Lemons of life

 As the rains poured from the floodgates of the skies with drops resounding on the roof, capturing moments was a passion she had since childhood. Her father, Karim, a northerner and a trader, that fell in love. He always took her on his bicycle to the big city to visit the library; his love for literature was endless. She would always wander to the photography section just to enjoy books with vast collections of artistic expressions compressed into single photographs.

 

As her thoughts wandered away, her mother coughed from the corner of the room. Her mother had been showing symptoms of Hepatotoxicity, which was very common along the creeks due to numerous oil spillages that were barely cleaned. These spillages poisoned both fishes and crops, slowly poisoning the people. The only hospital for miles could only provide pain killers and antibiotics, which were barely enough to keep these victims from crossing to the afterlife, just like it did to her beloved father.

 

Her mother drifted away back into sleep. She remembered they had a few movies on her phone and began scrolling until she got to “Minamata”. What a strange name, but she had seen all the others, so she played it. Seconds turned to minutes, and then an entire hour had passed. The movie went beyond just a script; as the light from her cracked screen got brighter, she realized all this while she had been focusing on the area of photography. She had finally found her voice, documenting the pain and neglect of her people.

 

Spending countless hours to get the right angles to tell the story of her people, from the dead fish to the contaminated water and terminally ill patients, mailing to various NGOs was another struggle as most never wrote back. But at last, one media company managed to squeeze her story onto the last page, and it somehow found its way to a UNICEF desk officer. In a few weeks, they had set up a proper outpost to treat the people of her community, also making her an official photographer for the organization.