Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace

Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq, by Michael Goldfarb (2005)

This book is Goldfarb's tribute to the late Ahmad Shawkat, a Kurdish translator who worked with the author when he was covering the war in Iraq for WBUR radio. A London-based reporter for the American public radio station, Goldfarb first met Shawkat shortly before the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

Shawkat was more than a man who knew the language. As an intellectual, he had moved in revolutionary circles for many years, agitating against Hussein's government. He had been captured, imprisoned and tortured on a couple of occasions and had once even met the dictator. As a Kurd, he rejected the sectarian leanings of many of his own people in favor of a single, unified nation. As Goldfarb explains, Shawkat was uniquely qualified not only to translate words but to provide context to what the reporter was seeing and hearing on the streets of a new Iraq.

The first section of the book follows the two men as Goldfarb reports on the war. (His dispatches can be heard on WBUR's Inside Out web site.) The last section is the story of Shawkat's tragic death at the hands of an assassin and the months after when the author returns to the war-torn country. The middle section, Ahmad's Life, is the author's reconstruction of his translator's life story. From his early years as a bookish boy through college and into adulthood, Shawkat was a man who never stopped searching for answers.

Goldfarb's view on the war itself may surprise some readers. Although he is very critical of the Bush administration's handling of the post-war situation, the reporter initially supported U.S. action there in the belief that the Iraqi people could be freed. He and Ahmad speak about this shared belief at length, alternately dreaming of the future and despairing as the country falls into chaos and internal strife in the months after the fall of Saddam's army.

Michael Goldfarb describes the qualities he looks for in a translator. Often, he writes, he cannot find all of those things in one person. In Ahmad Shawkat, he finds a scholar, an intellectual, a writer, a patriot and at the end a close friend. Goldfarb tells a remarkable story, which could be difficult to read due to the fact that one knows how it ends. In spite of this, he produces a moving, poignant read from start to finish. Highly recommended.

Originally reviewed 2/20/2006