Ambulance Vehicle

When I first saw the ambulance, I didn’t know how to describe exactly how I felt. I was sitting with my friend, exchanging tired words, as always, trying to distract ourselves from the devastation. Suddenly, the ambulance passed by. It was a donkey cart, and on top of it were corpses lying on top of each other, partially wrapped in old blankets, some uncovered.

The scene wasn’t strange or surprising; it was familiar—and perhaps that was the catastrophe.

I looked at it and said to my friend, “How cheap and worthless people are here.” I said the sentence suddenly, without thinking, without trying to sound profound or angry. It came out of my mouth like something rotting inside me that needed to be said. Then I fell silent.

I wondered, “Were my words true?” “Is it true that people here are worthless?” Or was it me who had lost my sense of the value of life because of all the things I’d seen?

But the cart passed again. And the next day I saw the same one, and the day after that, until I stopped counting. It’s as if we knew the type of bodies from the way they were transported—from the size of the blanket, from the movement of the dead man’s hand hanging from the side of the cart.

I don’t want to say that I drew this scene to claim anything. I drew it because I could no longer bear for this scene to remain only in my head, because I was afraid that I would get used to it—that I would see it tomorrow and not say anything.

I drew the cart, and perhaps I drew myself sitting in front of my friend, contemplating the cart as it passed, wondering if what I said was true—or whether the bodies had become clearer than the truth itself.