The Face of Torture

As reported in The New York Times, Ali Shalal Qaissi seems almost
certain to be the man under the black hood in the most iconic photo of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Other than seeming older than his years (he is 43), Mr. Qaissi looks unremarkable. Nor is his story so different from that of others caught up in the shadowy web of detention, abuse and torture. He was a low-level official in Saddam's Iraq, who says he was picked up after complaining about garbage being dumped on a local soccer field. That led to six months of confinement and abuse. Ironically, the incident in the famous photograph, where he was made to stand, hooded, on a box with wires attached to his hands, seems to have been the only incident of real torture that he suffered; not that that excuses the treatment he received. (Mr. Qaissi says that he was given five shocks, enough so that he bit his tongue. An American soldier, Sabrina Harman, was accused of threatening to shock a hooded inmate, but not of actually doing so; she was convicted for her role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.)

To view this photo is to expeience what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil; a concomitant of the ordinariness of iniquity is the difficulty that so many of us have in identifying evil that does not resemble the Satan or monsters of childhood picture books. Take a look at a photo of Hitler and try to put aside what you know about him. Apart from his comic moustache, he looks like a small businessman, perhaps, or a minor civil servant. Do the same with a photo of Stalin and you can see why, during the Second World War, some people called him Uncle Joe.

At the same time, seeing the face of Ali Shalal Qaissi reminds us that there was a real person under that hood. We need to remember that. Icons and symbols cannot feel pain. Humans can and, all to often, do.