ISSN 1758-6488
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Sudan Fiction |
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“Hello sweetheart,” he said. He was slurring his words but he didn’t care. “Wish I was there. It’s hot here and the Nile looks like a long, skinny swimming pool. No,” he paused. “It’s bad here, actually.”
He would hear about that from Carol, scaring Samantha like that.
“Okay, well, love you, Sammy-sam.”
When he landed at Heathrow on Saturday, the photo was there on the front page of The Times staring back at him.
One hundred and thirty one papers carried the shot, and for a few weeks Brady couldn’t escape his picture. When he went grocery shopping it lay stacked in newspaper stands. It was talked about on British television. One university professor wrote into the London Times Op/Ed and called him “another vulture on the scene.” He wrote three responses to her letter, discussing ethics and photo journalism and questioning her knowledge of both, but decided he didn’t need to defend himself.
The Washington Post nominated him for the Hirschberg Prize. He got the letter on a rainy day in London three months after the assignment, followed by a phone call of congratulations from Richard Glengrove, the Executive Editor of The Post. Within days the paper had sent over a plane ticket, hotel reservations at the Waldorf, and when the day came to fly to New York a black limo met him at the front door of his flat.
The next evening Brady was at the university sitting on the dais beneath the neo-classical rotunda. Spread in front of him was a hall of white tablecloths, black ties, and dresses accesorized with gold. Glittering pyramids of champagne glasses rose from tables dressed with ice-sculptures, and every few seconds flashbulbs popped silver sparks.
“It is rare,” Ian Lightman, the Executive Director of the foundation, said, “that a picture seems to capture all the anguish of a place.” He paused until the picture was projected onto a white screen behind him. It was life-sized, the child looming over the room, the vulture calm, patient. The sight of it so large shocked Brady and he felt a little muscle spasm in his temple. “But Hugh Brady’s photograph of famine stricken Sudan seemed to capture the horror of a whole continent.”
When he rose to receive the statuette, people rose from their tables in applause. He buttoned the single button of his tailored tuxedo before stepping forward. He and the director shook hands and held a pose a moment for the cameras. Then the director left him alone, the photographer in front of the photograph having his picture taken.
Afterwards a string quartet played and men dressed in black ties balanced platters of hors d’oeuvres in the palm of their hands. He finished a glass of champagne, and someone replaced the empty glass with a full one. Later when he requested a scotch, a man brought him a single-malt on a silver tray. He met a thousand people, it seemed, all a blur of names, smiles, handshakes and praise.
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