Khadafi in Batam

The Batam Post carried the same pictures and headlines as everywhere else.

         KHADAFI

           TEWAS

         The unavailing pleading for life was quoted: Don't shoot, don't shoot.

         The main picture was from the files of the chieftain of former times, in the rich robes when he would pitch his famous tents in foreign capitals. Finally, in the end, the deposed leader was caught in a sewer. 

         That picture too featured in the Batam Post, the wall of the drain scrawled with graffiti celebrating the event. 

         One of the English newspapers made capital of the circumstance, turning the tyrant into a rodent.

         The feature photograph was of the corpse. The dreadful tyrant brought to account for all his crimes: bloodied, shaggy-haired carcass with twisted mouth. 

         In Indonesia—in the local newspaper on the island of Batam at least—there was a variant cropping of the photograph, one that helped set the scene on the outskirts of Sirte where Gaddafi was cornered. 

         In the earlier publications there was a close focus on the dead man, the figure of the torso, the head and rictus of the face tightly framed. 

         In this reproduction it was an odd kind of angle presented, as if the body had lain on a rise of ground. 

         In the Batam Post the slightly wider shot delivered the staging that had been involved. 

         Alongside the corpse here in the Batam Post, on the left, a man's jeans-clad leg was bent, the knee pointing at the camera. On the thigh of the jeans a blood smear, the same as on the waistband of his white t-shirt. 

         The dying Gaddafi had leaked over the man. 

         Framing the body on the other side, on the right, was the jeans man's left arm. 

         Eventually the picture becomes clear. Gaddafi's body was wedged against one of his captors, the man propping up the dead weight at an angle for the camera.

         The first, long anticipated photo, scoop for the news-services. Market price you would guess might be in the region of $US25k, say. 

         One could not take a photograph of a dead man flat on the ground, even a horrible, detested tyrant. The image was wrong. It did not make a useable photograph. How to hold up the head for one thing. 

         The man in jeans and tee, from an opposing tribe no doubt, was found willing to cradle the old monster in his lap. 

         A tale to dine out on for the rest of your life, if not tell the grandkids.

         Seemed further film evidence was emerging on Gaddafi's final hour. 

         One of the news outlets back home reported prospects of cheaper petrol prices.