Culture
The mark of Cain won’t sprout from a soldier who shoots at the head of a child on a knoll by the fence around a refugee camp— for beneath his helmet, conceptually speaking, his head is made of cardboard. On the other hand, the officer has read The Rebel; his head is enlightened, and so he does not believe in the mark of Cain. He’s spent time in museums, and when he aims his rifle at a boy as an ambassador of Culture, he updates and recycles Goya’s etchings and Guernica.
From J’Accuse by Aharon Shabtai. Copyright © 2003 by Aharon Shabtai and Peter Cole. Reprinted by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved.