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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Staying Sane in Iraq: A Soldier's Story Hello everyone! I got a remarkable letter last week from a soldier in Iraq named Shaun Feingold. I found his words so inpiring, I asked him if I could post them, and he agreed. So here they are: At the start of the letter, Shaun says he had read some articles about my books that described me as a humorist. He continues: "I thought to myself, 'What exactly is a humorist' and as far as I can tell, it's someone who finds the little everyday things in life that make you smile. I have now been in Iraq for many months and I have found myself to be what I believe is a little bit wiser. One of the things that this wisdom has presented me with is what I think of as little pictures and big pictures. It's very easy to look at the big picture over here and be pessimistic. I'm away from my wife and family for over a year. Every day when I roll out I might get hit by an IED. It's hot. It smells. I can't just relax and drink a beer or a glass of wine. The average American cares more about their $600 tax rebate than the War in Iraq. Just writing that kind of makes me depressed. That's why I don't look at the big picture. Every day, without fail something happens, something small, that makes me smile. And that's all it takes, that one laugh a day, the little picture, makes it all doable. It's kind of like ignoring the forest so you can see the flowers. There was one time when myself, another soldier, and an Iraqi Policeman were manning a small traffic checkpoint. It wasn't very busy, maybe a car every ten minutes or so. Mostly it was boring and hot. Anyway, a car pulls up and I said to the driver 'salam.' He looks up at me and says 'How are you, sir?' I ask him if he speaks English and he gets this smile on his face and says to me in a chipper British accent, 'I was on the faculty of Oxford, I bloody well hope I speak English, friend.' Another time we were patrolling, and of course it was hot. Suddenly in the canal next to us we saw and heard a puppy that we thought was drowning. My company commander, ever the dog lover, unhesitatingly jumped into the waist deep water with all 70lbs of gear on. The puppy was so startled by this that it swam to the other side of the canal and ran away. My commander climbed out of the canal soaking wet with this smile on his face and said, 'Well, I guess I got him out.' But my favorite moment was one day when we were doing a patrol through a village. There had recently been some sectarian violence and so all of the villagers were scared or angry, none of the adults were out to greet us like they usually do. Anyway, we're walking through this village and I looked over this short stone wall into someone's back yard, and I saw this group of little kids, maybe four or five years old. And they were just being little kids, playing with dolls and toy cars. The violence, the war, the US Army, Sunni, Shia. They didn't know and didn't care. I could go on, about things like how our two pet dogs always sleep in front of our vehicles, so before a combat patrol we have to wake up or drag these lazy dogs out of the way, or how the wives club still manages to circulate rumors about and to us from half way around the world while we're in a combat zone. Or how I was pulling security outside of a Nahia Council meeting (think: City council), and one of the Iraqi Policemen we were with pulled out his cell phone and started playing that Celine Dion song from "Titanic." (It was funny at first, but then he played it three times). Maybe I'm just optimistic, maybe I'm too young, but maybe I'm a humorist myself in a way. Even over here there's always a reason to smile, that one little picture a day, and it helps break that big, ugly, 15 month long mural into a bunch wallet sized smiles. Sure, there are still a lot of frowns, but I don't concentrate on those.
posted by A.J. Jacobs at 12:05 PM
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10 Comments:
Love it.
you updated! i've waited soooooooo long for u to update!finally! hope you update regularly now... I hope :-)
that's kind of what humor is about, isn't it? as much as this soldier says he's looking at the smaller picture, all of these stories require the context of a bigger one. they're funny because he's in the middle of a war-torn country, and he manages to find professors, animal lovers, and celine dion enthusiasts through it all. humor, i think, is just a fresh glimpse of belittling perspective, like the instances he described.
I think that this soldier may have a future as an author. I'd buy the book!
Great posting -- I'm so glad that you got the writer's permission to put this on your blog.
Hope to see you at Thurber House tonight! I haven't been this excited since I saw Journey in concert in '81! WooT!
Enjoyed meeting you this evening and the near-handshake. Thanks for the inscription. I'll look forward to more great stuff.
Thank you for the reminder to focus on the smiles in my day. It can be easy to forget that, sometimes.
I'm in the middle of The Year of Biblical Living and it is proving to be one of the "flowers" in my day. I'm currently studying development in Nairobi, Kenya - and while my situation in no way compares to this soldier's and what he must deal with on a daily basis - I am surrounded by poverty, an oncoming famine and a system that seems eons away from having the structure or integrity to address any of the challenges facing the people around me. When I try and share the situation with friends and family I'm tempted to use the time simply to wallow in the hopelessness of my limited ability to help - but this soldier's words (and the giggles your book have inspired) remind me to focus more on the hope, on the bits of humanity that reflect an ability to change and work towards all good things. Thanks to you both for the great reminder and may our guy in Iraq be safe so he can continue to share such perspective when he rejoins the craziness back home.
Great stuff. Thank you for this. It's important to get these stories of humanization out there, especially now, as Afghanistan is ramping up.
Who was it who said Comedy = Tragedy + Time? Aristophanes? or maybe Jackie Mason...
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