A boy on TV
Originally uploaded by nofrills.
Taken at my TV screen. 14 August 2006.
From a film originally shot in Iraq in 2003, by Mr Toshikuni Doi, a Japanese journalist.
This eight-year-old boy's name is Mustafa (or Moustafa), and he lives in Baghdad. In 2003, just days before the Iraq war ended, he was hit with a sharpnel in his left leg. At the time the journalist met him, he was on a hospital bed. The medicine there was not enough, which made it worse for the boy's leg. Doctors feared they would have to cut it off to save his life, and Mr Doi decided to begin some fund-raising activities in Japan. His website has some reports (in Japanese only).
On 14 August 2006, on the eve of the 61st VJ day, the NHK (Japan's BBC) aired a special program on "children and war". The program started with two pretty-boy actors' recent efforts on a war play, followed by this Mustafa report.
In the report, Mustafa was drawing some pictures. Whereas other children's pictures were about fighting, bombs, explosions and destruction, his were 1) a beautiful sunrise 2) a playground, a tree and the river. That's how his wounded boy sees, or wants to see, the world around him.
