How to Absorb a Nightmare (Instructions on observing genocide through your smartphone)

1-

Do not try to take it all in at once. Don’t look at the smoke billowing up from the buildings. Don’t listen to the screams that blend into a chorus, undercut by the sonic booms of the jet leaving the scene. Don’t try to understand the scale or the scope. You are only human. It is beyond you.

2-

Find one thing to focus on.
Maybe the way the camera shakes as its carrier runs toward the carnage.
Maybe the wounded girl draped over two steps in a stairwell, dust in her clothes and hair.
Maybe the quivering lip of a man who sits on the dirty tiles of a hospital floor.

3-

Now that you have found your thing, follow it. Be careful not to get lost. It’s easy to get lost.
Follow the quivering lip to the jaw to the shoulder.
Follow the shoulder down to the hand that holds another hand belonging to a man on the ground, lying in a pool of his own blood.

4-

Notice how the blood makes small puddles as it leaks out of him. Notice how the makeshift bandages—no doubt applied by an overworked medical student pressed into the ER years too early—are no match for the flow.
Notice how some of the tiles have no puddles. How some of the tiles instead have a smear, as though someone tried to mop the blood.
Notice how the red is surprisingly pleasant.
How, if you look only at the red on the tiles, if you forget the man on the floor and the man with the quivering lip, if you ignore the beeping from the one nearby machine and the exclamations and the moaning and the general rush and only, only look at the red and the tile (I am bringing you back now. We have lost track. It’s so hard to focus on just one thing) you can almost pretend it’s paint on a canvas in a Bob Ross video. Notice how a mop and a brush can leave the same imprint.

5-

Notice the uneven, shallow breaths of the man on the floor. Notice how his belly rises and falls with no discernible rhythm. Notice his ripped shirt. Wonder if it was ripped in the impact of an explosion or if the poor medical student-turned-doctor tore it as he searched for shrapnel or bullets.

6-

Notice how you don’t even notice anymore that the man on the floor is not in a bed. How you don’t even notice anymore that the man on the floor is not in an operating room. How nothing around the man on the floor is sterilized.

7-

Interlude. Let your mind wander. It’s too hard to stay focused here. Despite my warnings, you have tried to absorb everything at once.

8-

Remember last week when your son came home from soccer with a cut on his knee. Remember how you rolled the pant leg up gently, tenderly, to examine the cut.
Remember how you ran warm water over the blood. How it twirled in the sink. How it made little whirlpools around the drain.
Remember how you dried it with a clean, dry cloth. Remember how you squeezed a dab of Polysporin onto your finger and pat-pat-patted it onto his knee.
Remember the sound of the band-aid wrapper as you ripped it open.
Remember your son’s sheepish look as you pulled him in for a hug. “I’m fine, mama.” Remember his tough boy act. Remember the way he is embarrassed of your big fuss over such a small cut.

9-

Return to the video on your phone. Notice that the belly of the man on the floor is no longer moving. Blink twice. Try to determine when it stopped.

10-

Look away from the man on the floor. Follow his hand up to the hand of the man with the quivering lip. Trace the connections of the two bodies back to the still-living man’s face. Watch it collapse in on itself. Watch the way the face curves and crinkles like a crumpled-up tissue as the silent sobs rise out of his throat.

11-

Press the button that turns your screen black. Look up. Re-orient yourself. You may be on a train on the way to the office. You may be waiting for your breakfast sandwich at the café down the street. You may be on your living room couch.

12-

Take the deepest breath you can muster. Try again. Eventually, your breath will return.