The Opposite of Love

In memory of Brian Haw

The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

Hate, in fact, is a form of love, since you cannot hate what you have not previously loved, or which has not hurt or wounded or threatened that which you love. Hate is love bent out of shape. Hate is love which is itself wounded. Hate is love broken or betrayed, tortured or defiled, raped or murdered, molested or mutilated. Hate is love when confronted by injustice, or by violence, or by cruelty or by hate. Hate breeds hate, just as love breeds love. Hate is love grown bitter. It is love roused to anger. It is love forced to witness the destruction of innocence. It is love in shackles. It is love enslaved. It is love deprived of hope or freedom or a say over its future. It is love humiliated, made to crawl, love whose spirit is broken. It is love’s ache at the loss of a loved one. It is love’s rebellion at the corrosion of liberty. It is love’s stand against the darkness of repression.

Hate is love’s wound.

I remember being at a demonstration a few years back. It was a Kurdish demonstration against the Turkish government, then engaged in the wholesale repression of Kurdish culture and Kurdish identity. There were only about 20 people there. It was outside a government department in Whitehall as the British government were helping the Turkish government at the time by means of financial loans. Most of the people were members of the Kurdish Diaspora, people who had fled the border areas in South Eastern Turkey where the fight for Kurdish independence was taking place. There was some drumming going on, and some of them were dancing. They had their arms linked in a line and were doing this elaborate stepped dance involving handkerchiefs being waved in the air. I remember it very clearly: the kicking and the dancing and the trills and whoops of excitement. There were a few cars lined up by the side of the road, onto which the demonstrators had attached some posters with information about their cause.

One of the demonstrators came up to me, and he started showing me pictures. I couldn’t quite make them out at first. They were grainy photocopied blow ups of screen shots taken from the internet. In one there was a family gathered in a half circle in front of what appeared to be a mannequin. In another a soldier was holding up an object about the size of a football.

My demonstrator friend said, “these are photographs taken by Turkish soldiers as trophies. They sell for a lot of money in Istanbul.”

I looked again at the picture of the soldier and what it was in his hand. It was a severed head. He was holding it up by the hair, and grinning. There was blood dripping from the neck and the features had sort of melted. There were several more of these photographs, of soldiers holding up severed heads, sometimes one head, sometimes two. Sometimes several soldiers would be standing in front of the headless corpse while one of the soldiers held up the head. My heart started pounding and I found myself sobbing. I was embarrassed and sickened and had to turn away.

Then my friend showed me the other picture again, of the family sitting behind a mannequin. It wasn’t a mannequin, it was a corpse. He said, “that is the man’s family. They are made to sit beside his body while the photograph is being taken.” There was a woman in a flowered headscarf and a couple of children. Their faces were blank, impassive. The body was scarred with its wounds, the jet black hair stuck to the face by blood. I can still see it to this day: the corpse in the front of the photograph, sort of flattened out and paled by the loss of bodily fluids, and the family behind, with their hollow faces, betraying nothing. They are sitting in front of a fireplace on which are ranged the usual knick-knacks: small ornaments and photographs in their frames. In a way this photograph is a perverse version of the same thing. A little memento to remember the moment.

My demonstrator friend said, “sometimes they come into a village and they will pick out every tenth man and they will shoot him and the whole village is made to clap.”

I’ve never forgotten that moment. I remember going into a shop soon after to go to the toilet. There were all the products lined up in their various displays, looking shiny and new. But I couldn’t help seeing the blood that seemed to flow from the photographs underlying this conspicuous display of opulence all around me. I couldn’t help thinking of the murder of innocence.

So, now, imagine those children made to sit before the corpse of their beloved father while an enemy soldier takes a photograph. Their faces betray nothing of their feelings. But what will be seething in their hearts? What rage, what anger, will have been born there that day? What hatred? What acts of revenge? What future violence?

Hate breeds hate breeds hate breeds hate, but hate is born from love.

Now imagine that on a world scale: in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, in Syria, in Somalia, in Libya, in Bahrain. All over the world. Everywhere there is a war.

Thousands of corpses. Tens of thousands. Unimaginable numbers. Who knows how many corpses or how many children there are, just like these children, being tortured by the horrors of war? Who knows the scars on the heart or the heart’s wounds or how much blood has accumulated in the soul of the world? How much sorrow, how much anger, how much violence, how much love seeking revenge?

And you wonder why these photographs are not seen by everyone, all of these mutilated corpses in forgotten corners of the world: why they are not allowed on our TV screens. They should be on the front page of every newspaper: the consequences of war. We should see the bodies torn apart, the blood, the consequence of violence. We should all be made to watch Al Jazeera, which is less squeamish about the sight of death. We should all be made to see the consequence of our own indifference.

Because the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

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