She examines the photographs of Somalia, and these have a different effect on her, because she’s never been there. If she googles Somalia, she sees many pictures like these. They’re often images of violence, hardship, and destruction. And if not that, they show camels, or nomads posed decoratively in the desert, or some other cliché of Africa.
What’s missing, and this is true of Ed Sadler’s photographs as well, are ordinary lives. The photographs here are extreme. They’re focused on shocking things. They tell a story that’s incomplete and sensationalist.
Where are the mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and brothers and sisters who are the living, breathing heart of these places, because they’re not violent, because they wish only for things to be improved? Sofia can answer her own question even before she’s posed it: Ordinary stories are boring. They won’t sell papers or encourage donations.
She misses the ordinary folk, though, in this room that depicts horror. She misses their warmth and courage and the boredom they went through and the small things they did every day to try to survive. Her parents were those people, and so were many of their friends and neighbors in the camp. The unsensational things they did are, in Sofia’s mind, the true acts of heroism.
In contrast, she finds these photographs to be heartless and part of the problem, but she shakes herself out of these thoughts. They’re not why she’s here.
In the middle of one wall she sees what she’s looking for: an image from the camp of men watching football. It’s the photograph Abdi asked about in the recording.
She sees the man he mentioned. He’s right in the middle of the picture, the only face turned toward the camera, though he’s not looking directly into it. This is a candid shot. His uncorrected cleft palate is a shocking deformity.
She looks hard at the picture, but finds no other clue as to why this one in particular caught Abdi’s attention. She wonders if she should ask her parents. She uses her phone to take a picture of the photograph.
The gallery girl approaches her, startling Sofia when she says, too brightly, “That’s one of my favorite images, too. What do you think of the show as a whole?”
“Horrific,” Sofia says. Hearing her own voice as she articulates what she’s really feeling unexpectedly brings her close to tears.
“But so necessary, don’t you think?”
“No. Just horrific.”
“They’re shocking at first sight, yes, but if you think of the meta-meaning—”
Sofia speaks quietly, but very firmly. “There is no meta-meaning. These photographs glamorize and sensationalize suffering.”
“He’s not selling the shocking ones.”
Sofia doesn’t dignify that with an answer.
When she steps out onto the pavement she takes a few deep breaths to steady herself and quell a feeling of nausea. She can only imagine how Abdi must have felt, being at a party to celebrate pictures like those.
Back at HQ, I read Noah Sadler’s therapy journals while I wait for Fraser to finish a meeting.
I feel as if I’m starting to chafe against the short leash she has me on, what with the twice-daily briefings she’s asked for, but as it’s only my third day back at work, I don’t think I have any choice but to suck it up for now.
I try to suppress my fatigue as I read. My lack of sleep is catching up with me, and the journals are, as Ed Sadler warned me, pretty boring.
In the first few journals—which are actually just slim school exercise books, labeled by year—the handwriting is immature. They contain dated lists of the topics that Noah and his therapist discussed, and nothing more. The earliest of these journals must have been started when Noah was only about eleven years old, so I’m not at all surprised that they’re so bare.
I can’t help thinking what a sad catalogue of subjects the books contain, though. A typical entry reads: “Talked about chemo, friendships, school.”
It’s not until I get to the fifth book, the most recent, that things get more interesting as Noah begins to add personal comment to his entries. Mostly they’re all variations on a theme:
“School friendships: hard work, sometimes lonely, work on asking people how they feel.”
Here and there he adds something a bit more personal: “Need to try not to think of Imran as a threat. Think about friendship circles.”
The only place he goes into more detail is in one very recent entry, where it seems to me that a sense of injustice might have provoked him into writing more.
“School friendships: talked about getting Imran to write the essay for Abdi, and all the fuss that happened after. Don’t see why it should be a problem. Imran was desperate for GTA5 and he got it for ￡20 in the end, from one of the sixth formers he knows in badminton club, so everybody’s happy. A never got the blame in the end. Told Dad, who thought it was a good deed!”
The entry is a bit of an anomaly in terms of the amount of detail he provides. I flick ahead in the journal. He writes some fuller entries later on, but none of them piques my interest like this one. I show it to Woodley.
“GTA5 is Grand Theft Auto, the computer game,” he says. “It’s very much an 18 certificate.”
I reread the passage. “So am I right in thinking this sounds as if Noah and Abdi bought an essay from Imran for twenty pounds, because Abdi needed it, and Imran was happy to make the deal because he spent the money on a copy of Grand Theft Auto, which is a computer game?”
“Grand Theft Auto 5. It’s important. It’s better than the other versions. Better optimization, gameplay, graphics.”
“Speak English, Woodley.”
“I’m just teasing you, boss. It’s gaming geek speak.”
“I understood graphics.”
“One out of three. Could be worse.”
“You’re making me feel old. Haven’t you got something better to be getting on with?”
He leaves me with a small salute.
Fraser takes forever to finish her meeting. As I wait, I toy again with Emma’s card. Each new bit of information we get about these boys colors in a little bit more of their lives for me, and makes me feel as if I know them better, but it also increases my anger about the low-life tactics she’s used to get her story.
I find an empty meeting room and call her. I want to make it clear how I feel. Whether she’ll listen or not, I don’t know, but I’m going to try.
The phone rings and rings until I’m certain that I’m going to get her voice mail, and it’s only as I’m clearing my throat and wondering whether I’ll leave a message, and what I want to say if I do, that she answers.
“Jim.”
So she didn’t delete my number, then, and that fact whitewashes my brain momentarily, leaving nothing there apart from regret that I thought that I could handle this call. I push on anyway. I’ve got no choice now. I can’t panic and hang up. It would be too humiliating.
“Hi,” I say.
“It’s you.”
“Yes.”
I want to read her the riot act. I intended to. I want to tell her that what she’s doing is wrong and unethical and to ask how could she? How could she report on crime in our city so recklessly when she knows what that can do to an investigation, to her former colleagues, and most important of all, to people who are guilty of nothing?