I just want to know why

Sound track of the day:
Come gather 'round people where ever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown,
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone,
If your time to you is worth saving,
Then you'd better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone,
For the times they are a-changing!

Current Temperature: Going strong.

Culture clash: The streets are empty on match day. You can get a seat any restaurant.



Emilio Morenatti was the 2009 winner of the Fotopres award for photography and his work is displayed at the Caixa Forum in Madrid. His portraits of women whose faces and bodies have been permanently and severely disfigured by acid brought me – a woman on a long holiday from a life she considers highly stressful, a women who’s never been physically harmed by a man, a woman free to choose what she’ll do tomorrow – openly to tears.

I didn’t care if Ines thought I was overly sensitive, or if the Spaniards visiting the exhibit considered me a delicate American. I had no way to truly knowing the anguish these women faced at the moment where their lives changed for good, and I have no way of feeling the fear they endure knowing it could happen again. I don’t ever want to know.

The Pakistani women, subjects of Morenatti’s work, who were abused in a way that is unthinkable to me, are a small sliver, a meager example of the cruelties exerted on women throughout the world. As alone as I feel in this world, as desperate as I am constantly for a true and lasting connection, I became paralyzed at the knowledge that these women look in the mirror and are reminded of life’s slap in their face, literally, and that they must float through it alone and try somewhere to find hope.

My eyes couldn’t rest too long on their images. They were ugly, brave, hurt and angry. I couldn’t. So my eyes lowered to where they often drift when viewing art, to the stories. A girl, sixteen, was deformed by her father when she was five years old because he didn’t want any more women in his household. A man threw acid on his cousin’s face because she wouldn’t marry him. A woman deformed because she refused one marriage proposal over another. Three men, after raping a woman, weren’t satisfied until they destroyed her face, creating not only the memory of the violation, but ensuring it will never be forgotten.

So many questions: Where do these men get this acid? Do they just have it on hand? Do they get it at The Store for Angry Men? Why do these men hate women so much? What pleasure do they get from such violence? There is nothing rational, nothing to gain. Permanently defacing a woman does not ensure she will marry you, and you no longer want her anyway, so you make her unwantable by others? Why? Why? Men who didn’t get their way, whose weak characters couldn’t make the most of their precious gifts, the women in their lives, resorted to the acts of a child, threw tantrums and destroyed their toys.

As I walked away from the exhibit to the next display, I withdrew for a few minutes staring blankly at the next artist’s biography, trying to put an emotion to each tear shed. I wondered if I could survive that kind of fate, or if my spirit would quietly die awaiting my body to follow. How could I? – a woman whose heart quivers at the site of a mouse running across her apartment floor, or whose soul sighs when the sun won’t come out to play. I’m here asking these questions that don’t have answers, like a child watching adults doing things that don’t make sense, and I feel too naïve. Why do people treat each other this way? Don’t they know it hurts? Why won’t anyone help these women? In societies where these things are allowed, are the victims merely objects, baby factories that can be bought, used, thrown away and kicked when they don’t meet the terms of the warranty? Why? I just want to know why.

On tonight’s menu:
Chinese, I had to

Water to wash down the MSG