One of the themes of this year’s Cuirt International
Festival of Literature is that of the eyewitness to
history–to war, human rights violations, atrocity.
An impressive lineup of writers have shared their
knowledge and their views in readings, talks and
interviews.
Samantha Power’s most recent book is Chasing the
Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save
the World, a political biography of the remarkable UN
diplomat who died in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq in
2003. In her talk, which I think was given without
reference to any notes, Power– eloquent, detailed
and affecting–explained the man, his career, and the
complex, transformative growth of the privileged
Brazilian boy into the guardian of human rights who
believed it was his job to always be “in the room,”
talking tothe bad guys. “The most important person
you’ve never heard of,” Power calls him.
In the questions period, she wasn’t asked much
about the Vieira de Mello book though; the audience
wanted her views of the presidential race and on the
steps she thought the U.S. might take to reverse its
estrangement from traditional alliances and forums
and to restore its image and effectiveness around the
world. Power expressed hopefulness, and pointed to
some promising signs of engagement she’s seen among
young people. She responded in a fairly low-key,
diplomatic way when she was asked to address her
off-the-record Hillary Clinton “monster” remark, which
led her to resign as Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisor.
Her Pulitzer Prize winning book is A Problem from
Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2003).
***********
Tony Lagouranis and Arkady Babchenko appeared on
the same program, which transfixed the audience with
the experiences of a U.S. Army interrogator at Abu Graib
and Mosul and a young Russian conscript fighting in the
first and second Chechen wars.
Lagouranis’s book is Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator’s
Dark Journey through Iraq (2007, co-authored with Allen
Mikaelian). Arkady Babchenko’s book is One Soldier’s War
(2006), which won Russia’s Best Debut of the Year Prize.
Tony Lagouranis sat at a table on stage and with controlled
emotion told his troubling story simply and directly. He ex-
plained pretty much chronologically the insidious procedures
which led him to practice a repertoire of torture, his awakening
to the true complicit nature of his role, and his decision to refuse
further participation. The obvious difficulty he had in revisiting
his experience and the details of the system that made torturers
of honorable young men had a profound effect on the audience.
As did, in a different way, the story Arkady Babchenko had
to tell of being lifted from his law studies, aged eighteen, and
drafted into the Russian Army, where humiliation and mal-
treatment were endemic, where stealing food daily was a
necessity, where beatings by superiors was commonplace,
and where the Russian role in what was essentially
a Chechen civil war was confusing.
Filed under: By Dick
