The Samaritan of Iraq: A Short Story About Doppelgangers

The Samaritans were a despised and denigrated tribal group in ancient times. Yet, who was it who had the eyes to see, the heart to act when all others avoided the battered and ran away? It was a Samaritan.

As the ancient story is told… a poor soul lay by the side of the road, beaten to a bloody pulp. Men of the priestly classes crossed to the other side of the road to avoid helping the bleeding man. Other travelers merely stepped over the dying man. Yet, one, an old man Samaritan, took up the harmed traveler so gently in his arms and carried him to lay him down, where he tended to him, giving the innkeep money to watch over this wounded soul until he returned.

It is said on various sites on the internet that the US government closes down websites which reveal pictures of all the little travelers waylaid in war, waylaid not by cutpurses, but worse, by their own, as well as others. Killed by exploding fire, laid out in rows, as here, in an economy of space and drying in the sun.

I think of the fireman, Chris Fields, who carried the little child Baylee Almon out of the bombed Murrah building child care center, too her little legs dangling like this child’s also, except this child, as you see, her feet have been blown off, only the skin of the heel and part of the ankle, emptied out of bones, remains.

Both Baylee and this beautiful child too, died. And both Commander Fields and this Iraqui grandfather carrying the child in his arms, would recognize each other’s souls as doppelgangers on sight.

There are ‘Samaritan men’ who live everywhere in our world; often hidden until or unless there is death, pointless death close in… and they may too, be seen by the overculture, in some way, as ‘untouchables’. But because many travelers when coming upon injustice and horror on the road, look away, or become angry with the victims themselves, or for whatever reasons cross to the other side of the road… without the Samaritan men, our world would die utterly

… for they are the ones who do not look away, will not find it oh so funny that death of the innocents goes on and on, will not call names nor tell lies in order to attempt to dehumanize a group or a people, and will instead, touch the dead, carry the dead as though they are still alive and the most precious beings on earth… giving honor to the frail bodies, the so terribly damaged and harmed vessels that once carried such massive souls.

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CODA
You see in the picture of the Iraqi Samaritan, that the old man is in the outdoor morgue where the bodies of those who have been killed are laid. You see a middle aged man’s feet, , you see a person’s hand over their heart as though they are only sleeping. This picture has been cropped; when I ran it through the photo forensic software I have, I could see this is only a segment of a much wider picture, presumably showing many more rows of the dead.

Doppelgänger, is from the German word doppel, meaning double, and goer, meaning to do, to act, to show up and to go to conduct oneself in a certain way. It is used in English to indicate a kind of ‘twinning’ of minds, hearts, spirits, ideas that, often, appear in diverse persons who do not know one another and… have most often not been exposed to the same ideas, but who somehow, act, hold to ideas, develop character in ways that are nearly identical.