Summoning up all the wildness he possesses in his tiny frame, the little boy with the crenelated mouth is caught in a nanosecond of indecision, just before he winds up and hurls his grenade.
His empty hand, often referred to as a “claw”, forms the shape of another grenade, as successfully as a mime’s. The tension in this hand is astonishing: he grips a shape so solid and particular through empty air that you think of the circumference of an aluminum can, or a back-up grenade. Indeed, there had been a back-up grenade, lost when the boy attempted to blow up the alley next to his building (1).