It is March 2026, and there is another war in the Gulf. This time it is Iran’s turn.
The news cycle in the United States is dominated by an endless (and yes, I do mean to use the word “endless”) flow of quantitative descriptors of how many and what type of these planes are dropping those bombs on those targets, and so on. We are told, daily and nightly, by glamorous talking heads that owing to all the things we have, the planes, rockets, and bombs, when this is all over (when did they say it would be over?), “they” will be the “losers” and “we” will be the “winners.”
If they say so.
I’m going to stay away from the politics of this latest war. Having spent a lot of time in the Middle East, I am well and personally acquainted with the horror that is Iran’s foreign policy. I have met hundreds, maybe thousands of people who have borne the brunt of Iran’s campaigns of stealth-conquest and terror.
And yet I simply don’t have the heart (or maybe the stomach) to hear another story filled with the “somethings” of the war: the bombs, the planes, and their targets. Things don’t suffer in war. People do. When are we going to hear about the “someones” caught up in this mess?
During the war with ISIS, I worked (lots) in Iraq as a photographer. It might surprise some to know that one of the fears of those swept up in conflict is that the world will forget about them. That they will be thrown into obscurity by forces not of their making, never to be heard from or seen again.
To fight this fear, I always started any photograph I took by sitting down with people and asking them to describe their experiences to me. I wanted to hear their thoughts, their dreams, and even their nightmares. I wanted them to know that I was there to see them as a subject, a person, not simply to repurpose them as an object, a picture.
I would sit and talk with them for a while, often over tea, and then and only then did I take their photograph. I repeated this process dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Many of those conversations blur together in my memory. Others stand out.
It was, I think, 2017, and I was working around Erbil in northeastern Iraq when I photographed Nora.
The day was rainy and cold, and we had stopped at an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. In the building lived three Yezidi families, including one with a young daughter: Nora.
As I spoke with Nora’s mother, gradually her story emerged.
Nora was 10 years old. Her family had lived for generations in a village (they asked me not to reveal its name) in the Sinjar region of Western Iraq. They had managed to escape ISIS in 2014, but just barely. Making their way North and then East, they reached the city of Erbil, hoping to find refuge, a place to live. They found none and were forced, like thousands of others, to try and make a home in one of the hundreds of unfinished and abandoned buildings in and around Erbil. They had been living outside, under concrete and blue tarps, for nearly three years.
Beside the pile of old blankets inside their tarp shelter, Nora’s only protection against the cold Iraqi winter was a red coat, donated by some Europe-based relief organization, which ironically read “Sun, sunshine, beautiful summer.”
Nora was lucky. Over the last year or so, she was allowed to attend a nearby government-run school, but she was struggling. All subjects were taught in Arabic, a language Nora did not fully understand (she speaks Kurdish), and her mother told me that Nora was frightened because “Arabic sounded like the language of ISIS.” Nora cried a lot.
I walked away from Nora’s “home,” feeling as sad and useless as I have ever felt.
What became of Nora? Did she get out of that abandoned building and back to her village? Or was she pulled down into the ranks of the 6 billion people worldwide who suffer and die poor and hungry? I pray not, but I simply do not know.
I have never been to Iran, but I am certain that there are thousands of Noras being made every day this conflict drags on.
If all parties involved in this latest war, including those governing Iran, would look more closely at those subjected to it and spend less time focused on the objects used for it, then maybe they would see their Noras. Maybe then, too, they would stop this damnable war a whole lot sooner.