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Places And Names: Dispatches Of War by Elliot Ackerman
The Blurb On The Back:
In a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that in fact he was a Marine. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary joins him, filling in the map with the names and dates of where they saw fighting during the war. They discover they had shadowed each other for some time, a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy.
Elliot Ackerman’s extraordinary memoir explores how he came to this refugee camp and what he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent experiences on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure.
At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for America, the region and the world, Places and Names bids to take its place among our great books about modern war.
Elliot Ackerman is a novelist, journalist and former Marine who received the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valour and Purple Heart during tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a sparsely written, thoughtful meditation on the US wars in the Middle East and his place in them and his meetings with Abu Hassar (an Al Qaeda fighter) are poignant but his reticence to go deep into the conflict make it a little frustrating at times.
First published in 2019, this is an unusual memoir in that it is only concerned with Ackerman’s time in the army and his time in the military. Although the back cover biography for Ackerman mentions his having served in Afghanistan the book focuses on his time in Iraq because this is when he overlapped with Abu Hassar (an Al Qaeda fighter who remains committed to their cause even as he lives in a refugee camp in Turkey with his family). However this isn’t really a book about combat (although there is a section at the end where Ackerman quotes the citation given when he won his Silver Star and annotates it with his details of his experience) it’s more a musing about why he feels drawn to going back to the region - notably Syria - and trying to contextualise it against his own experiences there.
The most effective sections of the book are those where he meets with Abu Hassar, who goes some way to explaining why people were drawn to Al Qaeda and what they were fighting for. The sections are more effective because of what Abu Hassar and Ackerman don’t say - there are no confrontations here, no accusations - they are two men who have been fighting and are making sense of it and what the results of that are. There are moments when I wished that Ackerman had gotten into it a bit more with Abu Hassar - specifically what he thought of Al Qaeda’s treatment of people within its territories and how that tied in with his view of Islam - but I equally don’t think that the book suffers for that.
I did wish there was more about Abed (a man who works for the same organisation as Ackerman and who is engaged to a Swiss woman) who serves as Ackerman’s translator. He weaves through the story as a counterpoint of sorts to Abu Hassar (notably in his attitude towards extremist Islam) but we don’t find out much about who he is or what he wants and again, Ackerman doesn’t seem interested in finding out.
If I sound conflicted about this book, then that’s because I am. It is an absorbing read and I think you end up with a sense of Ackerman’s own confused feelings about the war and his search for why he keeps going back to the region and trying to work out what it is he’s looking for. But equally, the fact that he doesn’t probe deeply and doesn’t get personal means that I was left feeling a bit frustrated at times. Maybe that is the point - that we will never really get answers or resolutions to what went on - but it doesn’t make for a read that leaves you satisfied or feeling more informed.
The Verdict:
Elliot Ackerman is a novelist, journalist and former Marine who received the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valour and Purple Heart during tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a sparsely written, thoughtful meditation on the US wars in the Middle East and his place in them and his meetings with Abu Hassar (an Al Qaeda fighter) are poignant but his reticence to go deep into the conflict make it a little frustrating at times.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
In a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and whose connections to the Islamic State are murky. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that in fact he was a Marine. Ackerman then draws the shape of the Euphrates River on a large piece of paper, and his one-time adversary joins him, filling in the map with the names and dates of where they saw fighting during the war. They discover they had shadowed each other for some time, a realisation that brings them to a strange kind of intimacy.
Elliot Ackerman’s extraordinary memoir explores how he came to this refugee camp and what he hoped to find there. Moving between his recent experiences on the ground as a journalist in Syria and his Marine deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan, he creates a work of astonishing atmospheric pressure.
At once an intensely personal book about the terrible lure of combat and a brilliant meditation on the meaning of the past two decades of strife for America, the region and the world, Places and Names bids to take its place among our great books about modern war.
Elliot Ackerman is a novelist, journalist and former Marine who received the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valour and Purple Heart during tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a sparsely written, thoughtful meditation on the US wars in the Middle East and his place in them and his meetings with Abu Hassar (an Al Qaeda fighter) are poignant but his reticence to go deep into the conflict make it a little frustrating at times.
First published in 2019, this is an unusual memoir in that it is only concerned with Ackerman’s time in the army and his time in the military. Although the back cover biography for Ackerman mentions his having served in Afghanistan the book focuses on his time in Iraq because this is when he overlapped with Abu Hassar (an Al Qaeda fighter who remains committed to their cause even as he lives in a refugee camp in Turkey with his family). However this isn’t really a book about combat (although there is a section at the end where Ackerman quotes the citation given when he won his Silver Star and annotates it with his details of his experience) it’s more a musing about why he feels drawn to going back to the region - notably Syria - and trying to contextualise it against his own experiences there.
The most effective sections of the book are those where he meets with Abu Hassar, who goes some way to explaining why people were drawn to Al Qaeda and what they were fighting for. The sections are more effective because of what Abu Hassar and Ackerman don’t say - there are no confrontations here, no accusations - they are two men who have been fighting and are making sense of it and what the results of that are. There are moments when I wished that Ackerman had gotten into it a bit more with Abu Hassar - specifically what he thought of Al Qaeda’s treatment of people within its territories and how that tied in with his view of Islam - but I equally don’t think that the book suffers for that.
I did wish there was more about Abed (a man who works for the same organisation as Ackerman and who is engaged to a Swiss woman) who serves as Ackerman’s translator. He weaves through the story as a counterpoint of sorts to Abu Hassar (notably in his attitude towards extremist Islam) but we don’t find out much about who he is or what he wants and again, Ackerman doesn’t seem interested in finding out.
If I sound conflicted about this book, then that’s because I am. It is an absorbing read and I think you end up with a sense of Ackerman’s own confused feelings about the war and his search for why he keeps going back to the region and trying to work out what it is he’s looking for. But equally, the fact that he doesn’t probe deeply and doesn’t get personal means that I was left feeling a bit frustrated at times. Maybe that is the point - that we will never really get answers or resolutions to what went on - but it doesn’t make for a read that leaves you satisfied or feeling more informed.
The Verdict:
Elliot Ackerman is a novelist, journalist and former Marine who received the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valour and Purple Heart during tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a sparsely written, thoughtful meditation on the US wars in the Middle East and his place in them and his meetings with Abu Hassar (an Al Qaeda fighter) are poignant but his reticence to go deep into the conflict make it a little frustrating at times.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.