I had not put a lot of thought into how the majority of women are portrayed in times of war until I watched this film. For some reason, this story pulled my heart right out of my chest. I remember that photo from my childhood. I understood it in a way a child understands bad things. This film wasn’t the first horrifying piece of journalism I have seen featuring the death and destruction of women and children. My entire lifetime has been plagued with photos, movies, and articles featuring death, war, and destruction with plenty of running screaming bloody starving women and children. Vulnerable women who are scraping dirt in the streets for food, crying, unable to protect or feed the children, begging for peace and protection. They are always covered in dirt. Dirt is everywhere, dry, blowing around, suffocating dirt. Dirt on faces, bodies, vehicles, in the wind, on and in every crevice. I think I always hated it for some reason. The rubble, the dirt. Everything is grey and dead and dry. It is saying to me now like never before, that is all that left. Dirt. When everything we know is gone, there it is, just sitting there.
The film asked us about the pictures, what is behind the pictures? The men are waving, aiming guns and knives, using weapons creating death. The women are vulnerable mud smudged targets, behind walls, sand bags, and helpless in the streets dragging along tattered bags and carrying starving children. The message is clear. I never saw it before. I saw the pictures; I did not process the message. There is an evil you cannot define or avoid.
A woman, an outsider, somehow not meant to know what is going on, just running around screaming in fear and panic. No resources, no help, no one is coming, so they keep scraping the dirt. This is your fault somehow, you can’t keep the peace, you don’t even know what is going on in your home, your neighborhood, or your life. Running in circles looking for more dirt, good dirt, dirt that yields crops and hope. Dirt that does not run with blood.
And here I am, in this continuous war-torn world, in a place that was supposed to be safe. My female friends carrying passports and birth certificates in case they are pulled over or someone breaks down their door and they disappear. It doesn’t matter what they look like in their picture, their last names change the canvas. Evil won’t care about the picture, only the words beside it. I too live with those bastards in their darkened armored vehicles rolling through my quiet forested streets. They are cruising for death in the National Forest, piercing my whole body with a fear that derails my entire day, my night, and every day following. I am enraged at their presence. How dare they trespass on my dirt! There is no peace. There is no relief from the unchecked evil. What are these men doing? Who is going to refuse to pull the trigger? What if I run out of dirt? I thought my dirt was a safe haven. If I had this dirt, I could live no matter what happened around me. I don’t like anyone on my dirt.
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