Sea in the Blood

Before an American physician and pathologist coined thalassemia, there was already blood in the Mediterranean. There was bloodshed around the Mediterranean for thousands of years before anyone ever thought of hemoglobin and the severe anemia that particularly affected the people of Italy, Greece and Turkey. Coined from Greek words 'sea' and 'blood', thalassemia seems like a lethal tribute to the clear blue waters of the Aegean and the Mediterranean.

I saw a photo of a child fished from the sea recently. The tiny parcel was in the arms of a man kneeling in a boat, as if he were an offering to the gods. Not to the Gods of the EU but most naturally to some pagan gods who would welcome the lifeless little fellow still wearing a red beanie. Should the kiddo have a name, it remains as slack a question as his swollen, dangling body. We conveniently go by numbers when asylum seekers and refugees flood the seas, shores and gates of pristine first world exclusivity.

So we are told now the Mediterranean is the deadliest of borders. It takes thousands of bloody bodies in the sea to say that. It takes statistics and policies and some grey suited -mainly- white elder men speaking English in some conference hall in Europe. It takes us watching. We may fret over tangible terrors but this one, as long as corpses refrain from washing on the shores we do our jogging in the morning... It is an unbecoming sight.

The sea is indeed in the blood. And the blood will stain the sea like indelible ink.


Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green one red.

Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

postponed, procrastinated, belated

Not knowing where to start is how I start because I cannot start otherwise. I turned and tossed the idea of patch-working my life, that of others, collecting stories, sound and images here and there into a blog. The idea was so well executed that I did nothing to actually begin anything concrete. In its nebulous form the 'feeling' of the blog was just so cool. Really cool. And what if the words did not do it justice? What if my idea sucked? Terror. Then I said to myself, 'if you have sore throat, eat ice cream' and precisely after a year or two of attempting to create this blog, here I type away with no basic plan, no structure, no purpose really. Welcome.
Read more

Agnès

I'd abandoned this blog, as one does, because it is mine to abandon. I'd abandoned many a thing: half eaten oatmeal, lovers, cats, ideas for films, luggage here and there, promises and boxes of delicate  negligibles  in other people's basements. For someone who gathers and keeps (if only in her heart) people, beasts, pebbles, her grandfather's watch and illusions, the abandoning is a necessary function. I retract. I retrieve. I transit. I cradle the thought that if I could... I would have had I... Abandon comes with a side of undone capable of surviving minor tragedies. Agnès Varda est morte. Long live Agnès Varda. I'd met her on the stairs of a venue I can't quite remember (the MaRs building or Isabelle Bader Theatre?), during Toronto Film Festival in 2004 when she was traveling with Cinévardaphoto , a three part reflection on photography. It must have been a press screening because there was a handful of us when she suggested we go outside. Accompanied by tw...
Read more

an awful nurse

"You'd make an awful nurse!" I have been told twice. Not that I harbor some sweet affection, deep understanding or an overflowing nurturing capacity that's yet to be unearthed. I am grumpy and impatient. Some like it hot-headed. In December 2009, when Robin was frail, transparent and wheezing in the bed he would soon die, I was spraying fake saliva into his mouth and missing the point, I was fixing his pillows to the most uncomfortable position his bones could ever bear. Of Robin, nothing was left but bones. Robin had a T-shirt with Alfred Hitchcock's head in a glass bell jar or an astronaut's helmet that sat perfectly atop his jolly good and mighty belly, giving Hitchcock a 3D quality somehow. That was when Robin used to cook lamb shanks, we'd drink quite a few bottles of wine each, there'd be some singing or somber discussion on the state of academia, he would at some point cheer up, recite dialogues from movies I'd never heard of. As Robin melte...
Read more