Words that do not end in hope
Rehnuma Sazzad acknowledges the realities of an ancient conflict
A thoroughly researched book of about 13 hundred pages, with 200 pages of bibliography included at the end, is a challenge in itself. Besides, the author is not presenting any pulp fiction here; he is chronicling the last 30 years' warfare in Middle-Eastern countries. So why would you be interested in the incessant reportage of killing, massacre and tragedy? I think the name 'Robert Fisk' should be reason enough. Through the publication of translated Fisk articles in Prothom Alo, I would imagine that the Bangladeshi audience is familiar with the most astounding journalist of our time. In fact, the book cover includes a great two-liner about him from The Financial Times: 'One of the outstanding reporters of this generation. As a war correspondent he is unrivalled.' Indeed, he is. Fisk has lived in the Middle East for almost three decades as a reporter of The Times and The Independent and won numerous prestigious journalism awards. He is superbly committed to telling the truth which has cost him a lot throughout his career. Interestingly enough, the ironic title of the book comes from the inscription of the medal that his father received for his heroism during the First World War, which was called 'The Great War for Civilisation.' Fisk bitterly shows how every war is subtitled, so to speak, in this way: every war is fought citing a noble cause and justified in the name of our civilisation. Fisk is no Homer to imply that a war is the deadliest opposite to this. He sees the gory reality day in and day out by being part of various countries and cultures, streets, cities and villages, military headquarters/camps, hospitals full of severely wounded civilians and the lives of people whether or not they are soldiers, citizens or leaders. As a war correspondent, he makes every attempt to condemn the power-hungry rulers who defend the merciless killing in the name of 'civilisation'. Fisk is on a crusade of his own in this book to unmask the brutal powers that have been the cause of injustice in the Middle East in the last hundred years that his book covers. Fisk's reporting becomes a canvas that illustrates the historical repetitions of phenomena like ethnic cleansing. Much to the shame of humanity, propaganda is at work portraying events as 'tragic' but not genocides after all. Fisk describes how the Armenian genocide should have been regarded as 'The First Holocaust'; but the world is not even allowed to recognise this let alone raise its voice in condemning the inhuman crime. In the chapter 'Fifty Thousand Miles from Palestine', Fisk shows how politics equals irremediable exile for Palestinians. He quotes from Macbeth at the beginning of this chapter: And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd/That palter with us in a double sense/That keeps the word of promise to our ear/And break it to our hope. There we have it. Fisk records not only the pain and suffering of the Palestinians but also the examples of rational and compassionate people on both sides. However, he argues that the politics of the region being similar to the Macbethian witches' empty promises, its quagmire continues. At any rate, I cannot help pointing out here that like this chapter, Fisk's quotations at the beginning of each one foreshadows the content, which is fascinating from a stylistic point of view. Let us take a look at the details of some of the chapters to gain a better idea of his reportage. The book kicks off with a startling interview with Laden in the 1990s. Intriguingly, Fisk makes the best use of the interview to demystify the 'wanted' man; he tries to fathom the source of his extremism. It is an effective opening chapter as one gets a feeling from it about the entire book as a questioning project. The second chapter takes us back to the 1980s, the days of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Fisk's marvellous descriptions link the Afghan problem back to its very source, namely colonialism. The next chapter, 'The Choirs of Kandahar', chronicles the increasing presence of the West in the country on the one hand and, on the other, the rise of the 'mujahedin'. The next moment, 'The Carpet-Weavers', focuses on the land of tapestries. It is a brilliantly written and extraordinarily courageous chapter offering one an invaluable insight into the Iranian Revolution and of course the power politics of the West related to it. From the fifth chapter, 'The Path to War', onwards, Fisk's truth-telling gathers a tremendous momentum. He goes on detailing the Iran-Iraq war and its gruesome history, the making of a dangerous dictator and his most abominable crimes under the auspices of the West and the failing of the West and Arab states in the region. The crushing details, facts and figures about the major events in the Gulf in the 80s and 90s are graphically presented through the most reliable descriptions. And you know they are reliable because Fisk is absolutely insistent on getting to the bottom of the horrific events at any cost. 'The Girl and the Child and Love' takes a detour into the story of an extremist who threw away everythinghis life, the girl he loved and the child that they were waiting for. Fisk analyses the deep desperation behind this but concludes that a rational mind cannot justify such an act under any circumstances. He then details the extreme situations that create extremists. He hopelessly witnesses human sufferings, violations of the Geneva Convention and the 'bloodbath' over and over again. 'Anything to Wipe Out a Devil…' gives you the grimmest details of the Algerian Revolution and its aftermath. As the Iraq crisis intensifies, the chapters entitled 'Planet Damnation', 'Betrayal', 'The Land of Graves', 'The Plague', form a monumental archive of the crisis that captures the 'infinite sadness' of the events. Whereas 'Now Thrive the Armourers…' presents unpleasant facts about weapon industries, 'Why' is a chapter that links the 'human cost' of the conflicts with 9/11 extremism. The book is not, however, full of facts analysis. Fisk is a dazzling reporter who does not fail to add dramatic and personal touches to his reportage. 'Even to Kings, He comes…' is an absorbing chapter where he combines the death of his mother with that of powerful Arab monarchs. An abundant black humour also adds to the readability of his reports. At his mother's funeral, he laments how the West should have engaged in inventing medicines to save life rather than the fiesta of rampage and killing. As the rector responds to this with a prayer, Fisk comments: Unless there is a Heavenly Post Office which redirects packages of anger to our presidents and prime ministers, there wasn't much point in bothering the Almighty. Nevertheless, Fisk grows dour towards the end of the book. In the chapters, 'The Die is Cast', 'Atomic Dog, Annihilator…' and 'Into the Wilderness', he fails to find any hope in the midst of cluster bombs, explosions and destructions of invaluable information, books and artefacts: Never, in all my dreams of destruction, could I have imagined the day I would enter the Iraqi National Archaeological Museum to find its treasures defiled… The Iraqis did it. They did it to their own history, physically destroying the evidence of their own nation's thousands of years of civilisation. Fisk, therefore, does not end the book in hope. He cannot do so after describing all those gory events in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Palestine and so forth. '(Our) tragedy lies always in our past, that we have to live with our ancestors' folly and suffer for it…' unless we pay heed to the lessons of history for sure. In any case, the fact that Fisk has spoken out against power politics and the failure of history is an act of great hope for us; because the better we know the truth the stronger we are supposed to be in resisting the deceitful power games. Fisk could be provocative in revealing unpalatable facts through first-hand interviews, accounts and experiences. And of course he has been criticised for his obsession with details (hence the size); but his unflinching efforts to uphold tolerance, decency and rule of law in the midst of the hellish chaos in the Middle East is extraordinarily stunning. His book is an absolute treasure.
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