1991. At Checkpoint Zulu in the Iraqi desert, journalist Tom Benson and American private Arwood Hobbes are forever changed by the terrible events unfolding around them. Tom enters a dark tunnel of disconnection, and young Arwood Hobbes begins another kind of journey. Twenty years later, they return to face their shared past.
This
fast-paced tale by Derek Miller reveals the strange machinations of armies and war. Inside the cease-fire zone, Arwood sees an Iraqi officer shoot a defenseless fourteen-year-old girl in cold blood. Tom stops Arwood from shooting the killer and walks him back to the US Army base, "without his body, mind or soul." When Arwood's superior officer berates him for getting them all in trouble for the dead girl he refers to as "some fucking Arab bitch," Arwood "beats the living shit out of him."
Later, the veteran journalist explains the scale of the catastrophe to his young friend. "Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, are dead. There are mass graves. Starvation. Exposure. The state of Iraq is ripping itself apart. America thinks the Shiites are backed by Iran, and they're letting them die. And Turkey doesn't want support flowing to the Kurds..."
Arwood's response is simple. "Well...a person's a person, no matter how small, right?" When Tom doesn't reply to this, he mutters to himself, "I thought that was the whole point."
Technically, Arwood gets away with "pulling a weapon on a military officer from a country with whom the United States...has a ceasefire agreement." Aided by Tom's threats of triggering bad press coverage if he's court-martialled, he also seems to get away with punching his officer's lights out. But down the road, consequences await him in the form of ambiguous paperwork. Not a dishonourable discharge, but "bad paperwork" all the same. Like so many other veterans, Arwood "can't even get a job at the Dairy Queen," or in any way come close to fitting in at home.
The reader also glimpses the constraints on peacekeepers and NGOs. Chillingly, the author reveals how the steady encroachment of new media is altering the landscape around the
fourth estate. We see this when Tom tells his editor that a misleadingly edited video is being shown around the world "because no one gives a damn anymore...they'd rather be fast and wrong than slow and right." Ironically, he adds that "while business depends on speed, mere democracy depends on validity."
On the other end of the phone, the editor takes his point, but reminds him that "democracy doesn't pay the bills around here." He then inquires about the girl, saying "She's the human interest in this story," and cynically promising, "If she's alive, there'll be a prize in it for you."
Worst of all, the reader must witness the unbelievable suffering of the people caught up in the war. In an area filled with refugees, Tom sees a boy kicking a soccer ball and strikes up a conversation with his father, who is standing nearby.
Asked if he is Syrian, the man responds, "I'm nothing. There is no Syria...For the first time in three thousand years. I am a ghost." The former school principal, who now lives in a tent, shares with Tom the terrible fate of his pregnant wife, and his feeling of helplessness in the face of the need to tell his son that his mother will not be coming back.
Meanwhile, "Tigger," a Frenchman, and Marta, a Swedish woman from an NGO, discuss their concern about the future of the many orphans now growing up in refugee camps. Tigger voices his fear for the future leaders of the countries where these dreadful crises take place, certain that growing up as orphans and refugees will "go into their hearts" and "become what they are." He points out that "in
thirty years Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan and Congo and Somalia...will
all be run by orphans...people who never knew a real home."
Miller's handling of language is masterful. Dark humour, deftly applied, relieves the more chilling moments. The tone is set at the beginning. As they watch helpless from behind the sandbags at Checkpoint Zulu, helicopters fire on civilians at close range. Private Hobbes asks his journalist friend when the war is going to end.
"The war is over," Tom informs him. "This is the peace. Now the lawyers are drafting the UN permanent-ceasefire resolution."
Without "bothering to motion to the town at the end of his machine gun," Arwood inquires laconically, "We're waiting for paperwork?" Arwood is full of quips, and has a Hollywood movie to compare to every situation that comes up. The tone and wicked humour evoke
Catch 22 and
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (a book novelist
Khaled Hosseini named as a favourite when he visited Vancouver a few years back.)
Miller also lightens the tale with a sprinkling of poetic images. I delighted in riding along the winding roads of Cornwall with the young Tom Benson in his
British racing green MGB, with its gleaming chrome and exhaust notes that "could have recited Yeats." Such a contrast to the eternal white Toyota Land Cruisers used in the desert.
Tom's hope is to live on better terms with himself, "a skill he's been losing." Arwood's character arc is different, but he shares Tom's need to find some sort of redemption, and this allows the story to end on a small note of hope.
In April, Simon Fraser University is hosting a forum entitled
Confronting the Disinformation Age. This would be a good book to read as background.
