No pictures out the window, the minder said.

I snapped and hid, snapped and hid. He was sitting right behind us on the bus into the war zone front, the Iraq-Iran border.

No pictures, he said, as he took pictures of me.

Okay, I said, and I kept snapping.

Out the window of the bus: two women walking near the highway where the oil tankers and the Jeeps, the tanks and the food supply trucks went up to Turkey, because they could not go to Iran. Two women making their way through a rain pool in the chill of the desert war winter.

No pictures, the minder said again, snapping me; doing his due diligence.

That's right, I said, snapping the human blurs in the war land, doing mine.


(Photo by Susan, Iraq highway, 1986)