Editor’s Corner
September 5, 2008
Keyholes into the Middle East
By
Constance Hale
Almost nine months ago [see the December 21, 2007, post on this page], we focused on narratives coming out of the war in Iraq. Today, spurred by recent submissions, we return to the subject of strife in that region. Each of these pieces offers not just a keyhole into war, but also a keyhole into narrative itself.
“Ramadi Nights” is an impressionistic piece we found remarkable for its characters, telescopic observations, and descriptions of the Al Anbar capital. The author, Neil Shea, shows how much narrative depends upon immersion reporting. We love the detail of how a soldier marks the hand of each helicopter passenger in black so that the crew can check hands in advance of each stop and disgorge the right passengers. In several instances, snatches of dialogue reveal more about characters than exposition ever could.
Successful narrative also depends on a narrator like Shea, who weaves himself in and out of the story—never getting in the way of his characters, and never blocking the action. His presence also comes through in his metaphors (“Ramadi was known for IEDs the way certain French cities are known for wine”) and insights (“I did not see how armed men bursting in on sleeping families could possibly be a good idea, even if they did it with a smile… Yet this was the mission. And the Marines, being good Marines, had learned to say, Fuck it. Let’s do it.”)
Moni Basu works with a different palette in “Chaplain Turner’s War.” In this 1,600-word segment of an eight-part series, she focuses in the direct experiences of one man, Chaplain Darren Turner. Unlike Shea’s dark wonderings, Basu uses a chaplain’s trip to the gym to render his reflections in declarative sentences and terse paragraphs.
“The Mother’s War,” another newspaper account related to Iraq, was published in The Plain Dealer. Andrea Simakis offers a tale of two mothers, Donna Zovko, from Cleveland, and Katy Helvenston, from central Florida. They respond to the death of their sons—two of the four Blackwater contractors whose ambush, slaughter, and immolation in Fallujah were broadcast the world over—by launching a public campaign to reveal the inner workings of a secretive defense contractor. While telling the mothers’ story, author Simakis also gives readers food for thought on the role and rights of “hired guns” in modern warfare.
The juxtaposition of these three stories made us contemplate some of the differences between magazine and newspaper narratives—especially when it comes to language, length, and point of view. And that, in turn, made us hungry for some narratives in other media.
In the realm of audio and video, we point you to two different pieces from BBC/PRI radio’s The World. Rather than focusing on Iraq, both look at the aftermath of war in Lebanon. “Nahr el Bared One Year On” is an affecting narrated slideshow. It begins with a panoramic of a once-thriving refugee camp that became the site of a pitched battle between Islamic militants and the Lebanese military. Tracing a marvelously simple narrative arc, Aaron Schachter’s photographs take us from bombed-out alleys, into the steel container now serving as housing for a Palestinian family of six, and settling finally on an antique key a grandmother wears around her neck: it opens the door to her former home in Palestine, now Israel.
If Schachter’s Nahr el Bared piece is poignant, an audio narrative about a new business in the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahyeh is, well, piquant. In the face of the threat of civil war, a plucky restaurateur names his new eatery “Buns and Guns.” The restaurant’s décor hardly denies Lebanon’s violent side: Waiters dress in camouflage, fake guns adorn the walls, and sandbags demarcate the patio. Lunch fare includes the B-52, a huge beef sandwich. Schachter admires the effort to poke fun at Lebanon’s troubles but wonders if he hasn’t fallen prey to a marketing scam.
Recent history in Georgia has shown that questions of international intervention, debates over democracy, and bloodshed exacerbated by ancient disputes are not tied to any single country or conflict. Please send us more stories from around the world—in any medium. We look forward to reading them and sharing them here.