The untold story of Iraq
Kanwalpreet

The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary American Soldier, Joshua Key
as told to Lawrence Hill. Roli. Pages 237. Rs 395.

a gripping story told by a soldier, Joshua Key, who gradually reaches the conclusion that countries, at times, can profess and practice wrong notions. And he does not say it without experience. Key was enlisted in the US Army in 2002 to "learn a trade and provide financial security for his family". But what he got back were nightmares, blackouts and insecurity in shopping malls, where he felt vulnerable without his gun.

Six months in Iraq turned this patriotic American into a human being who questioned his own actions as well as the actions of his own superiors. On March 20, 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein and his government had weapons of mass destruction. The mission of American soldiers was to find those weapons and nab terrorists. Key narrates the various means by which the soldiers tried to do so. House raids, kicking people, cursing, hollering and stealing from the innocent people are some of the means he mentions.

The story of Key is narrated by Lawrence Hill who has succeeded in capturing the anguish of soldiers trapped in a battle on a foreign soil. It is not for the first time in Iraq that the American troops have to help their government implement its ideology overseas. It has done so in Vietnam in the recent past. The revelation by an American soldier depicts the helplessness of these men in uniform. Some of them don’t want to be part of the murky affair but are forced to. They are far away from their families, vulnerable in a country, where they can be caught in the crossfire between two warring sides. Yet they carry out the orders against their conscience.

Key narrates the atrocities committed on the people of Iraq: innocent men, women and children have been subjected to insult where their right to life, freedom and privacy were trampled. Hill pens the pain of Key, "To the civilians of Iraq, we became police officers, prosecutors, jailors and executioners." Key found certain things hard to swallow. He argues that the American troops were in Iraq to maintain order, yet when a girl was being taken away by the Iraqi police to be molested, his superiors looked the other way. Hill writes what Key painstakingly recalls, "We (Americans) were the occupiers and we controlled the border, but when it came to the fate of the 13-year-old girl who was about to be raped, we did nothing."

As we read the narrative, we come across certain preconceived notions that people of America have towards the people of the Muslim community. Key is candid enough to admit that his own family had these notions. He mentions his wife’s warning to him before he left for Iraq, "Don’t you let those terrorists near you, Josh. Even if they are kids. Get them before they get you." But Key realised that there were innocent people in Iraq who had suffered under Saddam Hussein, who was one of their own, and were suffering under a foreign army. There was no respite for these innocent people. Key had been taught by his grandparents, "it was wrong to attack defenceless people". And he was ordered to do just that.

This book must be widely circulated. When Key saw the inhuman treatment meted out to the people of Iraq, he left his country and all that it stood for. Key have written a powerful but painful story that lingers in mind long after the reader has turned the last page.

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