Wetting yourself

This post describes three events in which someone wets themself: pees in their pants. It was motivated by the third event described below which took place in Gaza in February 2024. The first event, about an incident from my own life, is me clearing my throat before I speak. It has no significance to anything. The second is something I read a few years back and, IMHO, is significant. But the third is huge. That people will do this to a five year old child, and that we, my society, my government, the whole charade of Western 'civilisation' is complicit. It changes everything. As El Akkad goes on to say: "How does one live, hearing the screams, bearing witness to the bodies? How does anything else matter"?

Fleetwood, October 1969

At 11 years old I went to boarding school. It was not a nice experience. I was a very timid and home-loving child who, prior to this, had never been away from home - even finding staying at school for school dinners too frightening - but my parents were living in Germany and so I was sent to boarding school in England. One day in the first week I wet myself. This is on the only time in my life that I recall it happening. I was on my own in the music practice rooms, didn't know where the toilets were and couldn't hold on. In 55 years I've never told anyone about this, though some people knew I had wet myself because they saw my stained y-fronts. 

Hillsborough. April 1989

On April 15, 1989, catastrophic failings of crowd management at the FA cup match at Hillsborough statium led to the deaths of ninety-six Liverpool football fans. Four days after the disaster, The Sun newspaper infamously published lies, blaming Liverpool fans for the deaths - something which was eventually, 27 years later, completely rejected by the official inquiry. One of the lies was that Liverpool fans urinated on police who were trying to help victims. In a later interview, one the survivors said that he had a full bladder after having been drinking before the match and that when trying to escape the crush, terrified, he had wet himself. So, yes, maybe he had urinated over people. Just think about that: the terror of that man among his dying friends and set it alongside the editor of The Sun, Kelvin Mackenzie, using the tragedy to further his career. 

Gaza. February 2024

"On the second weekend of February 2024, the decomposing body of five-year-old Hind Rajab, whom the Israeli military murdered, is found in a car with her family, next to a burned-out ambulance that was dispatched to rescue her. Later, and independent investigation will find 355 bullet holes in the car Hind was in. But early on, the story is reported in multiple media outlets as though it were a missing-pesons's case, as though this child simply walked out of sight and then walked straight out of this life.

She had called for help. She had picked up a phone and begged for help. She cried, said she'd wet herself. She was five years old.

What is the word for what she felt? Because on the other side of the planet countless people are cheering on this liquidation will wake up and say they too are afraid. But if these are equal and offsetting fears then the word means nothing. As does any system, any was of living, that abides it."

Omar El Akkad "One day everyone will have always been against this" Canongate 2025 p147