Discussion

There's something so powerful about the incident described - powerful because it's about precisely that, the attempt to reclaim power in some way. It's powerful because it was done in an almost helpless, instinctive fashion, and not as a statement. In some ways - observing the silence would have been to acknowledge grief, but this act of "craziness" was an ACT of grief.

With the economy nosediving and Silverstein and the Port Authority battling over who should finance two unbuilt towers. Gatwick hotels

Bina this is an excellent article and you should publish it for a wider Pakistan audience also.

It seems that you may yearn for past times. Unfortunately I doubt they will ever return.
Too many with too much hatred of fellow man

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So much like a brothers Grimms fairy tale im sure some Jungian style analysis would illuminate a metaphysical allegory. Have you published more like it? I would love to read them.

Watching the willingness of white westerners to publish apologia for the most ruthless terrorist organization in world history never fails to take the breath away.

Tamil Tiger (aka LTTE) terrorists slaughtered 1000s of innocent civilians going about their daily business. They make Hamas and Hezbollah look like rank amateurs. Have a look at the stats.

But now Granta succumbs to the notion that "sure, the Tigers were no angels, but..." Don't be fooled for a minute. There are only about 15 million Singhalese (the super-awful-oppressive majority) in the world, but there are about 90 million much better funded "oppressed minority," "genocide-suffering" Tamils out there. The LTTE is not a home grown group.

The notion that tens of thousands of civilians were intentionally killed at the end of the war has been so roundly debunked that it has led to apologies from the people who initially made these crazy claims and puts the fact checkers of this "august" journal to shame.

This was a hot shooting war at the end, involving hundreds of thousands of hostages held at gun-point by their "own people." It resulted in approximately 5,000 Sri Lankan army soldiers being killed. Did innocent civilians die in the fighting? Of course! Does the government say otherwise? Of course not.

What the LTTE apologist author doesn't want you to know is that there are 3-4 times as many Tamils living peaceably in Colombo alone (around 1 million) as there were in ALL of the north (before they were marched at gun-point as hostages by the LTTE). But it's a genocide, right?!?! What a joke.

I am a white American who lives in Sri Lanka by choice -- not for work but simply because it is a fantastic place, full of terrific people including Singhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers and white folks like me. I felt compelled to create an account to express my sadness and shock that such a generally well-regarded, supposedly sophisticated journal as Granta would fall for something so brazenly manufactured, maudlin and political as this clownish piece of propaganda.

All decent people can do is stick our necks out and ask other people not to fall for such brazen attempts to reignite old hostilities.

Hearing you read "Vision" at The Loft Literary Center's Granta discussion on September 8 was a powerful experience, but reading your words on the page allowed me to take them and this story in at a much deeper level. It also allowed me the space to do what I could not have done in public, which was to openly weep. Thank you for writing this.

"So I tell my family, I’m staying in – the GI Bill can wait. And I tell my OIC, sir, I want to go to OEF. OEF’s where the fight is now. And I tell my girlfriend, OK, leave me. And I tell PFC, I wish it’d been me, even though I don’t mean it."

love it sir

This is remarkable! I would love to see more work by Ms. Martin. I checked but she doesn't seem to have a book yet--a situation I hope someone will rectify very soon. What a wonderful poem!

I was pleased to hear the interview featured this morning on NPR. Besides Baghdad College, the high school, the Jesuits also ran Al Hikma University. My late husband was a volunteer teacher there 1966-67. After a year back in Canada, he returned to Al-Hikma in the fall of 1968, intending to remain for the rest of his career. But within two months the "Americans" were expelled by the Ba'athist government and the campus(es) seized.
While it operated, in those last years of increasing tension at least, Al-Hikma (and presumably Baghdad College as well) was the only institution open to Muslims, Jews, and Christians.
During his first year, my husband shared an office with a young German. Our families remain close friends, and I know that he and his wife have devoted themselves ever since to the welfare of Christians in Iraq.

"A moment has been lost, and that’s what I was trying to write about: an intersection that we did once see between America and Iraq and an idealized vision both had of the other." My friend, Basil Balian, attended Baghdad College in the 50s and wrote a book about his experiences growing up in Iraq at that time, Once Upon a Time in Iraq. It was indeed a moment of hope for Iraqis, who had a much more positive view of America, once that is, sadly, irretrievably gone. I encouraged him to write the book, and even got it into President Obama's hands. I had hoped that reading the book might waylay some Americans' fears about Iraqis, but that doesn't seem to have happened. It was indeed a kinder, gentler time.

Como un canto tranquilo.

El caliente sol
aparece radiante,
en el pasar del
llanto; siento
el color amaranto
donde vive la
noche regalando
la flor.

Francesco Sinibaldi

Greg, it's considered bad manners to upstage your host.
Beautifully written.
By the way, I am going to steal the. "that what looks glorious through the bottom of a shot glass may lose color when reflected off a cup of coffee" bit and foist it upon others as my own. Just so you know.
No, I'm not a plagiarist, I just love nuggets like these, and forget how I came by them.
Betwen the two of you, I mess O'Rourke's even more, and other than going through on a bus once, I've never even been to Chicago.
But I'm going to, now...

Brilliant! Heartfelt and very well written!!

I am currently writing my Phd thesis on American Literature and Auster is one of the writers I will be dealing with (hopefully), so I found this enormously helpful...

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Please note your article has created some confusion about Col. Khushwaqt and his younger brother. Could it be possible that you have made them into one person?

Otherwise a well written piece that draws clear parallels between the past and the present. Lending credence to the theory that people do not learn from history.

Chitral is beautiful and will always remain so because there is no greater force than mother nature.

La préface de mon coeur.

Comme une
mélodie, comme
le son qui
revient dans
le lieu naturel
qui rappelle
la jeunesse.

Francesco Sinibaldi

What an articulate expression of grief and mourning! I remember this. I remember that this knowledge pinched my heart because I struggle with the one from my homeland, where I wasn't born; where it is said that at least thirty thousand children were taken away to fight and the world did not stop spinning. How it is possible that the world gathers all it needs and rests at night, while we walk about stunned and burning with sorrow. Thank you for this essay. It speaks for more of us than you could imagine.

I am an American. My government is the United States, which no longer has a soul. It openly represents only the greedy and powerful; it does not represent 98% of Americans.
I live among Americans; almost all of us are kind and generous people who are horrified at the arrogance of our government towards other countries.
But we are easily duped. Too trusting. And so it has come to pass that almost everything we can remember that was once good is getting bad - and so quickly we can't keep track of what the government is doing anymore. We fear for our futures, and it is making us isolated from one another.
We Americans need to get out of the voting booths and into the streets.

The honesty of mind in the full version of this is brilliant. Thank you Mr. Klay for excellent writing.

In the voice of a mariner...

In the voice
of an happy
mariner you
can find the
atmosphere of
a fine sensibility,
and often the
candle of a
loving profile.

Francesco Sinibaldi