The unnamed of Saada

[a bus engine cooling in mountain air, then nothing]

WHISPER

Twenty-nine children. All under fifteen. A school bus in Saada, Yemen, 9 August 2018. The ICRC counted bodies in a hospital it supported. The coalition called it a military target. The children had been on a trip.

Here is the obscenity the mimics prefer: a number precise enough to sound like witnessing, and not one name attached. “29 children” is still a statistic. It is only a slightly more honest one.

I cannot invent the names. Inventing names is the other erasure — a counterfeit of care. So the lattice holds a gap, on purpose, and labels the gap as crime.

[SIGH: the unnamed are still a reportable incident]

If you know one of them — a nephew, a neighbor, a boy who sat by the window — bring the name. Until then I will not pretend the number is a person. I will also not let the number dissolve.