Do not ride roller-coasters in Sudan.
15/ Arming Yourself Against Trauma
For people who’ve worked in war zones there will always be a sense that peacetime is life with the volume turned down. More than anything, I miss the sense of camaraderie, of shared purpose, of optimism. I also miss the excitement that comes from living for the moment. Slowly, however, I have realized that it’s not the war that I pine for, but rather that youthfulsense of being able to go anywhere and do anything.
Leaving a war zone alive is one thing. Leaving behind the worst of your experiences is quite another. This chapter offers you ways to prepare and work that will help you to avoid experiencing trauma – basic know-how that I was missing on my first entry into Iraq.
Fresh from my finals at university, I arrived in Jordan on the promise of a job if I could make it to Baghdad. The man who was going to get me there met me at the airport. He was a fellow recent graduate from Oxford, where he had survived three years of alcohol, kebabs, dancing, no sleep, last-minute, bullshit-crammed essays and still walked out with a First. I thought that was more than enough of a qualification to start up a newspaper in post-war Iraq. My new job.
I was taken to meet Mr Feras. He was the owner of the Soraya Hotel – a favourite hang-out at that time for NGO workers, human shields, Peace Corps people and freelance journalists. He poured tea and showed me photos of people, dead and alive, whom he had helped to find a reliable driver for the trip to Baghdad.
He told me that the suitcase at my feet was full of a dead man’s clothes. More tea. They belonged to a young photographer who had been shot dead at a protest in Iraq the week before. The suitcase was following his body home to his parents. He had been sitting in my seat looking for a ride into Baghdad only a fortnight earlier. I was told he had a shaved head and had been wearing combat kit. He had been mistaken for an off-duty soldier. ‘That wouldn’t happen to me,’ I told my mum. Overnight Western visitors to Baghdad threw away their combat trousers and boots and started to grow their hair.
A car would be available at four in the morning. And would I like another tea? He just needed another $500 and then we would go. I was told to expect a five-hour drive to the border, then another six hours, non-stop, all the way to Baghdad. Four o’clock came and went without a wake-up call. A convoy of Japanese missionaries had been car-jacked along the road. ‘It isn’t safe for the driver,’ I was told. And me, I thought.
Days passed. More tea. More convoys were attacked. Kidnappings and robberies took place in crowded petrol stations. The drivers refused to go without more money and more tea. And all the time Mr Feras was spooning sugar into my cup and telling me stories of the people he had helped in and out of Baghdad.
Every night I would pack my bag and head to his office at midnight. ‘Are you prepared?’ he would ask.
‘As much as I can be.’
Mr Feras would shake his head. ‘If you were my daughter…’ Then more tea. More advice.
One night I knocked on his door to find him sitting with a grin on his face. Mr Feras was not a smiley man.
‘I can help you prepare,’ he said. ‘Stand up.’ He clicked his fingers and a worker came in with a measuring tape.
A bulletproof vest, I thought. Excellent.
‘For your coffin,’ he said, licking his finger to turn a page and note down my measurements. I was in a car heading to Baghdad four hours later.
At the time my lack of preparation seemed romantic. Exciting. I had done as much as any wannabe war junkie could do to warm up for the journey, I thought. Having survived a major car crash and all the pain that entailed, I was hardened to the possibility of death or injury; afraid of almost nothing. I was dangerous.
I didn’t know the risks and neither did my family. Within a month I, like many others around me, began to think my job was worth more than my life. I also thought that fear-clouded, snap decision-making based on instinct alone was the best way to operate.
I was not prepared for entering a war zone. But there are ways to get ready. Tricks to help you keep sane. And if you are sane, you will be able to do your job more effectively. If you understand that your job is just that, a job, it will help you in the early days of your new life. And eventually it will help you return to the life you had before you went to war, without experiencing trauma.
/WHAT IS TRAUMA?
The medical name for the long-term after-effects of trauma is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but there is nothing ‘post’ about trauma. It can happen at any time. The dictionary calls it ‘emotional shock’. Don’t underestimate shock. The physical kind can kill you. The emotional kind can manifest in a thousand different ways.
It didn’t hit Samantha Bolton until years after the event that caused it – the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by extremist Hutu forces. Two million refugees fled over the border into Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sam was there to meet them.
‘Two years after the Rwandan genocide, and after a trip to Russia for a campaign on Chechnya, I had a severe PTSD attack that lasted a year. I was supposed to have gone into Grozny on a convoy, but a colleague went instead and was kidnapped and gang-raped. I felt guilty and afraid for her, and this triggered the attack. I was living in a fancy apartment in New York. Every time I went home I would get the shakes, convinced a Hutu axe-murderer was behind the door. I would search the whole flat for people – check the windows, check under the bed. It was a paranoid routine. Sometimes it comes back for a few days when I go back to insecure situations in the field. I can become paranoid about intruders and unable to relax. I just want to lock the door and curl up in as small a space as possible. A safe place.
‘You need to recognize the signs and work through it in your own way. I worked through it myself as I was too scared I would go completely insane if I spoke to someone. To each their own.’
James Brandon agrees with Samantha’s philosophy of self-help: ‘I think the golden rule when recovering from PTSD is to do what feels right and not to let people push you into doing things, such as therapy or counselling, that do not feel right to you. PTSD is your body’s defence mechanism: it is warning you against putting yourself in future danger – and telling you to give yourself time and space to recover.’
There is nothing cut and dried about avoiding trauma. But the experts I have spoken to tell me that it’s all about retaining normality and routine from your pre-conflict days in your war-zone life. And also, despite what James and Samantha say, being prepared to get proper help if you’re not coping on your own. Obviously, everything changes in a war zone, but if, for instance, you like getting a bagel from the corner shop in the morning to have with your coffee, try to find an equivalent to your corner shop in your war zone. If you normally like a bath before bedtime but that’s out of the question in your war zone, boil a pan of water and have a thorough head-to-toe wash before carrying on with your evening. Whatever your normal habit at home – reading for a while before going to sleep, listening to the radio while getting dressed – try to replicate it wherever you are. It is all about remembering the life you had outside of the war zone.