Eye

Fire crept up the walls, casting shadows against crumbling stone and outlining silhouettes stopped in motion. Frayed rags were draped across the figures, whose faces shone in the light as their hands appeared to melt into the ground.

As a typical American tourist, I unsheathed a heavy-duty Nikon camera and began waving it in the air toward the exhibit before me, flipping the camera horizontal to vertical to horizontal again while pounding my index finger into its button furiously. The depraved figures – there were three of them – remained still, their eyes soullessly gazing off into the distance. I moved on.

I was on a mission; it was my first time in Japan, my first time at the Hiroshima Museum, and I knew I would not be back for years to come. This was, I told myself, a historic site. If I were to discuss the atomic bomb in a future research project – or even personal essay – I would regret not having documented my every sight. After all, I was only thirteen. My body and soul were immature, developing, and I processed information in a childish way. But if everything were to be on film, I could look back five, ten years later and finally understand.

I gazed up at the sloping dome ceiling above me, Nikon camera fixed to my eye. The crosshairs followed my line of vision, transforming my camera into a sniper gun. With each new devastating remain or death-depicting model – a train of bright paper cranes leaning on each other for support; a singed lunchbox; a last message scribbled, the bottom half chalky ash – one pull of the trigger took the suffering out of their misery.

Soon enough, the camera gained sentience as I lost my own will. My mechanical gestures were not about me taking a picture to preserve the moment or to create an artistic understanding, but they were a mechanical function of life: that picture/model/document exists so it must be on film. I was my camera’s liaison to the tangible world, swimming under the surface of reality in drunken deliriousness.

            Until my mom brought me up for air.

            “Emma,” she snapped, “are you even looking at anything here? Do you see what’s in front of your own eyes? How are you not moved by this?”

            This caught me off guard. My mother never raises her voice or even gets agitated. What scared me further were the tears running down her cheeks. She also never cries.

            While my mouth retorted something along the lines of Yes, Mom, of course this is tragic; I’m sorry I didn’t have the same reaction as you, my brain started sparking with worry. Why was it that I would cry at a question wrong on a math quiz or at a sarcastic comment yet the deaths of thousands didn’t have the slightest impact on me?

            I shut her out and kept taking my photos, trying to will myself to cry while missing the true tragedy before me. With each passing second I got madder and madder, until suddenly my camera stopped and the white contour of a battery flashed on the screen. It was dead.

            That was the key to the floodgates; the tears came pouring down. I needed to finish my mission, to be successful. Eyes burned holes into my skin, peering in from around the room. I heard voices: how is she not moved by this? But I was thirteen and it was unfair to expect me to have the same reactions as adults. Weren’t my body and soul still immature – developing – and didn’t I process information in a childish way?

            I took my tears in my hand and displayed them to anyone who would look. See, I have emotion. But soon they dried up and left dirty streaks on my cheeks, the product of impurity and selfishness.

            Without my Nikon shielding my gaze, I suddenly found myself naked and vulnerable, having shed my heavy armor. My senses overwhelmed me: the smell of sweat and crowds who all viewed the same exhibits, stood exactly where I stood then; the sound of Japanese murmuring pierced by American shrieks; the sight of the same picture I was just staring at moments ago, only with all the colors more vibrant and all the lines more dynamic.

            I stopped in front of a poem printed on the wall:

            A dragonfly flitted in front of me
            and stopped on a fence.
            I stood up, took my cap in my hands,
            was about to catch the dragonfly
            when…  

For the second time that day, I was reduced to tears. But for the first time that day, they were genuine and had weight. And as sad tears mixed with happy tears, I couldn’t help but think about the Japanese tale of a girl named Sadako who survived the bombing at age two, only to develop swellings and discoloration ten years later. She resolved to fold a thousand origami cranes, following ancient tradition, in exchange for a wish bestowed by the gods. When she was a little more than halfway to a thousand, Sadako died.

That was the true key to virtue. Not taking pictures, not having wet cheeks, but tenacity. Hope. Helplessly opening your arms to the sky and letting whatever happens happen. Embracing vulnerability.

My dad took photos that day too. Of 734 collectively, one of me jumps out. My family is walking away from Hiroshima, back to our car and our apartment and our computer and Internet and Japanese super-toilet. I stand tall, looking back. There are bags under my bloodshot, drooping eyes and my chapped lips are tight in a frown. As much as I try to walk away, I can’t help but to gaze back, a magnetic pull drawing me to the site of my ancestry and the world’s greatest tragedy, my own eyes now soullessly gazing off into the distance.

Emma Smith
Age 16, Grade 11,
Hunter College High School
Silver Key