SHOW ME THE BULLET

Today I found this photo I took in Baghdad the week before last.

The reason I went to Baghdad was to document the first humanitarian aid mission there—for AmeriCares, a disaster relief organization. What I did was to document the shipment of medical supplies from where they were shipped (Maastricht, Holland) right to the hospitals where they ended up. I spent t two days in hospitals while the goods were being unloaded and locked away in the pharmacies under the protection of U.S. Army troops.

While this was going on, I roamed the wards of the hospitals photographing patients.

I never found who shot the man in the photo—a looter, a Saddam sympathizer or an American soldier? But when I went to take his picture, he held up the bullet the doctors had taken from his abdomen. I suppose at this point, it didn’t matter to him who shot the bullet. He seemed grateful to me for taking his picture—as if it was some sort of reward for having been shot.