rubbing his bloodied face with his small hands before looking at them, I wonder if he can see me, on the other end of the universe, looking back at him, teary and unable to explain to him what is going on, unable to promise him that it will not happen again. My heart bleeds for the children of this world. I carry a heavy heart.

– Lidudumalingani Mqomboth