she stares at the computer screen. there's a ball of fire staring back at her. she inspects the photograph. it was a methodical inspection, like a dissection. there are a few armed men, rifles up. a few wailing men and women walking off the edge of the photograph and into the rubble. she notices that the photographer has included a little pink shoe sprawled on a scalded tyre. out of focus slightly were the people from the red cross, busy. in this photograph there was a little of lebanon in every corner. there were no politicians though. she took a photograph of the photograph and looked at it in her camera. in her photo of the photo, she only saw the fire. she took it again with no flash this time. the fire was still the same. it took up the entire frame, a grim yellow. she could not detail the people really because she could not even spot them next to the fire. she thought about how easy it was to take a photograph of controlled fires, of people, and of dead people. how easy it was nowadays to make headlines. she didn't feel much. but this fire was different from the others. the man that was burned alive had been neutral. neutralized, and he was neutral. neutral in lebanon is like being a eunuch. rare, and castrated by society. he protected the country less than a year ago, he had a hand in making the lebanese army the only commendable element of lebanese society. he did not dip his hands in blood from either side. and yet he burned. she wondered how long it took them to put out that fire. how many politicians and from which side made sorrowful speeches on tv, their mouth breathing over one hundred and twenty three microphones, avenging the death and denouncing evil. just before they immersed their mouth in the fluffy pillows of Phoenicia Hotel. gargling Moet et Chandon. and announcing national mourning only after the son of the burned man claimed that even in mourning there was no justice. so 24 hours later, it was decided the burned man would be mourned. she felt anger once these thoughts came to mind. she wished she didn't care. she did.