Published at Allegra Laboratory.
November 2015; I proceeded ten metres behind Ertan Abi for much of the morning, a place in which I was not directly within the firing line but could also observe acutely what was going on. Before proceeding from where we disembarked from his vehicle, everyone had confirmed and asked each other in short gestures and barely formed words whether we were going a certain way. Everyone seemed to agree on the obvious choice of which direction – inland along the stream bed. Ertan’s gun was loaded as he walked. Right hand griping it near the trigger with the end resting nested between his left forearm and bicep. He calmly walked, every so often urging his two dogs to stay around twenty metres in front of him. We cut through fields, shrub-land, up and over boulders, hills, steep mud faces, into little groves, along the stream bed, sometimes in almost marshy terrain. From the road these varied terrain were basically imperceptible, hidden between hillocks and flats of ploughed or resting fields, destined for barley and wheat crops to be harvested the following year….
Avi 