This is the image that I’ve tried to forget: I’m on my knees and I’m pleading for my life. As I was taught in a hostile-environment course for journalists, which I was compelled to take by my employer long after I started covering wars for a living, I’m trying to make eye contact with one of my captors. I’m trying to make him see me as a fellow human being rather than an animal, a threat, an impediment or even leverage. My hands are clasped one on top of the other and I pump them in front of me as if I might be agitating a bottle of champagne after winning the Tour de France or Indy 500—but this, I hope instead, he will recognize as the international symbol of someone begging for his life. In case he still doesn’t understand, in perhaps an ill-advised gesture, I draw one hand across my throat like a blade and at the same time say in English, “No. No.”
Sitting in my therapist’s office six years later, I wondered why I had shut out so completely this specific detail of the memory. Was I ashamed of what I had done? Was I afraid to remember what it felt like to be completely powerless and without any control? Or was it, as my therapist asked me to consider, a correlation of two images too disturbing for me to hold together in my mind: the image of myself pleading with my captors for my life compared with the image of Taleb Salem Nidal inside that Fallujah mosque pleading with me to save his? While I got out of my predicament alive, thanks to the negotiations of Tofiq Abdol, my Kurdish interpreter, Nidal was not fortunate enough to have someone like that to champion his cause.
Considering his career choice, Mark Sadoff was aptly and whimsically named. He had treated everyone from husbands and wives trying to comprehend their loveless relationships to Central American victims of torture. He had been studying an emerging form of therapy known as EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (the same therapy used in Michael Ayala’s case). With EMDR the therapist attempts to re-create the rapid eye movement of sleep by having the patient follow the therapist’s finger moving back and forth in front of his eyes like a metronome. At the same time the therapist prompts the patient to talk about the incident affecting them, trying to change its negative orbit into something more positive. In my situation, Dr. Sadoff asked me if I purposely wanted Taleb Salem Nidal to die or if my actions were accidental, rather than intentional. If I could have prevented his death, if I knew what would’ve happened to him when I left the room, would I have acted differently? Of course I would have stayed, I said, I would have taken him out of the mosque to somewhere he might be safe, rather than leaving him alone. It was Dr. Sadoff’s effort to get my guilt- addled brain to understand that Taleb Salem Nidal hadn’t registered as a victim to me, as someone who needed saving. The person I was trying to save, by exposing the crime, was the one who had already been killed on videotape in front of me. He helped me to understand that it was a mistake, not malice. My intentions were good, I just hadn’t thought the situation through clearly, which was understandable considering what I had just witnessed. Through our discussions he also helped me to see that difficult but ultimately critical connection between my capture outside Tikrit and the murder of Taleb Salem Nidal. With no interpreter, no Tofiq, as I had had during my capture, to translate for him, Nidal would die because I did not understand, as I should have, that I needed to walk him out of that mosque under my protection. I didn’t save anyone, as I did in my dream; I let the plane sink to the bottom of the Potomac. I did nothing. But I had to find a way to forgive myself, or in a misguided search for equal justice, I would end up killing myself in exchange.
Shortly after Anita and I moved in together I began preparing for a reporting trip to Afghanistan. It would be my fourth time there, and I stepped up my therapy sessions, hoping to find some closure before I went. I found myself telling Dr. Sadoff that one of the ways in which I thought I might be able to be at peace with my actions in Fallujah was if I lost a limb during the upcoming trip, preferably a leg, rather than a hand or arm. The loss of that leg, while not a life, could make me feel that I was even for Nidal; that, along with my years of self-hatred and self-destruction, would ante up for his life.
But while Dr. Sadoff couldn’t dissuade me of the notion, my actual behavior during that reporting trip to Afghanistan was the anathema of all that I had been saying. For the summer I was in Afghanistan, I trod perhaps more carefully than I ever had in my life, walking well-worn paths and being careful to stay out of clearings and the line of fire when possible. I had purchased a Kevlar helmet and body armor, which I normally never wore while working in war zones. Inside the helmet, I placed a picture of Anita, and inside the body armor, a photograph of each of the girls, one in front and one in back. Somehow, I understood there was now a value to my life that went beyond myself. If I died or lost a limb, Nidal and I might be even, but I would then be cheating the people who now considered me part of their family, the ones I wore next to my heart and on top of my head. My past actions during war didn’t make me a bad person, nor did they invalidate the good things inside me; they simply proved the existence of both. While I obviously had not always seen clearly what was the right thing to do in the past, in this case, I had no doubt. Despite all my shortcomings, all my betrayals, all the pain I caused, all my sins, I wanted to come home alive—yes, changed by the things war had both given and taken from me, but somehow complete.
I secretly married Anita exactly two years to the day I met her at Joshua Tree, three days before leaving for my fourth trip to Afghanistan. I married her again, in front of family and friends, after my return. Inscribed on my wedding band is the Latin phrase “
If you have comments about this book and are a service member or veteran (from anywhere in the world) who would like to be part of an ongoing veterans’ storytelling effort, please e-mail me at the address below. Your story, photos, or video may be shared in this book’s companion website.
My deepest thanks to all the service personnel, both U.S. and international, who had the courage and generous hearts to share their most intimate stories of war. Your efforts, I strongly believe, will help you on your journey—and encourage others to find their own way home again. They include those featured in this book: Michael Ayala, Mikeal Auton, Joe Caley, Morris Goins, Zach Iscol, Thomas Saal, Sebastiaan Schoonhoven, Leonard Shelton, James Sperry, Lior Tailer and William Wold.
My thanks also to the many others who helped me to understand the combatant’s experience in war, especially past and current service members: Frederick Coe, Wil Cromie, Pat Donahue, Justin Featherstone, Bernard Finestone, Dana Golan, Phillip Herbig, Roxanne Hurley, Gord Jenkins, Jeff Milhorn, Cathy Murphy, Arthur Myers, Zakyia Ibrahim Rahman, Matthew Rodgers, John Schluep, Justin Schmidt, Jonathan Staab, Sean Tuckey, Garret Ware and Joe Young.
I talked with the mothers, wives and girlfriends of some of the combatants profiled here—and I thank them for their contributions—but out of respect for their privacy, I will not name them here.
Several experts in the field of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder provided invaluable assistance both through their written works and in personal interviews they granted to me, and in some cases, they helped me to make contact with individuals featured in this book. I’m extremely grateful to Dr. Edward Tick, author of
Other books that provided critical perspectives and thoughtful insights:
