Ghostly Image

Some images are ghostly. They appear as ghosts in that they are immaterial and/or ephemeral. These images are not understand and certainly cannot be held for long as anything other than a stereotype.

What the heck am I talking about? On the way home, I got behind a vehicle that looked, to me, like an animal control van. There was a gray box with a grate behind the driver’s cab. The interior was pitch black in the afternoon sun. Two sets of fingers seemed to clutch the grate, and small stickers on the side read “Police Department.”

The image of these hands sticking out of the grate will stick with me as a ghostly image. Ghostly, not ghastly. The hands did not writhe and claw; they sat still. I knew eyes peered back at me, though I could not see them. A photograph seemed an invasion of privacy, but the image sticks with me.

This post will surely do nothing more than feed to stereotypes of Pakistan. However, take a moment to step back and realize how little you know about the situation. Is the method of transportation inhumane? The police at least had a vehicle for transport. The police in my village in Ghana had no vehicle at all. Is Islamabad a town of criminals? I think this individual is reading too much into an image, or a view that lasted less than a minute. Look at reported and unreported crime in my hometown of Atlanta. No, I know very little about the surrounding situation as I learn about this city and country. That’s why the disjointed pictures I carry with me seem ghostly, not yet connected to the whole of my reality.