The Somalian Child :: essays papers

The Somalian Child There is a child from Somalia, with an old mans face, sitting in the corner of the lounge room. He must have come out of the television set at some time this evening. Its in the altogether Years Eve, and all the stations have been playacting condensed highlights of the year -- so many images of poverty and diseases and war from approximately the globe. severe to cram so practically human misery into a a couple of(prenominal) short hours, its no wonder, really, that something overflowed. He sits there, huddled in a ball, the like a tiny wizened dwarf, behind the corner lounge chair. I dont know when he came out. It could have been any time. The television has been on for a long time. His face is blank. An old man on a childs pivot body. I pretend hes not there, of course, and go into the kitchen to make a snack. I am about to bring it back into the lounge room, until I stand for better of it, and eat it in the kitchen. When I get back, hes still th ere. Its retributory as well that I had planned for a quiet New Years and hadnt invited anybody over, because he smells a bit too. You dont get that when theyre on the TV, but its a smell of old dried cow dung and other things Ive neer smelled before. The television is still on, and its still showing word of honor highlights. There ar scenes from some civil war in the former Soviet Union. well(p) to be on the safe side, I turn the channel to an American sit-com. There are some gorgeous looking ladies sitting around a dinner table making risque jokes. non much chance of having one of them appear in my lounge room, I ponder. Not in real life. Theyre only actresses. I steal a discern at the Somalian -- but he doesnt seem interested in the show. I stay there watching until the show ends, then the news comes on. Its another highlights of the year program. Naturally. A well-groomed news commentator says, rather pompously, Hemingway sit down in the Hotel Florida in Spain and wrote passionately about the blood being spilled in the streets below, trying to convey the idealism with which people were fighting and dying.