📧 “more stuff re you…” w/ Barrett
Hey Logan,
In your opinion are the paragraphs below a fair assessment/recollection of your mental state on that last day in Rutba?
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After Jum'ma cancelled the tea party, Logan scribbled in his journal, "For some reason, this was the breaking point for me."
He'd struggled to keep mum about his military past, especially at the primary school where we met young boys whose fathers were killed in the war. Earlier, Sami told Logan that it might be okay to discuss his Army stuff with Iraqis if he distanced himself from the war by phrasing comments and questions in the third-person (e.g., "I work with guys in the military who fought in Iraq …"). When we were invited to the principal's house, Logan had hoped Sami would free him up to talk more candidly about soldier stuff, if only in the third-person. At Horan Primary School he'd met a redheaded kid whom the principal introduced as a war orphan, and as Logan made his way through a courtyard filled with students, textbooks, book bags and teachers, his frustration at remaining silent grew. His parents are school teachers, and at Horan he pined for permission to express to the students some kind of regret that felt genuine. An apology just as a peacemaker felt watered down. After leaving the school, he wrote in his journal: "I would really enjoy the opportunity to express my 'vicarious' grief on behalf of 'those soldiers I work with' to the redheaded boy through the principal. Lots of proxies involved and only a slim chance of doing it, but I know it would be very powerful for 'the soldiers I work with.' "
Of course he was referring to himself and the pressing need to vent whatever it was that he couldn't release unless he was fully present. He needed his identity back. When the principal's tea was cancelled, Logan retreated to Rutba General's flat roof, and with a dramatic view that counts eight minarets and stretches to the desert highway, he vented instead into a voice recorder. He cursed the trip's meaninglessness; its lack of genuine reconciliation, in his opinion; and he cursed the fear of others that dictated his silence. Most of all, he cursed, angrily and repeatedly, the idea that this story, this apology, this group's return to Rutba amounted to any sort of gospel or could offer any real traction for healing and peace. Logan felt excluded.
"Hope sells, grief don't!" he wrote that day in his journal. "Pains me that the folks we've spoken to think that atrocities are the only stories soldiers have to share. … Maybe this is a bridge I'm not allowed to help build."
@ 0654 to Barrett
without seeing the wider context that you hope to set it within, i can't give an ok to using my journals in the book. i shared them in confidence with you and the others without any desire to have them publicly released. if you are willing to share the manuscript with me, i'd be happy to consider it, but only seeing pieces at a time isnt enough for me to trust that my most intimate thoughts, recorded privately in the heat of the moment, should be included in anybody's book but my own. i shared my journals with you in the hopes of giving you a glimpse into what was going on in my head, not to be used publicly. if i were to have the opportunity to see the larger manuscript, i might be willing to give my permission to use selections of my confidential work, but i cant give the okay on this one without seeing the larger whole within which you hope to set it. i hope this makes sense. it is not a dig on you or your writing, it is me trying to protect intimate and revealing information that i still am wrestling with.
@ 0742 from Barrett
You've shared your frustrations about the trip publicly and I've read to you verbatim the previous parts about you from the book, which included many quotes from the journal you kept while on this trip to rutba. My attempt is to explain your frustrations in as honest a light as possible. The manuscript is still being prepped, tweaked, edited and cleaned up, but if you want to swap manuscripts with me and dig through 100,000 words of narrative and end notes, I'm happy to let you do it as long as it goes no further than with you. Really, I'm only trying to write an honest accounting.
@ 0813 to Barrett
i understand and appreciate that, but my journals were not intended for open access. i only shared them with the rutba group, my family, and my church (as they provided the resources to go and they also were committed to me in a way that welcomed my frustration without necessarily trying to figure it out), i dont want them quoted from directly. if there were quotes from the stuff you read me in DC, then i just didnt recognize them, sorry about that.
if they help/ed you to see a fuller picture of me, than that's great, but i do not want them to be referenced directly in a work that is not my own. that's part of the reason that i think it would be safer, if you want to collaborate with me in a way that reinforces trust and safeguards vulnerability, to share the manuscript with me when it is conducive to your time and energy. that might not be right now, and that's fine. i am getting to know the publishing process more each day, and i want to respect the work you've put into your book, but i need to know that if i am going to be named and quoted that i have some kind foreknowledge of what it is that is being used. my journals, at this time, are not something that i am willing to open up to scrutiny, as they were never intended to be. there is a chance, however, that after reading the how/why/where i am being narrated in this particular story, that i might feel differently. if you want to wait until you are a bit closer to a full first draft manuscript, than that's fine. i expect, however, that i would object to any use of my personal journals in your manuscript unless the trust is in place that would afford me the peace of mind that my intimate thoughts and emotions are being expressed in ways that are both healthy for, and representative of, me.
if you do choose to share it with me, you have my word that nobody else will see it. sorry if i had not shared my manuscript with you sooner, it is attached. in fact, i am happy to include you in my IVP 'influencer' list and have IVP send you an updated copy directly (shane, for example, got one that was more revised than the one i gave them and that i am able to send you). it sounds like you are not done with the first full draft, and if you want to wait until that is done before (if) you share it with me, that is fine. if you put the stuff you use in quotes then i can find the references more easily and send you feedback more quickly. i want to work together on this to make your job as writer easier as well as to dispel my own anxiety about having my innermost thoughts exposed and deliberated by thousands of people. im sure we can collaborate well together, you're a very talented writer and a good man.
