Consequence (29 page)

10.3

Karin's parents come to visit; they bring a bottle of wine, along with an expensive Norwegian liquor. They say it's the kind of thing we can serve for special occasions. I consume the entire bottle in two nights, and then try to hide it by burying it in the bottom of the recycling bin.

Karin cleans and organizes the bottles and cans in the recycling bin before putting them to the curb. I return to the apartment and find the kitchen counter lined with the bottles and cans she has meticulously scrubbed and set out to dry. I find the bottle of liquor from Norway. I'm embarrassed, so I lash out. For the first time, we argue about alcohol. This is also the first time I remember her trying to stand her ground and tell me something is wrong. She says something about the alcohol getting worse. I say something about how I don't deserve to have things taken away from me. As the argument drags on, I'm surprised by how long she stands her ground. She even has the courage to wonder aloud if they allow alcohol at seminary. I tell her to go to hell.

10.4

In November 2005, when we're talking again, Karin and I decide it's time to leave Maryland and go home to Bethlehem. Karin has received an offer to return to the chemical company in Allentown as a process engineer. Iraq continues to deteriorate. It will be a long war. If I stay with the NSA, there will be more trips overseas. I am tempted. I could spend significant time in Iraq and make significant money. I could eventually take another job as a contractor and work as an intelligence analyst full-time in Iraq. I wouldn't have to see Karin. There would be no living expenses. I could do it for five or six years. I'd be wealthy. I could divorce Karin and move somewhere on my own to die of heart failure.

I've been changing jobs and relocating ever since the heart diagnosis. The decision to apply to Princeton is foolish, but I'm too unstable to see that. Karin is, too. Her wounds are as deep as mine. The war has damaged her as much as it has me, and we struggle to find a solution; we struggle to find a way back to where we were. I search for something to define me, so I'll become a pastor. Karin searches for parity. She hasn't suffered enough. She hasn't lost anything. She hasn't been to war, so she surrenders to whatever I say. We're both trying to make things even again. We're both making things so much worse.

At the NSA, I meet with my supervisor. She says, “We'd have lost you to the CIA eventually.” She talks about a new program at the NSA. They're looking for people willing to spend significant time in Iraq. She says someone with my credentials would be perfect for the position. She says, “You were born for this war. Why not give it another year?”

The office organizes a going-away party. The supervisor stands up front and compares me to Jack Bauer of
24
. She says, “God help the terrorist who comes to your church.” Then they present me with gifts. There is a nice aerial photo of the camp where I worked in Iraq. It is classified, so I have to leave it behind. There is a certificate of appreciation from a supporting office, and a shopping bag filled with cheap gifts from the official NSA store. There is a lanyard, a plastic coffee mug, a key chain, and a glass sculpture engraved with the NSA seal. I hold up the sculpture and say, “I'll be sure to display this from the pulpit so everyone knows you're listening.”

10.5

In Bethlehem, we buy a house on Bonus Hill. There are wood floors, plaster walls, high ceilings, and cast-iron radiators. We remodel the ninety-year-old fireplace and install a wood-burning stove. We go to a quarry and pick out the stone that will line the new chimney. I sit in front of the fire and start reading books again. Someone recommends
One Bullet Away
by Nathaniel Fick. Fick recounts his time as a platoon leader in the Marine Corps with deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a heroic story. Someone else recommends
The Irresistible Revolution,
by Shane Claiborne. Claiborne studied at Princeton Theological Seminary before dropping out to serve the poor in Philadelphia. He traveled to Iraq in 2003 and served as a human shield during the run-up to the invasion. This feels heroic, too. I wish my story was like one of these.

To our surprise, life improves. In January 2006, Karin and I spend a weekend in the Pocono Mountains. We laugh about the possibility of reserving a room with a two-story hot tub in the shape of a champagne glass. There are his and hers staircases leading to the top. On the way home, we get lost trying to find a secluded Christmas-tree farm that serves hot cider next to a bonfire. Eventually we give up and buy a precut tree from a parking lot in Bethlehem. We laugh about this, too.

I agree to go to First Presbyterian on Sunday nights and supervise a group of rambunctious ninth-grade boys. The youth pastor introduces me as an Iraq war veteran. She says, “God help you guys.” We read the book of Acts. In chapter 16, Paul and Silas are dragged before a crowd, beaten, taken to prison, and placed in chains. An earthquake destroys the prison and frees the prisoners. The prison guard, having failed to do his job, tries to kill himself. The ninth-grade boys aren't paying attention. They're throwing doughnut holes at each other. One ricochets off an empty chair and lands in my lap. One boy says, “Oh, shit, he's going to kill you.”

One of the other ninth-grade boys says, “My dad says you were in Iraq. Did you get shot at?” So I tell stories about convoys and land mines, mortars and rockets, gunfire and prisoners. Some of the stories are true. The boys love the ones that aren't.

I request a deferment from the seminary. The deferment policy says something about family emergencies, so I tell the seminary I'm having a family emergency. I tell them my heart condition has worsened and I'd like to take a year to focus on treatment. This is a lie. I don't know anything about my heart. I haven't seen a cardiologist since leaving the NSA. I have no intention of seeing one in Bethlehem. But it's a convenient excuse to take a year off in Bethlehem and focus on the things I enjoy.

There are fewer arguments and fewer fights at home. I read books in front of the wood stove. We have the rambunctious ninth-graders over to watch the Super Bowl. The nightmares recede. I drink less alcohol. And then I write an article for the newspaper about Iraq, and Karin and I discover that we aren't back yet.

 

11

The Philadelphia Inquirer

SEPTEMBER 7, 2006

There's a large pool of blood on the floor. I'm aware that it's part of a dream, but I can't wake up. The blood slides toward my feet. My legs are sluggish and I can't get out of the way. The puddle moves as if it's alive. It nips at my feet as I pull back in fear.

I wake up. I'm afraid to go back to sleep.

That dream came to me almost every night when I returned from Iraq in the summer of 2004. It was just one of a series of nightmares that visited me on a consistent basis. The longer I was home, the less frequent the nightmares became, but they never completely stopped. They return without warning. I'm convinced they'll never be gone for good.

I was a civilian contractor in Iraq from December 2003 to May 2004. I served as an intelligence specialist in Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and Baghdad. My ability to speak Arabic made me a valuable commodity and allowed me to work directly with Iraqi citizens. A few of them inevitably became my friends. During a rocket attack one afternoon at Camp Victory in Baghdad, two of them were killed.

I retrieved their bodies from the U.S. military morgue the next morning. I was to meet the families at the front gate and notify them of the deaths. The body bags were not labeled, and I was forced to make identifications, but the men were so disfigured, I couldn't tell the difference between the two. I unzipped the bags and searched the bodies for ID cards. Blood poured out of one of the openings and streamed to the floor. It covered my boots. It's the same pool of blood that visits me in my nightmare.

This is one of the untold stories of the war in Iraq. It is an example of the scars and the wounds about which no one wants to hear. Instead, we focus on the more than 2,600 deaths and argue about what they mean. Some think of them as a reasonable sacrifice for the greater good, while others consider them a terrible crime. But no one wants to think of the damage that's been done to those who have returned home. We call those who served heroes and throw them a barbecue. We tell them we'll take care of them.

I don't know how many are suffering from their memories of Iraq. Maybe I'm the only one. Common sense tells me otherwise, but I can speak only of my own pain. It is severe, but I usually share it with no one. I'm embarrassed at times, fearing I'm the only one who has been unable to control it. As a man who has served as a soldier and worked as a police officer, I should be immune to such fears. I should be able to control my emotions and move on without complaining. That's no longer working.

I am quick to anger now, and my temper flares without much reason. I cry without cause, and I struggle to find purpose in everyday tasks. I used to value hard work; now I feel lazy. I've found ways to go on with life, hide the symptoms, and pretend nothing is wrong. For now, no one can tell the difference.

I listen as others debate the war in Iraq and talk about what it has cost. They wonder how it will affect elections and gas prices. They compare it with wars of the past and disagree about how much tougher or easier this one has been. They argue about phrases like civil war and accuse one another of making mistakes. In the end, though, they always say they support the troops. It brings consensus and makes them feel as though they're doing their part. They move on to the next topic.

I can't find a way to move on. There is no way to change what Iraq has done to me. The scars are permanent, and I've grown tired of hiding them. It's time for the nation to start thinking about what it really means to support those who serve. It's time to consider the full effects of this war on the nation's sons and daughters. The experience doesn't end once you're home. In many ways, it's just beginning. While the rest of the nation sleeps soundly tonight, I'll go back to my nightmare in Iraq.

Eric Fair

The piece is well received. I get emails. Nice ones. Ones that say, “I hope you sleep better,” and “Don't feel guilty,” and “Anything we can do?”

A professor from Villanova who teaches an introductory writing class asks me to answer her students' questions about writing and war. One student writes about her father. He died a few years ago. He was a Vietnam veteran. He never spoke about his experiences. She wants to know why I have gone public with mine. Why not get the help I need in private? Why not keep it to myself? Why am I seeking attention?

The professor calls and thanks me for taking the time to respond to these questions. She says the students were impressed that a writer would send personal emails. She says the students were particularly impressed with the way I handled the questions from the student who questioned my motivations. She says every class has one of these students. She says, “The rest of them know you weren't trying to impress anyone.”

The student who questioned my motivations is right. I was trying to impress everyone. The piece is deceptive. It says nothing about interrogation and nothing about torture. It says nothing about the old Iraqi man I shoved into the wall. It makes it sound as though the two boys were my friends. I alter the story about returning to the same body bag, but only to simplify the narrative. Nothing in the article is meant to be untrue, but the picture it paints is an absolute lie.

I haven't yet mustered the courage to confess, so I hide behind a story meant to impress.

Still, the piece in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
sets me in motion. I'm not sure what would have happened if I hadn't published that first article. I might very well have found a way to bury my experience in Iraq. I might even have found a way to feel good when people thanked me for my service. But in late 2006 I started a process I wasn't able to stop.

Many of the people who respond to the essay encourage me to publish more articles, and while they can't possibly know the real story that needs to be written, their voices contribute to a call to start moving forward. So I keep writing.

11.1

At night, in bed, Karin and I talk about starting a family. We've had this discussion before, during our engagement, while we were walking around a kettle pond on Cape Cod. We agreed to have children, but not right away. We haven't talked about it since. For a time, after I was diagnosed with heart failure, Karin wouldn't sleep with me, afraid that I would suffer cardiac arrest in the middle of sex. That never happened, but we agreed the heart condition changed our views on family. Then there was Iraq. That changed our views as well.

We've been married five years. I'm thirty-four. Karin is thirty-two. We're older than our parents were when we were born. We both agree the time is right. Karin is comfortable in her position as an engineer. We're both becoming more comfortable with the idea of moving to Princeton for seminary in the coming year. We agree it would be a great place to raise a child. In the meantime, I write more articles for newspapers.

In December 2006, someone sends me a link to an op-ed in the
New York Times
. The piece, which was published nearly a year earlier, is by Tony Lagouranis, an Army interrogator who served in Iraq in 2004. The piece is called “Tortured Logic.” It details his experiences in Iraq and questions the efficacy of aggressive and abusive interrogation techniques. I'm familiar with most of these techniques. I used many of them and had success with them. In the email, a sentence from the piece is highlighted.

Perhaps, I have thought for a long time, I also deserve to be prosecuted.

The email asks, “Did you know this guy?”

I did not know Tony Lagouranis. But I know his experiences. I know why he questions what he deserves. I know why he questions why some were held accountable and others not. I know why he feels he did something wrong, and I know why he wonders whether he should be prosecuted.