An interview with Mark Cantrell of Tykewriter
1. Why did you decide to turn your experience as a human shield into a play?
It just sort of growed. When I got back I found nearly all my friends were writing books. I didn't want to be just another writer in what was a crowded market. I thought of trying to do something from the point of view of the Iraqis we met all the time, mainly people who ran the cafes where we ate and drank several times a day. That's where we plugged into the true Iraqi culture, which Blair and Bush will never understand.
2. How authentic is/will be the play?
It is one person's biased and somewhat jaundiced view of what it was like, and so cannot be trusted, any more than (if you'll forgive the comparison) Shakespeare's Richard III is anything like the man who was probably the best king England has ever had. (But then I'm a red republican!)
I have changed all the names but I expect they will recognise themselves. Some of the portraits are far from flattering, but then the character representing me ("Frederick") comes over as a bit of a berk, too, I think, so all's fair. Some of the things said about/to them in the play are records of actual conversations.
The only fictional character is the café proprietor, Schweyk, who is modelled on the hero of Jaroslav Hasek's satirical Wold War I novel, The Good Soldier Schweik. Brecht took that character and put him in a play, Schweyk in the Second World War, and my Schweyk is meant to be his son by an Iraqi woman. He makes reference to his father having met Hitler on the Russian front, which actually happened in Brecht's play.
3. How does the play tie into anti-war activism in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion?
It is not a propaganda play. If it has any message, it is to highlight the incredible amount of freedom we had in Iraq, and it was our failure to act responsibly in those circumstances that ended, eventually, in the failure of our mission. I think there is a message in this for the anti-war/anti-occupation movement, but like Bob Dylan sang, "I can't think for you - you've got to decide".
4. Furthermore, what is the point of such activism?
"It's life and life only" as Bob Dylan also sang (which I quote in one of the songs in the play, which I actually composed in Iraq and sang on local TV. Or as the Bible says, "Faith without works is dead".
5. What message, if any, are you pushing in the play?
I send my messages by email.
6. How do you square your own activism with your journalism?
I'm not really a journalist any more, except in the sense that most of my writing is rooted in present-day events, whether they be a love affair or being shot at by Israeli troops in Palestine and suffering hearing damage from their stun grenade sound bombs.
I think of myself as a poet, which is to say a magician.
As I wrote in occupied Nablus, the first time I went to the West Bank,
"Sitting here in the shade, eating grapes and shortcakes, writing love poems. Is this what I came here for? For love? Perhaps it is exactly what I came here for."
7. Is the play a kind of journalism in dramatic form?
No. My journalism has always been drama in journalistic form.
8. What were the dominant impressions and memories you took away from Iraq?
I was there in 1987, doing secret work for the anti-Saddam underground (ironically, the Iraqi government paid my fare and accommodated me in a top-class hotel, which just shows you should never trust a poet). I have Iraqi comrades who were assassinated by him on the orders of the CIA.
But I found that the 1991 Gulf War and 12 years of crippling sanctions had strengthened popular support for the dictatorship. And I was amazed how much freedom they allowed this bunch of weirdo anarchists, communists, Christians, Muslims and assorted rag-tag-and-bobtail activists to do things no Iraqi could get away with. This must have had an impact on the Iraqi populace who saw us organising demonstrations without police permission etc, moving from place to place exactly as we pleased, etc etc.
I also believe, basically, that we blew it. If we hadn't wasted so much energy quarrelling among ourselves, which sent mixed messages to the world about what we were at, we might have actually stopped the war. There were nearly 400 of us, from 36 different countries. If we'd had 36,000, not only in Baghdad, but every other major city, we might actually have stopped the war. As it was, only one of the humanitarian sites we occupied was bombed, though all of them were damaged in 1991.
9. How are you finding the process of turning your experiences into a fictionalised, dramatic account, given that you are new to the theatric form of writing?
I've been writing for the stage for many years, though not straight drama. (But is this straight drama? I don't think so.) I wrote a play for voices (thank you, Dylan Thomas) from which I read extracts in a London church, only to be denounced in the Daily Telegraph by Mary Whitehouse. She hadn't seen the text, of course.
10: How would you respond to those critics of the anti-war movement that Saddam was a dictator and the Iraqi people were screaming for freedom? (not to mention all the WMD stuff...)
All the Iraqi people want is to be allowed to manage their own affairs. Like the present puppets, Saddam wouldn't have lasted five minutes without the support of USA, Britain and (I'm ashamed to say) the Soviets. Thanks to the illegal invasion, Iraq will probably end up as an Islamic republic, along Iranian lines. Is that what we really want?
