By
THIRSTY
Helen Benedict is a
professor of journalism at Columbia University with expertise in international
affairs and social issues. She writes frequently about justice, women, soldiers,
and war, and is the author of seven novels, including Sand Queen, a Publishers
Weekly “Best Contemporary War Novel.” Recipient of both the Ida B. Wells
Award for Bravery in Journalism and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice
Journalism, she is also the author of five works of nonfiction and the play The Lonely Soldier Monologues: Women at War
in Iraq. Her latest book, Wolf Season,
is a novel about the wounds inflicted on soldiers, refugees, and their
families.
Because
of the importance of her work on veterans, women, and war, Stay Thirsty Magazine invited Helen Benedict to participate in our One Hundred Words project and write one
hundred words about topics we suggested.
STAY THIRSTY: War brought home.
HELEN BENEDICT: “The war doesn’t end when you get home,” a veteran
said to me once, her eyes filling with tears. She was talking about a soldier
friend who had fallen into such depression on her return from Iraq, and had
been so cut off from others, that she had taken her own life. Veterans from
today’s wars are 22 times more likely to kill themselves than civilians, and
women who were sexually assaulted in the military are six times more likely to
do so than other veterans. The military may turn civilians into fighters; it cannot
turn fighters back into civilians.
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| Helen Benedict |
STAY THIRSTY: Resilience and honesty.
HELEN BENEDICT: I interviewed quite a few Iraqi refugees to research Wolf Season, every one of whom had lost
someone they loved to the war. I was deeply moved by their resilience and the
honesty with which they talked to me. One woman had seen both her brother and
teenage son killed in our war. Another had lost his brother-in-law. Yet another
had seen her younger brother killed. They suffered, but they weren’t angry at ordinary
Americans. “We lived under Saddam,” one said. “We know the people aren’t the
same as their leaders. We know not all Americans were for this war.”
STAY THIRSTY: Loss.
HELEN BENEDICT: Perhaps the main fallout of war is loss. We don’t
often think of war that way, but it makes both the invader and the invaded lose
almost all that matters to a human being. The invaders lose their moral
compasses, their ability to connect with those they love, and sometimes their
limbs, health, and lives. The invaded lose limbs and lives, too, along with
their families, homes, and often, their country. These losses alone point to
the cruelty of war. And now, with the biggest refugee crisis the world has ever
seen underway, we have lost the world’s stability, too.
STAY THIRSTY: The wolf.
HELEN BENEDICT: Because my character Rin keeps wolves, I had to learn
all I could about what that entails. So, I made my way to a wolf preserve in
northwest New York called Wolf Mountain, and spent many hours watching wolves.
Because it was a weekday, nobody was there but the staff and me, so I was able
to stand by the fence and just stare as they played, slept, ate, and stared
back at me. I read a lot about wolves, too, of course, but nothing taught me as
much as simply watching them in their magnificence, majesty, and unconquerable
wildness.
STAY THIRSTY: Frankness and innocence.
HELEN BENEDICT: Say the words “frankness” and “innocence,” and of
course one thinks of children. The children in Wolf Season, Juney, Tariq, and Flanner, are essential to my novel
because, like children everywhere, they absorb the troubles of the adults
around them, and then reflect them back with unflinching honesty. Each child in
Wolf Season is profoundly affected by
war, and each is wounded in his or her particular manner. But children are
ebullient, and have a way of resisting darkness and reclaiming light. They are
also naturally tender, so can embody both the tragedy of war and the hope of
recovery.
STAY THIRSTY: Private massacres.
HELEN BENEDICT: Because war teaches such harsh lessons—murder,
senselessness, death, cruelty, despair, destruction—no one emerges unscathed.
Sometimes the wounds are visible, but more often they are only apparent in the
privacy of homes and families. The veteran who attacks his wife, the survivor
who cannot trust, the refugee who cannot hear rain without remembering bombs
and terror, the former soldier who fails to take his wife’s illness seriously
until it is too late, the child of the missing soldier who vents his rage and
hurt out on a friend—these are the sorts of tragedies I would call private
massacres.
STAY THIRSTY: Women veterans.
HELEN BENEDICT: More American women served in Iraq than in any war
since World War Two, and proved themselves excellent service members. But
because they made up only one tenth of the troops, many were painfully isolated.
This resulted not only in loneliness for many, but vulnerability to sexual harassment
and rape from their comrades. Nearly a third of military women reported being
raped by fellow servicemen, and 90 percent say they were harassed. If sexual persecution
were considered a disease, these rates would be labeled an epidemic. The
military has been slow and, so far, alarmingly ineffective at redressing the
problem.
STAY THIRSTY: War and conscience.
HELEN BENEDICT: I began writing about the Iraq War because I was so
stricken by the cruelty of invading a country that had never done us any harm.
The biggest surprise was finding that so many veterans of that war agreed with
me. I had expected fervid patriotism and defensiveness. Instead, I found young
people willing to ask themselves if they had done wrong in fighting this war,
and how they were ever going to feel like good people again. That question
takes courage to ask. Not the courage one uses to fight, but the courage one
needs to admit to wrongdoing.
(Helen Benedict photo credit: Emma O’Connor)
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