Thursday 16 April 2009

The Man With The Vacant Eyes

Carla Prinsloo, our researcher, conducted a series of interviews with displaced immigrants. The participants agreed to be interviewed provided that we never used their images or their real names.

Carla interviewed everyone from an 8 year old Somalian boy who aspired to be a policeman when he grew up to an ex military man who spoke about the inconsistencies between government policy and action. One man’s story stayed with me deeper than the others.  It was of a young man who had only been in South Africa for a month (coming to join his father in a spaza shop) when the riots broke out. When his father tried to sneak back to the looted shop to ascertain if there was anything to salvage, his father was shot in the head. He carried a very graphic autopsy photo in his breast pocket.

The picture Carla took of him was haunting. His eyes were bloodshot, but not with rage or resentment. His mouth slightly open. I kept his picture close to me. Carla had captured his bereavement in that one image. His grief was so strong, that from the look in his eyes I knew his father. During the writing process I often returned to this picture of this man: staring into the distance, staring at a future bleak and lonely.