The Heart and the Fist Part 4

After several weeks I moved on to work in a second Croatian refugee camp. Gasinci camp, outside the city of Osijek, was what I had imagined a refugee camp to look like. Hundreds of prefabricated shelters had been set up, laid out in straight lines like a military encampment. In Puntizela, everyone knew each other. Gasinci, by contrast, was crowded with refugees, many of whom were strangers to one another. This was no seaside resort. Volunteers from Croatian nonprofits, as well as International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and UNICEF personnel were also packed into the camp.

My first morning in Gasinci, I woke suddenly to the sound of exploding artillery. I shot straight up in bed and hit my head against the upper bunk. The Croatian Army regularly conducted maneuvers on a hill near the camp, and eventually I got used to the sound. In the early years of the war, there was intense fighting between Croats and Bosnians, and despite the alliance they now shared against the Serbs, the tensions of the past still lingered in the camp. A few days into my stay, Croatian soldiers shot two puppies that the kids in the kindergarten adored. None of the kids were injured, but the refugees were supposed to be protected by the UN, and the aid workers felt that the incident had to be addressed. I watched as outraged workers for the High Commissioner for Refugees debated what to do. In the end they decided to write a letter.

Before I'd left for Bosnia, people had been debating the role of the UN in responding to the ethnic cleansing. What should the UN Protection Force be allowed to do? What role should international aid organizations play? How can the UN use its power to shape events? As I watched the outraged workers type their letter-not fifty yards from where the puppies had been shot in front of the kindergarten-I realized that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had no real power. The United Nations only brought in aid when the people with guns allowed them to. The UN, it turned out, couldn't take a stand to protect anyone. Not the kids in the camp, and later, tragically, not the people of Srebrenica.

In July 1995 the Serbian Army began sh.e.l.ling Srebrenica, a town that the UN had deemed a "safe zone" for Bosnian refugees escaping the terror of the war. Days later, the Serbian Army entered the Srebrenica camp. Serbian general Ratko Mladic requested a meeting with General Thom Karremans of the Dutch United Nations peacekeeping force and demanded access to the refugees. The Dutch battalion had only four hundred or so men to protect thirty thousand refugees. Faced with the Serbian Army's superior numbers and firepower, the peacekeepers allowed the Serbian forces to advance.

As word that they had been abandoned spread through the camps, thousands of Bosnian men fled through the woods. Those that remained were packed onto buses and driven by Serbian soldiers to soccer fields and old warehouses. Some of the men and boys were lined up and shot. At other killing fields, men and boys were mowed down by machine guns. Before they were shot, some had their eyes gouged out, their ears and noses cut off. Some were taken to warehouses, stripped down, and packed tightly inside before hand grenades were lobbed into the buildings.7 In all, more than eight thousand men and boys, ranging in age from fourteen to seventy-eight, were slaughtered, and nearly thirty thousand refugees were deported to Serbian-controlled territories over a period of five days. Srebrenica remains the most heinous ma.s.sacre to take place on European soil since World War II.

Later, when I thought about the UN workers in Gasinci writing their letter, when I read about what had happened at Srebrenica, I realized that there was a great dividing line between all of the speeches, protests, feelings, empathy, good wishes, and words in the world, and the one thing that mattered most: protecting people through the use of force or threat of force. In situations like this, good intentions and heartfelt wishes were not enough. The great dividing line between words and results was courageous action.

Sitting in Gasinci, I understood the anger of the woman who had approached me on the train: "Why don't you do do anything?" anything?"

I tried in my own small way to be protective. In Gasinci, a director of one of the nonprofits asked if we could bring all of the kids outside to meet a donor that afternoon.

"Why?"

"The donor wants to throw out gum to the kids and I would like you to make photographs."

I could imagine the scene: a donor standing with a bag of candy, surrounded by children, and tossing out gum like he was throwing feed to animals in a zoo. I said to the director, "Why doesn't the donor sit down with the kids and talk with them? The kids can show him what they've been working on. I can take photos of that."

"Yes, but they want photos of the donor handing out gum."

"I won't take those photographs."

"But you must."

Many of the aid-organization advertis.e.m.e.nts for refugee children made the kids look as pitiful as possible-dirty, hungry, begging. The children I worked with in the Gasinci camp did need help, but they were also ent.i.tled to their dignity. You wouldn't walk into an elementary-school recess in America and start tossing out gum and taking photos of "desperate children." So why here? These kids were smart and creative. They were survivors; they deserved more than to be showcased like animals in a zoo.

"Actually, no." In an effort to be sure that I was understood, I added, "I don't must," and I walked away.

One night, as buses filled with refugees drove into Gasinci, a Red Cross worker told me that some of the families had been forced from their homes and then made to watch as their houses were burned to the ground. In the shelters, I listened as old men smoked and argued about the future. Occasionally someone would translate, but I couldn't follow the conversation very well. The smoke was always heavy. Once I cracked the window an inch and stuck my nose near the window to get a breath. The men laughed at me. But the conversation was serious. One man was shouting and gesturing at the camp. He believed that all the young Bosnian men living there should be out fighting.

I remember a man in the camp telling me-as he gestured at his hut-that he appreciated the shelter. He appreciated the bread. He pointed to where his children could play, and, he said, he appreciated the volunteers and the crayons and the schoolwork. But, he said, "we need the Serbs to stop burning villages and raping women and killing brothers."

It was in Gasinci that I got my first lesson in international diplomacy. There was a woman in the camp who worked with the Project for Unaccompanied Children in Exile. She was married to a Croat, and her sister was married to a Serb. This was not uncommon. Lots of Croats and Serbians intermarried in the former Yugoslavia. Yet with in-laws on different sides, the war had strained the family. She told me, however, that her entire family was gathering for a dinner and she invited me to take a break from the refugee camp. She was very insistent. "You must come to my house. I will give you good meal." And so I went.

"Welcome, welcome. Eric is from America. He is working with Project for Unaccompanied Children." I made my way around the living room of a very comfortable home in the city of Osijek, filled with the smells of warm food and the tension of relatives who didn't much like each other. I said h.e.l.lo and learned names, and then we were seated.

The two sisters sat at opposite ends of a long wooden table lined with children and friends and family. During dinner, I was asked about my work, my studies. Some of the conversation was in Serbo-Croatian, and though I couldn't understand the words, I could sense the strain between the two sisters: short words, tight smiles, narrowed eyes. They pa.s.sed around seasoned chicken, potatoes, vegetables. After we finished the main course, the hostess disappeared into the kitchen and then reemerged. "Eric, you must eat my dessert. Everything is of my produce, this cherry, this cake, this icing, all of my produce. Please, you must have some."

Then her sister followed quickly out from the kitchen. "And this dessert is of my produce. Please. This is of my produce."

The other sister said, "Choose what you like." Both sides of the family looked on.

It was my first exercise in international negotiation. Should I side with the Croatian host cake or partake of the Serbian pie? Should I be objective and pick the dessert I really wanted? How could I ease tensions and create peace? Should I side with the Croatian host cake or partake of the Serbian pie? Should I be objective and pick the dessert I really wanted? How could I ease tensions and create peace? The sisters watched at either end of the table. I reached for one metal cake server, and then I grabbed another. With a server in each hand, I dug in and plopped a piece of each dessert on my plate at the same time. "These both look so good. I hate to take so much but you have to excuse me. There is no way I could pa.s.s up one of these." I felt like King Solomon. The sisters watched at either end of the table. I reached for one metal cake server, and then I grabbed another. With a server in each hand, I dug in and plopped a piece of each dessert on my plate at the same time. "These both look so good. I hate to take so much but you have to excuse me. There is no way I could pa.s.s up one of these." I felt like King Solomon.

Then my host said, "Please, you can eat them now. Tell us what one is your favorite."

Checkmate.

At the end of my work in Gasinci, I returned to Zagreb and met up with the other American volunteers. We had a few days to finish the report we were writing about unaccompanied children, and one night we took a trolley into the center of the city for a night out. It was late when we walked back to our trolley stop for the ride back to the hotel, and we realized that the trolleys had stopped running. The square was empty of people, and there were no taxis. Our hotel was several miles outside Zagreb, and we didn't even know which direction to start walking.

As we discussed what to do next, the sound of laughter came from around the corner of a building. Out stepped a gangly Croatian, maybe six foot four, who was flirting with his tipsy girlfriend. He pinched her and she playfully slapped him. With the rest of the city deserted, I had no other options. I walked up to them and used my best Croatian.

"Gdje je, Hotel Park?"-Where is Hotel Park?

He whipped his head around when he heard me speak. "You are America! Ohhhhhhh my sweet home Alabama! OK 'merica, OK 'mer-ica. Follow me." So we followed him as he staggered along, pointing to me and singing, "America, America, Sweet Home Alabama!" He tugged at his girlfriend as he skipped through an underground pedestrian tunnel, his voice reverberating. "Sweet Home, Alabama!" I didn't know if he was taking us to Hotel Park, Alabama, or to his house for a drink.

"OK 'merica," he said. He stood at drunken attention and pointed. "Odel Park." I might be the only person in the world for whom this is true, but still today every time I hear "Sweet Home Alabama," I think of Zagreb.

I was in Zagreb when I called home. My aunt answered and I talked with her quickly before she handed the phone to my mom. "h.e.l.lo," she said, and I knew from her voice that my grandfather was dead. When she actually got the words out, she started to cry. "I thought he was waiting for you to come home."

I finished the call and set the phone down. I thought of my last moments with Shah. An inch lower to touch his lips. That's all it would have taken. Here I was in a foreign country, out to save the world from genocide, and I didn't even have the courage to reach over the bedside to help my grandfather.

When I returned to Duke at the end of the summer, a friend invited me to speak at a local church. The congregation, she said, wanted to learn more about the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.

On a Sunday afternoon, I stood at the front of a room before some twenty people seated in metal folding chairs. The man who introduced me said, "We've all read in the newspaper about what's happening in Bosnia, but you're the first person any of us have heard from who's actually been there."

I pressed the forward b.u.t.ton on a slide projector and proceeded to show my photographs. A picture appeared on the screen of a girl drawing a house on the ground with a chalky rock.

The photos were mostly of individual children and families living in the two refugee camps where I had worked. I pressed the forward b.u.t.ton, click-clack, click-clack, and showed a picture of refugees stepping off the bus into Gasinci, and commented on how many of them had lost friends and family members.

Click-clack, click-clack.

"This woman is knitting as part of a project set up by the Red Cross."

Click-clack, click-clack.

"This boy's mother was killed in Bosnia..."

Click-clack, click-clack.

"This is where all the kids went for cla.s.ses..."

Click-clack, click-clack.

"These are the shelters where refugees lived in the camp."

With each turn of the carousel, I could see that this was the first time that the members of this church had connected on a human level to what they saw and heard about in the news. When they read about thousands of people driven from their homes, it was abstract. When they saw one family dragging a bag across a field in search of shelter, they understood.

When I finished showing the photographs, the lights flickered back on and I offered to take questions.

A white-haired gentleman raised his hand just above his head, and in a dignified Carolina accent said, "This may seem like a silly question, but where did they get their food when they were in the refugee camps?"

The questions continued like this.

"Where did they get their clothes? How did they wash their clothes?"

"Did any of them get to return to their homes?"

"What happened to the rest of the girl's family?"

The folks in the church wanted to know not about an issue, but about another human being's life.

The photographs and video footage that people saw on TV were often of moments of incredible tragedy: women wailing, children bleeding. The photographs I showed were of people who were very much alive, some of them smiling, and the folks in the church didn't just see a little Bosnian girl drawing a picture of a home. They saw a little girl who could have been their daughter, one of their friend's daughters, or their own granddaughter.

The pictures I shared from Croatia contrasted with the typical international aid photographs that showed desperate people, desperate babies, in faraway places. My pictures didn't fit that story. When looking at photographs of ordinary people doing ordinary things-albeit in a situation that was anything but ordinary-it was hard to dismiss the war in the former Yugoslavia as simply "ethnic violence" or "ancient hatred."

One of the church members asked, "Why did they want to kill the Bosnians?"

Before I'd left for Croatia, I would have had at least a partial answer to the question. I would have described the rise of nationalist politics and ethnic tensions, the weak response of the U.S. and the United Nations. After having lived in the refugee camps, I was, I think, a bit wiser, and I said, "I don't really know why, why, any more than I know why any human being ever abuses or tortures or kills any other human being." any more than I know why any human being ever abuses or tortures or kills any other human being."

The final question came from an elderly lady sitting in the back row. She asked, "What can we do?" It was a simple question, and one that I should have antic.i.p.ated, but it caught me off-guard. I could have told her to send used clothing and toys overseas, or to donate money to organizations that helped refugees. But the anger of the woman I had met on the train from Vienna- Why isn't America doing anything? Why isn't America doing anything?-and the words of the refugee in Gasinci- We need the Serbs to stop burning villages and raping women and killing brothers We need the Serbs to stop burning villages and raping women and killing brothers-echoed in my head.

The pause extended longer than I had intended and the audience looked expectantly at me for an answer.

"We can certainly donate money and clothing, and we can volunteer in the refugee camps. But in the end these acts of kindness are done after the fact. They are done after people have been killed, their homes burned, their lives destroyed. Yes, the clothing, the bread, the school; they are all good and they are all much appreciated. But I suppose we have to behave the same way we would if any person-our kids, our sisters, brothers, parents-were threatened. If we really care about these people, we have to be willing to protect them from harm."

5. Rwanda

MY SUMMER WORKING with Bosnian refugees had been organized by one of my professors, Neil Boothby. It had left me hungry to do more: to doc.u.ment the lives of people living with courage through tragedy and find a way to help them. Before I graduated, I accompanied Neil, who had left Duke to join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to Rwanda. There, I would witness suffering on a scale not seen since the Holocaust and the purges of Stalin and Mao. with Bosnian refugees had been organized by one of my professors, Neil Boothby. It had left me hungry to do more: to doc.u.ment the lives of people living with courage through tragedy and find a way to help them. Before I graduated, I accompanied Neil, who had left Duke to join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to Rwanda. There, I would witness suffering on a scale not seen since the Holocaust and the purges of Stalin and Mao.

On the drive to Kigali, I bounced in my seat as we b.u.mped along the rutted dirt road in a white Land Rover, a bold, black "UN" painted on its door. Attached to the vehicle's front b.u.mper was the tallest radio antenna I'd ever seen. A reed of thin metal, it shot twelve full feet into the air and jerked and danced as we rocked along the roads. I patted my lucky s.h.i.+rt-a pale safari-style s.h.i.+rt that I'd worn into China and Croatia-to check-probably for the seventh time-that my pa.s.sport, my money, my ticket home, were all still hidden and safe.

The name "Rwanda"-virtually unknown and unspoken in the West only a year earlier-had become synonymous with death, cruelty, madness, rivers choked with the bloated bodies of the dead, and piles of human corpses so numerous that bulldozers had to be used to ingloriously corral them into open-pit graves. It was May 1995.

I watched through the window of the car and studied every detail of the streets. Two boys in tattered s.h.i.+rts ran barefoot along the road beside us-the bigger boy chasing the smaller with a stick. A wooden roadside stand offered cigarettes, phone cards, and cookies and crackers. Its owner-a willow of a man standing barefoot in oversized black pants, a pinched black belt, and a red b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt-raised his hand in a halfhearted gesture to slow us, as though we might make a purchase. A boy soldier with an AK-47 strapped over his right shoulder fixed unfriendly eyes on the UN vehicle, and then on Neil.

Neil had moved his family here. He served as the senior director of programs for the orphaned and abandoned and lost children of the genocide. As in Bosnia, these children were referred to as "unaccompanied," a word that belied the horrific violence by which they had often been deprived of their parents.

Neil spoke to the driver: "Tournez a gauche."

After French-speaking Belgians had colonized Rwanda in the 1920s, many Rwandans became fluent in French, in addition to speaking the native language of Kinyarwanda. Many Rwandans blamed the Belgians for exacerbating-or, some argued, inventing-differences between the country's Tutsi and Hutu ethnic groups in order to facilitate colonial rule. By claiming that the Tutsis had Caucasian ancestry, the Belgians "justified" their superiority. Tutsis held many dominant positions in society, and to hold a Tutsi ident.i.ty card conferred privileges. But ident.i.ties were not fixed. There were wide friends.h.i.+ps and extensive intermarriage among Hutus and Tutsis, and for the right price it was possible to purchase a Tutsi ident.i.ty card and "become" a Tutsi.

We turned down a side street and pulled into the United Nations compound. The compound stood on the grounds of an old elementary school that had been converted into offices for aid workers. It was guarded by UN soldiers from India. Dressed in sloppy fatigues, the soldiers on duty listlessly opened the gate.

Neil showed me his office: a wood table and metal chair in an old cla.s.sroom that he shared with a UN worker from Canada. The various international aid workers were all dressed in hiking boots, hiking pants, and safari s.h.i.+rts. Books written in a dozen different languages were tucked into their cargo pockets. The entire world, it seemed, had sent men and women to help-but only after more than eight hundred thousand Tutsis had been slaughtered by Hutus over the course of one hundred days.

In 1959 the Hutus overthrew the ruling Tutsi authority and shortly thereafter gained independence from the Belgians. The Hutu leaders.h.i.+p ran the country for three decades, marked by outbreaks of violence in 1959, 1961, 1963, 1967, and 1973.1 Thousands of Hutus and Tutsis were killed, and thousands of Tutsis fled to neighboring countries. In 1973, Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana successfully executed a coup d'etat, and inst.i.tuted one-party rule two years later. For a while the killings were stanched, but Tutsis continued to be excluded from positions of power. By the late 1980s, Tutsi military forces that had been part of the exodus threatened to sweep back into Rwanda and retake power, and in 1990 the Hutu elite used government-owned media to begin a propaganda campaign proclaiming that Hutus were the "pure" and "true" Rwandan race. On leaflets handed out in run-down bars, in newspapers sold by street vendors, and on radios strapped to bicycles, messages of hate and racial superiority were carried everywhere. At the same time, the government and allied groups began to stockpile machetes and build the Interahamwe-groups of militiamen organized to kill at a moment's notice. Intermittent violence plagued Rwanda during the early 1990s, and the rhetoric of bloodshed grew increasingly strident. Ethnic tensions ratcheted higher when the first democratically elected president of Burundi, on the southern border of Rwanda, was a.s.sa.s.sinated by his Tutsi military in 1993. Some propagandists encouraged the killing of Tutsi children. As one Hutu broadcaster said, "To kill the big rats, you have to kill the little rats." Thousands of Hutus and Tutsis were killed, and thousands of Tutsis fled to neighboring countries. In 1973, Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana successfully executed a coup d'etat, and inst.i.tuted one-party rule two years later. For a while the killings were stanched, but Tutsis continued to be excluded from positions of power. By the late 1980s, Tutsi military forces that had been part of the exodus threatened to sweep back into Rwanda and retake power, and in 1990 the Hutu elite used government-owned media to begin a propaganda campaign proclaiming that Hutus were the "pure" and "true" Rwandan race. On leaflets handed out in run-down bars, in newspapers sold by street vendors, and on radios strapped to bicycles, messages of hate and racial superiority were carried everywhere. At the same time, the government and allied groups began to stockpile machetes and build the Interahamwe-groups of militiamen organized to kill at a moment's notice. Intermittent violence plagued Rwanda during the early 1990s, and the rhetoric of bloodshed grew increasingly strident. Ethnic tensions ratcheted higher when the first democratically elected president of Burundi, on the southern border of Rwanda, was a.s.sa.s.sinated by his Tutsi military in 1993. Some propagandists encouraged the killing of Tutsi children. As one Hutu broadcaster said, "To kill the big rats, you have to kill the little rats."2 On April 6, 1994, a rocket hit Hutu president Habyarimana's plane, and Habyarimana, along with the Hutu president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryimira, was killed in the crash. Habyarimana's extremist military advisors blamed the tragedy on Tutsi forces. Within hours, the Interahamwe flooded the streets, carrying machetes, grenades, and AK-47s.3 One hundred days later, the most heinous genocide since the Holocaust was over. Between eight hundred thousand and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered. One hundred days later, the most heinous genocide since the Holocaust was over. Between eight hundred thousand and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered.

Driving through Kigali, Neil and I had pa.s.sed the gates of the Hotel des Mille Collines. "During the genocide, that hotel was a haven for refugees," Neil told me. The manager of the hotel, Paul Rusesabagina, saved 1,268 lives during the genocide, a story later made famous by the movie Hotel Rwanda. Hotel Rwanda. Paul was destined to become a friend, but at the time, I didn't even know his name. Paul was destined to become a friend, but at the time, I didn't even know his name.

Neil and some of his colleagues from the United Nations Children's Fund were using humanitarian aid funds to pay for programs to aid war-affected children across Rwanda and in the bordering nations of Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and Zaire. The UN often made grants to nonprofit organizations working on the ground, yet many of the reports that these nonprofits sent back from the field-"73 women and children attended a health clinic and were treated," or "24 adults were counseled"-were vague. Neil and his team needed to know more. It was difficult to tell which programs were having an impact and which were inefficient, and while Neil and his team frequently went into the field, they couldn't see everything with their own eyes. Neil had given me a simple mission: accompany UN aid workers and other humanitarian personnel to visit the sites of aid projects throughout Rwanda. Look. Listen. Ask questions. Take photographs. Take notes. Then report back.

I was not-as many were in Rwanda-an academic researcher bedecked with degrees. I was not an anthropologist. I was not a social worker. I was not a nurse or a doctor. With only one summer of experience with Bosnian refugees under my twenty-one-year-old belt, I was an expert in nothing.

My inexperience, however, had a double edge. Although I was unaware of some of the basic facts of the relief effort in Rwanda-I didn't know, for example, that the Red Cross missions from different countries could be antagonistic to each other-I was also unenc.u.mbered by prejudice and expectations, so I could ask simple questions.

"If the aid workers have access to two four-by-four trucks, shouldn't they be bringing health services out to the villagers rather than having sick families, sick kids, walk miles to get to the health clinic? Why don't we drive from village to village and bring the equipment and doctors directly to the people who need them? Wouldn't that allow us to serve more people, especially the ones who are too sick to get here on their own?" Often, there were good reasons why things were run a certain way, but my questions sometimes pointed to flaws in the system, as well as human flaws: corruption, vice, laziness.

Another advantage was that I was a volunteer. I had paid for my plane ticket and my few expenses with doc.u.mentary-photography grants, so no one owned my time. I was, moreover, willing to travel long distances in cramped trucks to visit remote projects. Whatever I lacked in knowledge, I tried to make up for with energy.

One day I jumped into a truck with another UN aid worker and off we drove for the border between Rwanda and Tanzania. "We're going to monitor a repatriation," the aid worker, Jill, told me. "These are refugees who fled and are now crossing back from Tanzania into Rwanda."

Jill was a small-boned American who spoke fast, one word following the next in an intelligent, intense train of thoughts as she recounted her time in Rwanda. Born Jewish, she had converted to Christianity. She had a degree in library science from the University of Hawaii, short brown hair, and a laugh that spilled out fast and stopped short.

"How many are coming across?" I asked.

"Maybe a hundred, maybe two hundred. We never really know until we get there."

When we arrived at the border, I watched as a stream of refugees walked into Rwanda across the no man's land between the two nations. Under their fists men carried blue and white plastic containers filled with water. Over their shoulders they carried burlap sacks and plastic bags filled with their possessions. They sweated under their loads, many of them dressed in jackets. These were the only clothes they owned, and they wore them back into the country they had fled.

The women carried children in their arms or wrapped tightly against their backs. They wore cloth headwraps, on top of which they balanced misshapen bags full of clothes and pans and jugs and keepsakes and other objects that const.i.tuted all their belongings. Any child who could walk could help, and so young girls carried their small brothers and sisters bundled and sleeping across their backs, and dragged jugs for water and bags full of food. I saw a black piece of Samsonite luggage being dragged on its last stubborn wheel across the stony dirt as the refugees made their way to a UN water truck.

The water truck sat on the Rwandan side of the border, and I began photographing the children as they went to fill their jugs. Intrigued by my camera, the kids posed and played in front of it, striking poses with their fists in the air and their arms draped about each other. I laughed with them as they clowned. A girl smiled under a wide-brimmed umbrella, its yellow and red panels faded by the sun.

I was just about to take the girl's picture when I felt a hand grip my shoulder from behind. A man with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder spun me around, grabbing my camera with his other hand. I yanked it away from him. He was two inches shorter than I was, and I could tell from his effort to take my camera that he was weak. I could also tell from his eyes that he was scared. He pointed at my camera and shook his head, saying, "No. No," as he reached for it again. I turned my shoulder toward him and pulled the camera back. "No," he said.

"OK, OK," I said. "OK." I put my hand lightly on his shoulder. "OK."

"No photo."

"OK," I repeated.

"No." He waggled his finger at the unmarked border just past the water truck and once again grabbed for my camera. When I again pivoted away from him, he turned his palm up and curled his fingers toward himself, the universal symbol for "Give it to me."