What’s wrong with this photo?

March 28, 2007

PHOTO: Graffiti on the wall of a home in the Amil district of Baghdad reads "Wanted blood, Hell for infidels." As families begin to return to the neighborhoods they fled, the threat of sectarian violence remains. (Max Becherer/Polaris, for The New York Times)

What’s wrong with this photo?

This is most suspicious. Call me conspiratorial--please, do; I mean it. It does not offend me in those times. The New York Times published this picture today with this caption: "Graffiti on the wall of a home in the Amil district of Baghdad reads "Wanted blood, Hell for infidels." As families begin to return to the neighborhoods they fled, the threat of sectarian violence remains." But anybody who knows Arabic will notice something really odd and fishy about the graffiti: It is not written by an Arabic speaker. It does not read Arabic, and the basic words for blood and infidels are misspelled, and the sentence structure is wrong. As if it was written in another language and then google-translated, or something.

Actually, it is very similar to a google translation. I just wanted to share this photo and the questions around it - many things going on in Iraq and the Middle East are not as they first appear.