Chicago murders spiked in August 1991, the deadliest month in city history: 120 killings. Almost four a day. The Sun-Times scrambled to cover this horrific story, crafting a wide-ranging series, “After the Shooting Stops,” trying to convey the expanding shock waves of tragedy and loss radiating outward from each death.
Some reporters sat with grief-stricken families. Others rode ambulances or trailed police. My job was to go to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office on Harrison Street and watch a single day’s butchery being processed.
To say it stayed with me is an understatement. I can still see the dura stripper peeling back skin to expose the yellow layer of fat underneath. Can hear the shriek of bone being cut by a Stryker saw. Smell the decay from the body that had lain undetected on a flophouse floor for two weeks.
What I can’t still see is the autopsy of the blue-tinged baby. Because when her turn came, I tapped photographer Robert A. Davis on the shoulder and said, “union-mandated coffee break.” We hurried out.
Cowardice? Prudence? It was defendable from a professional level — we were writing about murder, and this baby probably wasn’t murdered. At least not by street crime, which was our focus. A crib death, supposedly.
Though the real reason was: my wife and I were trying to have kids, and I just didn’t want that baby being cut apart in my memory. Some things you can’t unsee. It is not a decision I’ve ever regretted.
Though it came back Tuesday, when the Israeli consulate in Chicago called to say they were showing “exclusive footage” of the Oct. 7 slaughter, and I must be there.
No, I said, I mustn’t.
Not wanting to see jarring carnage was only part of it. It also seemed unnecessary — I get it, I understand what happened, and believe it. No further proof necessary. I’m already in the heightened state of alarm and unease that many find themselves in.
To take you by the hand and bring you into that room to see what I’d see ... that doesn’t seem a favor to you. To turn a spotlight on stark horror, just in case your day isn’t distressing enough.
These images already flood Instagram and Twitter, popping up along with the car crashes and “Young Sheldon” clips. Almost like entertainment. Bloody children in the rubble in Gaza. The faces of kidnapped Israelis, consigned to unimaginable dooms.
Plus the Israeli government isn’t showing that footage as a neutral service, for informational purposes. They are doing what many — maybe most — involved in this horror do continuously: use the graphic carnage committed against them to rouse support. “Waving the bloody shirt” it used to be called in American politics. While that is their right, that doesn’t mean I need to daub my fingers in the fresh blood and start writing.
Every writer approaches a complicated, ongoing story by forming a strategy — how to do this? — and my strategy is to try to find the path forward.
The question shouldn’t be, “What wrongs were done that now justify the wrongs you wish to inflict on others?” The question should be, “What are we all going to do now?” (Israeli novelist Amos Oz used to describe his country’s struggle with the Palestinians as “right versus right,” then came to view it as “wrong versus wrong.” Which makes sense).
Being roiled in outrage won’t help anybody solve this puzzle, won’t guide anyone out of this maze. At least, it hasn’t so far. Everyone shouting the same platitudes that were worn out 50 years ago. Of course, it doesn’t work.
Maybe the solution isn’t to relive the most recent horrors. Maybe just the opposite. I honestly think that the only way out is for each side to cool down, look around, try to empathize with one another. To start by extending to others a fraction of the sympathy that they lavish on themselves.
Not happening. Not anytime soon. But it’s going to have to happen eventually, and maybe that’s the role of those blessed enough not to be crushed by grief or numb with horror. All of us, impossible as it sounds, should comfort the survivors, then take one party’s hand, then the other’s, uncurl both fists and draw the two warring sides together.
