That's what it's often said: A picture is worth more than a thousand words. Not always. But when that happens, it often results in my not able to utter a word, not a thousand or more. It would seem as if the image is directed to me and me alone, like a dart, telling me, transmitting to me a mountain of sensations, emotions, with such intensity that I am rendered speechless. But I will try now to describe one image I saw very recently. I couldn't do so when I first saw it, I couldn't find the words.
That image was merely a snapshot, but it had instantly circulated by all media like the ray of sun, a thunderbolt, a gleaming shaft of light across the entire world. It had made me shiver, seeing the look of the man stand out above all others, fixedly on the TV screen. It wasn't the look of someone well rehearsed to put on a poker face to conceal overwhelming emotions. Sunk in his chair in that photo, Barack Obama was locked in behind mixed emotions - at least at that precise instant when the camera clicked - of an anguish beyond all bearing.
I felt it at the time, stunned, drawn to it like magnet, that frozen look in an expression which, instead of affirmation, transmits appalling doubt of someone not sure whether he had liberated the world of an unappeasable enemy, or had committed a great error, an atrocity. For better or for worse, that image would mark the place in the Pakistani map, with the disquieting look of the man, linked with what's considered by many a slaughter, that made the history.
I am not talking about the president, or politics. Just the look on a man's face. You take a better 2nd look if it's still possible, without preconception nor prejudice. Where have been shown before a man, sitting in the background, without the minimum arrogance but a stricken look, attending a live execution, planned and authorized by him, of a most sought number one enemy of his country? You will discover why this disturbing image is, already, without further words, historical.
