march 20, 2002

I'm vividly remembering that evening, sitting by the windows in my room in Holywell Street, reading the news, feeling sickened. Five years on, there seems very little to say that hasn't been said already.

Last night I went with several colleagues to see George Packer's play Betrayed, based on his New Yorker article about the plight of Iraqi translators who worked for the American and British occupation forces. It's only one small part of this huge, despairing story, but it's a worthwhile one, if only because it illuminates a particular carelessness, or shamelessness, endemic to the whole enterprise. (As a play, it has its flaws: a little didactic at points, and one character's story--though moving--seems too pat, invented to fit the demands of the narrative. Tellingly, it's not a story that appears in the original article, which is otherwise very direct source material for several of the characters and their words in the play. Also, one of the leads bore an unnerving resemblance to someone I know, which unsettled me throughout.) Anyway, I recommend it, along with a score of other articles and films about the war in Iraq. The piece on Abu Ghraib in this week's New Yorker might be another good place to start. If we sear these stories into our memories, we might have a better chance at making "never again" a meaningful slogan.