καιρός remembered

Silent witnesses

As I walked amongst the thousand-year-old Khmer monuments, with the guardian deities on the gopuras gazing out over the land in all four directions with their inward-turned faces, I could not help but see them as silent witnesses to the horrors that had ravaged Cambodia only a few decades ago. They had all seen it happen. They had been unable to prevent it, but had themselves miraculously escaped the tidal wave of destructive fanaticism.

Unlike elsewhere, in Afghanistan, 25 years later, when the Buddhas of Bamiyan fell prey to fanatics of a different kind. And unlike in Mali in 2012, when the mausoleums of Islamic scholars and saints in Timbuktu were destroyed by fanatics of a similar nature.

Fanaticism: the seemingly indestructible curse of human nature.

Photo of the week: West Gopura of Ta Som (end 12th century), Angkor / Siem Reap, Cambodia, 2000