The Tender Underbelly of Soldiers: Phil Klay’s Lives During Wartime

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS - 26 MAY 2014

“WE SHOT DOGS,” writes Phil Klay in Redeployment, a collection of 12 stories about the war in Iraq. “Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. I’m a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.”

That ball-busting first paragraph shows the author to be a man of great compassion and creativity, with an ear for the voices of hurt men. A former Marine, Klay is very much in the process of figuring out what coming home might really mean for the two and a half million American service men and women who have served since 9/11. 

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Thanksgiving Abroad: A Bittersweet Holiday in Beirut

BON APPETIT - 14 NOVEMBER 2012

In the year 2000, my then-girlfriend Kelly and I took a monthlong trek through Mexico, with the aim of covering that country's historic presidential election but mostly eating tacos and falling in love. She was 30, and I, nine years younger, was basically a boy. Kelly hailed from the Midwest, where family and celebrations were important. My family, on the other hand, tended to forget non-Christmas holidays; remembering them at the last minute, we'd dispatch someone to order Chinese from a mini-mall. In Mexico City that year, we compromised on Thanksgiving Day: we went to a house party.

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Take It From a Soldier: On Kevin Powers's "Yellow Birds"

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS - 11 NOVEMBER 2012

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, we've been sending soldiers over there, and when they come back we say thanks, but we don't really talk about what they did. We call them heroes, but what do we call them when they kill each other on the base, or beat their wives, or clock one of us, maybe, in the parking lot of the Home Depot? Which words do we offer then? We know this violence is some kind of residue, left over from the work we asked them to do. We don’t excuse their crimes, yet we feel responsible and perhaps ashamed, so we say little, or nothing. All the violence we asked them to do is hanging there, and none of us has a clear idea how to apportion blame, or even how to discuss it. What has this silence done to us? These questions drive the work of a few good writers, such as novelist Benjamin Percy, in his stand-out short story from the 2007 collection, Refresh, Refresh, and more formidably and more recently, Kevin Powers, in his novel Yellow Birds. A former U.S. soldier, Powers announces his candidacy as the generation's premiere war writer with a cerebral and searching knockout of a debut. Nominated for the National Book Award, and informed as it is by what Powers experienced first-hand, Yellow Birds is crushingly mature, real, and fragile.

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I'm afraid of Virginia Woolf: On war movies, adolescence, and the 50th anniversary of Albee's masterpiece

ELECTRIC LITERATURE - 19 OCTOBER 2012

Last year, my oldest friend, Dave, was serving in the US military at a base in southern Iraq, where rockets rained down near his trailer, driving his roommate to hand-build a wall made from paving stones and water bottles around their bunk. My wife, meanwhile, had accepted a job in Baghdad, where projectiles took paths close to where she slept. In the meantime I made a home for us in Istanbul, the closest reasonable city, where I could raise our young daughter. The situation wasn’t ideal, but it’s the one we had. Alone for weeks at a time, I’d think about growing up in Florida with Dave, meeting my wife in Asia, moving to New York, then lighting out for more difficult terrain. I’d pour myself a stiff drink, wondering how we’d all gotten here: Was life at all what we may have imagined, or hoped for?

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Right into the fire

THE MORNING NEWS - 13 FEBRUARY 2012

My daughter is bawling, red faced, legs held ram-rod straight.

Loretta was born in Saudi Arabia, turned two in Turkey, and we've just moved to Lebanon. In a stroke of luck, we found a rare flat in a stunning French Mandate house. But until our boxes arrive, the place is empty, echoing.  

I reach out to touch Loretta's head, assuming she's hot again with fever. But maybe it's something else.

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Hawks and Doves in Kurdistan

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL BLOG - 4 FEBRUARY 2011

I travel every few weeks to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq. Surrounded by low peaks, the city of two million hasn't seen serious violence in years, and most agree it's one of the safest places in an otherwise dangerous country. But it's still Iraq.

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Christmas in Exile

THE DAILY BEAST - 25 DECEMBER 2010

ERBIL, Iraq – It's Christmas morning in northern Iraq, and the parishioners of St. Joseph's Church are emerging from their homes into the bright desert sunlight. With two Iraqi friends, I drive along narrow avenues decorated with twinkling lights and the occasional inflatable Santa. We pass a clutch of men wearing bright sweaters, pressed slacks, and loafers. A trio of women breaks into tight smiles; one is wearing a red skirt with a band of white snowflakes.

We round the corner, and we’re surprised to see that a shimmering tanker truck is blocking the road to the church. Frowning men in uniform wave their arms.

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Holiday in Baghdad

SLATE.COM - 29 NOVEMBER 2010

Rising to stretch my legs, I surveyed my fellow travelers, who had just endured a 3 a.m. flight to Baghdad. Among the Iraqis, there was a preponderance of plastic and/or leopard-print overnight bags. The men had big mustaches and weary eyes. The women were generally in their 30s, wearing colored headscarves, some of them no doubt coming back to Iraq for the first time in years. The plane smelled of sweat and perfume.

I felt weak in the knees. An Iraqi girl sized me up with a hardened glare. What did you expect? her eyes seemed to inquire, and I let my head fall.

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