“Mrs. Drummond,” Naema says then. “One more thing before we go. Tariq, he wants us to ask you—what happened to the wolves?”
After Tariq’s mom and Hooah leave, Rin lies back and closes her eyes, their faces dancing like shadow puppets behind her lids. She has made such a mess of things; she needs to face that now. She has let Jay down, and even worse, she has let Juney down. She won’t make any excuses. But their daughter is going to live with Iraqis now, or so she hopes. I know this isn’t how you would want it, Jay, but they are good people, I promise. These ones are, at any rate. As for the irony in all this, make of it what you will.
When the members of a wolf pack turn against one another, the pack destroys itself. She remembers Jay telling her that. Her pack turned on her, the very men in her platoon she thought she could trust. Why, she can only guess. Because they couldn’t have her while she was his? Because she refused to play their power games? Or maybe because she was widowed, pregnant, and devastated, and so, like wolves, they smelled her as weak and pegged her as prey?
She won’t be a person who betrays her pack like that. She might have lost Gray and Silver and Ebony, but her pack is still Juney and the memory of Jay. So even though she is bound for prison (and what is prison after war?), she will devote her life to doing what’s best for Juney. And if it turns out that the best for Juney is to be free of her, so be it. For it does occur to Rin, as she lies here having made such an almighty screwup of everything, that Juney might be better off without a mother as crazed as she is. Yes, even though it will crush Rin’s heart, Juney might be better off without her at all.
35
HOWL
Far away in the upper reaches of western New York, two wolves pace their pens, their heads sagging. Once in a while, they approach the hurricane fence that separates them and lick each other’s muzzles through the holes. But otherwise, each is left alone to prowl, wait, and to mourn.
The young wolf, black from nose to tail but for tips of white on his winter coat, searches for his family. He searches for his mother, his den, his woods, for the places he used to run and climb and hunt. He searches for his favorite beds. He searches and he whimpers. But this is not his territory. These are not his woods. Nothing here is his.
The great timber wolf, with his thick silver mane, arching eyebrows and simmering golden eyes, is searching, too. Many times a day he approaches the fence of this new, unpleasant place and sits looking out at the world. Different animals come to stare at him. Some are tall, some short, some dark, some light. Some smell friendly; most smell afraid. Many smell hostile.
He examines each one of them with keen attention, opening his nostrils to take in their scents, hoping to find what he needs. But the scents are wrong. The bodies are wrong, the faces are wrong, the voices are wrong.
He turns, and with a weary tread, drags himself to the highest ground he can find. And there he sits until the night closes in and the moon sails into the sky, when he raises his head to howl.
He howls as he will howl night after night, week afer week, determined to wait as long as he must for an answer.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I embarked on this novel some seven years ago, I had no idea how essential the Iraqis and soldiers I met would be to its realization. Former interpreter Yasir Mohammed Abbas offered me invaluable help with Arabic and indulged me in long conversations about war and the conscience. Nour al-Khal, who was also an interpreter and was shot and nearly killed for her efforts, taught me much about Naema and the life of a refugee. Hala Alazzawi and her daughter, Hiba Alsaffar, welcomed me into their home, responding to my numerous questions with enthusiasm and patience. And Mohanad Alobaide kindly told me much about working with the military as an interpreter and his adjustment to a new life in the United States. My deep gratitude to you all for understanding why literature matters and for showing me how to react to oppression not with hatred but with wisdom.
I was also partly inspired to write this novel by Maj. Jason Faler, a former U.S. Army National Guardsman who saved his Iraqi interpreter and his family from death by bringing them to his home in Oregon. Faler went on to create the Checkpoint One Foundation, which rescued more than a hundred interpreters from 2007 to 2012 by helping them obtain visas to emigrate here. Their work is being carried on by the organizations listed on page 312. I thank Major Faler for helping me check my facts and for being so ready to answer questions.
Captain John Ryan was also gracious enough to lend his time to reading parts of my work, as were the many other veterans I have met and interviewed over the years. Thank you all. Any mistakes are, of course, mine.
I also thank Dunia Kamal for her knowledge and help about her native Damascus: she would have been my guide had civil war not torn her country apart. And once again, my gratitude to Zainab Chaudhry and Susan Davies, who have worked tirelessly to help the Iraqi refugees settled in and around Albany, New York.
I am grateful to many others, too. The staff at Wolf Mountain Nature Center for letting me spend many hours with wolves. Jennifer Lyons, for keeping faith and working so hard for this book. Erika Goldman, inspired and inspiring editor. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Blue Mountain Center, the American Academy in Rome, the Ucross Foundation, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland for granting me residencies filled with peace, nourishment, and beauty while I was writing this book.
And last but never least, the friends and family who encouraged, read, reread, critiqued, tolerated, and listened: the brilliant writers Rebecca Stowe, Robert Marshall, Cara Hoffman, and David Groff; Simon and Emma Benedict O’Connor, who fill me with joy and let me pick their brains about language and music and elbows; Andrea Cashman for giving us her delightful self and Iggy; and, most of all, Stephen O’Connor, for his many reads, exacting eye, and for still believing in me while I write for year after year about war.
—Helen Benedict, 2017
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, some one million Iraqis have died, two million women have been widowed, and one million children have been orphaned, according to Physicians for Social Responsibility and others. More than four million Iraqis have been displaced, either within the country or without, meaning that one in five people have been forced from their homes.
Among the majority of Iraq civilians who are not and never were enemies of the United States are the more than seventy thousand women and men who worked as interpreters for the military, the government, or journalists. These interpreters, all of whom were meticulously vetted before being hired, saved countless lives, both Iraqi and American, but, like Khalil, were targeted from all sides, seen as collaborators and traitors by some, spies by others. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been tortured or killed by militias (the Taliban also murders interpreters and their families in Afghanistan), while others have been driven to live under assumed names, never daring to see their families or stay in one place for more than a few days at a time. As I write, the violence is growing ever worse in Iraq, endangering all citizens, interpreters or not, more than ever.
The United States has been unconscionably slow to help interpreters. The State Department did eventually create the Special Immigrant Visa to allow those in danger to move to the U.S., yet only a fraction of these visas have been granted, and, as I write, the future of this visa program is in question. As of October 2016, some thirty-six thousand persecuted Iraqi refugees with U.S. ties were stranded in Iraq, according to the Urban Justice League. Since then, the Trump administration has been playing fast and loose with these refugees’ lives, regardless of their sacrifices or the fact that they have undergone every security check possible. Naema represents one of the lucky few who escaped.
Several organizations have been created to help Iraqi and Afghan interpreters, as well as other refugees, escape persecution:
The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) at the Urban Justice League: refugeerights.org.
The Iraqi
and American Reconciliation Project: reconciliationproject.org.
The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies: thelistproject.org.
No One Left Behind, nooneleft.org.
For more information about the plight of Iraqis, see this report by Physicians for Social Responsibility: psr.org/news-events/press-releases/doctors-group-releases-startling-analysis.html.
BOOK CLUB EXTRAS
A Conversation with Helen Benedict
You interviewed dozens of veterans as well as Iraqi refugees before writing about them in your nonfiction book The Lonely Soldier, your novel Sand Queen, and now, in Wolf Season. What is it about their stories that continues to inspire your writing?
All the Iraqis I met, and most of the veterans, had been through truly terrible traumas—war, after all, offers little else. What inspired me was their resilience and their honesty. Parents who had lost children, soldiers who had lost friends, adults who had lost brothers and sisters and spouses, and women who had been sexually attacked or tortured—all revealed a determination and generosity of spirit I found deeply moving. They told me their stories because they wanted to help others who had lived through similar circumstances. The impulse of many who have been through trauma is to help others. This speaks to the best side of the human spirit, just as war often reveals the worst.
Your novel prominently features three mothers. Rin is an Iraq war veteran and Naema is an Iraqi refugee. Beth, on the other hand, is neither a soldier nor a refugee but the wife of a deployed marine. What inspired the creation of her character? What were you hoping she would add to the narrative?
As this novel is about the aftereffects of war—about war brought home—I thought a military spouse like Beth belonged in the story. More American women experience war through their husbands or sons, boyfriends or fathers than they do by serving themselves. Beth is one of these. Also, I liked the idea of the three women in the novel representing different views of war: Rin as a veteran, Naema as an Iraqi, Beth as a military spouse.
Rin reacts to the world around her in deeply honest yet troubling ways. Were you concerned that readers might find her unsympathetic?
I like characters who make me, as a reader, keep changing my mind. People are puzzling and self-contradictory and vulnerable and imperfect, and even the most flawed character can be sympathetic and heartbreaking. I hope readers will feel this way about Rin.
Programs that pair veterans with rescue animals have shown great success in helping to alleviate some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Were those programs on your mind when you made Rin’s wolves such an integral part of this novel?
I was not thinking of therapy animals when I brought the wolves into Wolf Season but of a real veteran I once interviewed who lived in the woods with wolves. Rin is not like her at all, but the idea intrigued me. Later, long after I’d written a draft of Wolf Season, I found out that quite a few veterans do like to keep wolves, and that some therapy programs do indeed pair wolves and vets. However, I suspect many vets are drawn to wolves not so much as therapeutic animals but because wolves represent something pure and wild and untamable and strong, as well as dangerous and protective. This is certainly why they appeal to Rin.
Readers were first introduced to the character of Naema in Sand Queen, when she was a medical student in Iraq. In Wolf Season, we meet her again, now working as a doctor in a VA medical clinic. When did you know you hadn’t finished telling her story? Will we meet her or Tariq again?
I decided to continue Naema’s story in 2010, as I came to know more Iraqi refugees and saw the terrible fallout from the Iraq War all over the globe. Having been so moved by the Iraqis I met and interviewed, I felt saddened by the negative stereotypes of Muslims gaining popularity around the world, and I wanted to push against that with Naema and Tariq. Now it seems more important than ever for us to pay attention to people like Naema and Tariq in all their humanity. So yes, Naema and Tariq are not going away yet.
Louis, an Army veteran, and Todd, an active-duty marine, reveal other aspects of war’s toll on the human psyche. Do you believe that men and women experience war and its aftermath in essentially different ways?
I don’t like to generalize about men and women because no one truth belongs to everybody, but I will say that many women do experience war and its aftermath differently than men. Civilian women and children die in greater numbers in today’s wars than men, for one. And as I found while researching my nonfiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, women soldiers are still often treated as outcasts by their comrades, along with being sexually assaulted at a rate of nearly one in three, which means many women veterans suffer the double trauma of combat and sexual assault. Furthermore, some 90 percent of women are sexually harassed in the military. (Men are harassed and assaulted within the military, too, but not in nearly the same proportions.) Having to fight without the compensation of camaraderie is a cruelty experienced by far too many military women, and this alters their view of both the military and war.
The three children in Wolf Season handle the challenges they face in very different ways. Why are their perspectives so vital to the story? Was it a challenge to capture their voices in such an authentic way?
The juxtaposition of children and war is particularly poignant, for their very frankness and innocence strips away the glamorizing lies that so often cloak our discussions of war. Valor and strength, weaponry and heroism—what do these matter to a boy who has lost his father and his leg, or to a girl who has lost her sight, or to a child whose family has been torn apart by the trauma of war? Worldwide, children suffer and die from war more than anyone else, yet they are rarely given a voice.
Also, I have written from the point of view of children before, particularly in my earlier novel, The Edge of Eden. Taking on the voice of a child enables me to cut through to the heart of things. And then, I am a mother and have learned to listen to and relish the way children talk.
Novelists sometimes talk about being surprised by their characters. Did any of the characters in Wolf Season surprise you?
All my characters surprised me. Rin, with her complications—her distrust of people and her love of her daughter and wolves—was a constant surprise. The children with their quirks and stubbornness. Naema, with her hard-earned patience. If a writer isn’t surprised by her characters, something is wrong. Creating a character is like getting to know a friend: if she never surprises, she is not going to be interesting.
Wolf Season takes place in upstate New York, and its towns and woods almost become characters themselves. Why was it important to set the story in a small American community?
Many enlisted soldiers come from economically depressed small towns all over the United States, especially towns that offer few jobs or opportunities. My fictional Huntsville and Potterstown are placed near the real Slingerlands in Albany County, where a large proportion of families have sons and daughters in the military. Furthermore, as I found out after I began writing, hundreds of Iraqi refugees have been settled in that area, so I was able to make Naema’s story historically accurate, too.
What were you trying to explore in Wolf Season that separates it from your earlier work?
Everyone who has been through the horror of war brings it home in one way or another, and this, in turn, affects families and communities. Put another way, when a soldier is wounded, physically or psychologically, so is everyone who loves her. Likewise with a victim of war. Sand Queen took place mostly in Iraq, during the war itself. With Wolf Season, I wanted to follow Naema and her family after they fled the war, and to explore how the Iraq War has affected all of us at home in America.
Conversation Starters for Your Book Club
1.This book explores the long-reaching effects of war, not only on those directly engaged in it but on those close to them. How are the three mothers in the novel—Rin, Naema, and Beth—affected by war, and how does it affect their children, Juney, Tariq, and Flanner?
2.Wolf Season opens with an approaching hurricane. What is the fallout from the storm on each character? What is the effect of opening the novel with such an event?
3.Wolves have long been symbols in folktales and literature all over the world, from ancient myths, such as those of Native peoples in America, to the European story of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Sometimes wolves stand for nobility and courage, sometimes evil, sometimes threat. What do you think the wolves represent for Rin and Juney or Naema and Beth, and how do those symbols evolve throughout the novel? What did the wolves represent to you?
4.After we meet Naema, the Iraqi doctor, we do not see her again for a few chapters. What effect does this have on the way Naema’s history and character are revealed? How does the author use her absence to develop the other characters?
5.Louis, one of the veterans in the novel, is something of an enigma. What makes him so guarded and private? Why does Beth make him so uncomfortable?
6.What pulls Louis and Naema to befriend each other despite the differences in their backgrounds?
7.What did Wolf Season make you think about war and how it affects people’s hearts and morals?
8.What does the novel reveal about how men and women experience war and military service? Are the experiences of women soldiers different than those of men? What could the small community in this novel have done to better support the families struggling with the aftermath of war and the deployment of their loved ones?
9.How does this novel portray the refugee experience and the process of immigrating to America? Would any of the issues Naema’s family faced have been different had she immigrated to a larger city?
10.How do Tariq and Juney cope with their disabilities? How do those conditions affect the relationships between them and the other characters, particularly Rin and Naema?
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