scavenger 復習
イスラム過激派組織「イスラム国」がイラク北部モスルから撤退して9ヶ月立った今、ボランティアチームは現在も、モスルの旧市街から何百体ものモスル市民やIS戦闘兵の遺体を発見や回収しているそうです。
MOSUL, Iraq — The garbage men laid out and unzipped each body bag so their supervisor could photograph the remains inside, just in case someone came forward to ask about a missing person.
But it seemed unlikely that anyone would be able to identify their loved ones from those cellphone snapshots, given how decomposed the corpses were. And no DNA was collected for future identification before the bodies were buried in a pit on the edge of a city dump on the outskirts of Mosul.
In the end, it was another pile of unidentified bodies in a mass grave, like so many others in a country plagued by violence. This time, most of the dead were believed to be Islamic State fighters killed in the final stages of the battle for Mosul. City workers said that since August of last year, they had retrieved and buried an estimated 950 such bodies.
The municipality has struggled to keep pace with the return of residents after the expulsion of the Islamic State nearly a year ago, and Mosul does not have the personnel to focus on clearing bodies and unexploded ordnance.
(中略)
At the main city dump, some of the city’s poorest residents sifted through debris looking for anything salvageable. The foul smell emanating from the sea of trash was inescapable and the thick, chemical-infused smoke wafting through the air burne
Many of the scavengers were young children. Armed with hooked metal rods, they descended on every new dumpster that arrived with a mixture of excitement and desperation. They seemed to encourage each other with the idea that there could be treasure amid the trash.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/business/michael-cohen-lawyer-trump.html
scavenger /skǽvindʒər/ に注目しました。『ジーニアス英和辞典第5版』(大修館) によると「(ジャッカルなどの)清掃動物、腐肉動物、街路清掃人」といった意味があるとわかります。『ケンブリッジ英英辞典』をみてみると ”a bird or animal that feeds on dead animals that it has not killed itself“ と定義されていて、捕食された動物の残骸などを清掃する役割をなす動物を指していると窺えます。
scavenger は元々アングロフランス語 で「視察」という意味のある ”scawageour“ が語源とされています。また “scawageour” からオランダ語で「検査する」というニュアンスのある ”scawage” という語が生まれ、そこから派生し英語の “scavenger” が成り立ったそうです。
このボランティアチームはその遺体と写真を撮り残すことでISの犯した「負の遺産」を後世に伝えるため活動しました。(Happidra)
