Jamila, left, plays on a seesaw with children of other female inmates on the prison yard of Pul-e Charkhi prison in Kabul, Afghanistan April 17, 2008. Jamila, age 7, and her mother Najiba who is serving a seven year sentence for adultery, have been in prison for 10 months. There are 226 young children in Afghanistan’s prisons, including many who were born there. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
The little girl on the high end of the seesaw looks stranded, and you can almost imagine that even if the other children wandered away, she might still float there, three or four feet off the ground, immune to the law of gravity…
And why should any natural law apply in that goddamned place, any more than any natural law applies in a video-game, beside a Humvee-space-invader, at a forward operating base in Helmand, Afghanistan?
LCPL Jordan Mitchell of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit plays a hand held video game lying on his cot next to his humvee at a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Friday, April 25, 2008. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)