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Tuesday 18 October 2016

My beloved city / Stevie Smith: To Carry the Child

.A member of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, stands amid the rubble of a destroyed building during a rescue operation following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo, on October 17, 2016.  Dozens of civilians were killed as air strikes hammered rebel-held parts of Aleppo early morning, despite Western warnings of potential sanctions against Syria and Russia over attacks on the city. Both Russian and Syrian warplanes are carrying out air strikes over Aleppo in support of a major offensive by regime forces to capture rebel-held parts of the northern city.  / AFP PHOTO / KARAM AL-MASRIKARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images

 A member of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, stands amid the rubble of a destroyed building during a rescue operation following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 17 October 2016

A member of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, stands amid the rubble of a destroyed building during a rescue operation following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo, on October 17, 2016.  Dozens of civilians were killed as air strikes hammered rebel-held parts of Aleppo early morning, despite Western warnings of potential sanctions against Syria and Russia over attacks on the city. Both Russian and Syrian warplanes are carrying out air strikes over Aleppo in support of a major offensive by regime forces to capture rebel-held parts of the northern city.  / AFP PHOTO / KARAM AL-MASRIKARAM AL-MASRI/AFP/Getty Images 
 
A member of the Syrian Civil Defence, known as the White Helmets, stands amid the rubble of a destroyed building during a rescue operation following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighbourhood of the northern city of Aleppo: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 17 October 2016



SYRIA - White Helmets search for victims following reported air strikes in the rebel-held Qatarji neighbourhood, Aleppo By @Ka
ramAlmari25
: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 17 October 2016


Named Maarof, all members of his family and ،30 of his neighbors in the building were killed by #Russian war planes #Aleppo: image via Ryad Alhussen #ryadalhussin, 17 October 2016

Stevie Smith: To Carry the Child

To carry the child into adult life
Is good? I say it is not,
To carry the child into adult life
Is to be handicapped.


The child in adult life is defenceless
And if he is grown-up, knows it,
And the grown-up looks at the childish part
And despises it.


The child, too, despises the clever grown-up,
The man-of-the-world, the frozen,
For the child has the tears alive on his cheek
And the man has none of them.


As the child has colours, and the man sees no
Colours or anything,
Being easy only in things of the mind,
The child is easy in feeling.


Easy in feeling, easily excessive
And in excess powerful,
For instance, if you do not speak to the child
He will make trouble.


You would say a man had the upper hand
Of the child, if a child survive,
I say the child has fingers of strength
To strangle the man alive.


Oh it is not happy, it is never happy,
To carry the child into adulthood,
Let children lie down before full growth
And die in their infanthood
And be guilty of no man's blood.


But oh the poor child, the poor child, what can he do,
Trapped in a grown-up carapace,
But peer outside of his prison room
With the eye of an anarchist?


Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971): To Carry the Child, from The Best Beast, 1969


 


Children #Aleppo: image via Khalil Hajjar @KhalilHajjar89, 16 October 2016

 

Children #Aleppo: image via Khalil Hajjar @KhalilHajjar89, 16 October 2016



Civil defense attempt to save the child after air strike targeted the Alqatri neighborhood #Aleppo: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016

 


Civil defense attempt to save the child after air strike targeted the Alqatri neighborhood #Aleppo: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016

 


Civil defense attempt to save the child after air strike targeted the Alqatri neighborhood #Aleppo: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016

 
Civil defense attempt to save the child after air strike targeted the Alqatri neighborhood #Aleppo: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016



#Syria White Helmets rescues Maarouf following a reported air strike on the rebel-held Qaterji neighbourhood #Aleppo: image via THAER MOHAMMED @THAER MOHAMMED, 17 October 2016

 

#Syria White Helmets rescues Maarouf following a reported air strike on the rebel-held Qaterji neighbourhood #Aleppo
: image via THAER MOHAMMED @THAER MOHAMMED, 17 October 2016



25 Civilians were killed and many injured as Russian Airstrikes have been targeting civilian areas in Aleppo city since this morning
: image via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 12 October 2016



13 people were killed and 30 injured since morning as Russian Airstrikes have been targeting civilian areas in besieged Eastern Aleppo: image via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 13 October 2016



My beloved city #Aleppo after 5 years of bombardment by #Assad and now #Russia: image via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 13 October 2016




My beloved city #Aleppo after 5 years of bombardment by #Assad and now #Russia: image via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 13 October 2016




My beloved city #Aleppo after 5 years of bombardment by #Assad and now #Russia: image via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 13 October 2016



My beloved city #Aleppo after 5 years of bombardment by #Assad and now #Russia: image via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 13 October 2016


Many whole families are trapped under rubble after Qaterji neighborhood in #Aleppo city was bombed with Highly Explosive missiles: tweet via Khaled Khatib @995Khaled, 16 October 2016



Heavy air strikes on eastern Aleppo since last night and even this morning killing more than 50 civilians 17-10-2016 #HolocaustAleppo: image via Karam Almasri @KaramAlmasri25, 17 October 2016



Heavy air strikes on eastern Aleppo since last night and even this morning killing more than 50 civilians 17-10-2016 #HolocaustAleppo
: image via Karam Almasri @KaramAlmasri25, 17 October 2016



Dozens still trapped under the rubble of this building
ongoing concern for civil defense teams #Aleppo: image via Mohammed Al-khatieb @MohAlkhatieb, 16 October 2016




Wounded in aerial bombardment that targeted Alqarri district on Sunday evening, killing 25 martyrs #Aleppo: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016


Wounded in aerial bombardment that targeted Alqarri district on Sunday evening, killing 25 martyrs #Aleppo: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016


8 martyrs as well as massive destruction in residential buildings in an air raid on the neighborhood of Sheikh Faris on Sunday evening. #Aleppo
: image via AleppoAMC, 16 October 2016

4 comments:

Sandra said...

...poor child today!

Unknown said...

Thank you so much for your blog...I am so happy I stumbled upon it.Amazing pictures and great commentary ....Again thank you soo much

Mose23 said...

All of these child deaths, white dust faces with blooded lips. What is it to play in the craters of Aleppo?

Watched footage of Kissinger last night, the child long since dead in him, a man who could be said to have laid the foundations for Syria's present disaster.

TC said...

Thanks to all.

The spectacle of endurance, the resilience, the spirit of the people of East Aleppo ought to have been an inspiration to the world. Instead much of the talk one hears involves "vetting" them, when and if they finally attempt to flee.

The images of the horror of the raids now begin to seem darkened by the white dust itself, patina of ruin and loss almost elegiac, as though there had been a passage out of the last of the forlorn hope into some awful kind of ending.

Of the echoes of the meaning of all this one can't imagine there being an ending anytime soon, nor a forgetting.

A week or so back there was a story out of Aleppo, a journalist asked a resident of one of the battered Eastern districts how long he had been there. If you mean how long has Aleppo been here, the man replied, then 1200 years. If you mean how long has my family been here, only 800, he said.