“Where is My Baby, My Daughter, My Bird?”
— father of one of the more than 900 workers killed in the illegally, shoddily constructed garment factory that collapsed in Savar, Bangladesh on April 24, 2013.
Photo by Taslima Akhter, Bangladeshi activist and photographer, who comments on it here.
I saw this photo too, yesterday. It’s so very moving. As are the words of the father that you quote. We make ourselves (or are made) servants to entities, physical and conceptual, and they can crush us… conceptually, and physically.
There are no words for this. None.
On April 23 this year, the day before my little 21 year old brother died in a freak accident, if you had shown me this picture I would have felt nothing but bewilderment. I regret to say that today, everything about this picture makes perfect sense to me. The sudden unexpected loss, the way the father holds his child, the way the media pimps out the story for its sensationalism; it hurts my heart that the friends and families of over 900 people now have to experience this kind of pain. When you lose someone precious to you, nothing can fill that hole in your life.
Ms. Akhter’s photo shows two young co-workers who died in the collapsed building — perhaps trying to protect each other, perhaps just reacting instinctively to hold another human being as they saw death come down upon them. She took more eloquent pictures of this disaster, but this is the most haunting.
I am very sorry you suffered the death of a loved one yourself. It’s true that we feel empathy most strongly when we have gone through an equivalent experience. However, the magnitude of this disaster (and the callousness that caused it) is such that the media didn’t need to sensationalize it.
Thank you. And thank you for correcting the little details, i would have missed them.