Burden of the Desert

What can you tell our readers about your new book Burden of the Desert?

Burden of the Desert is set in Iraq during the occupation but it’s not just a war novel about guns and explosions. It’s about people trying to live their lives in the midst of the violence, about falling in love with people you shouldn’t be in love with, trying to take care of your family and those you’re responsible for, doing your job – and trying to stay alive at the same time.

Your story features a lot of central characters, so what can you tell us about each of these?

Zoe Temple is an ambitious young reporter for a British newspaper who’s always dreamed of being a war correspondent, but when she arrives in Baghdad it’s nothing like she imagined, and she has to put herself in ever more dangerous situations to get the story. And she finds herself falling for another journalist, but she’s not quite sure if he’s who he seems to be.

Lieutenant Rick Benes is a young American officer in his first command, who’s trying to get his platoon home alive. He’s an honourable soldier, a good man in a bad situation, but he’s involved in this terrible accident where an Iraqi family are killed at an American checkpoint, and he’s consumed by guilt over it.

Adel is a young Iraqi man who would never have dreamed of getting involved in the violence until his father is accidentally killed by Benes’ soldiers, but then, driven by his grief, he joins the insurgency against the Americans.

Mahmoud is Zoe’s Iraqi driver, a Muslim man secretly in love with an Iraqi Christian woman, Saara. It’s dangerous for them to be together but they can’t stay apart, and Mahmoud is trying to keep her alive as the insurgents turn on the small Christian minority.

Nouri is an innocent man wrongly arrested, who finds himself being tortured by American soldiers in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and has to try to rebuild his life.

You were a war correspondent in Iraq for the Independent Newspaper, so how much of this book is autobiographical?

A lot of the incidents in the book are autobiographical, but the characters and the overall story are fictional. A lot of the things that happened to me in Iraq were perfect material for the novel, like being in a car chase, or arriving in a small town to be warned to leave immediately, because there were kidnappers “hunting” for Westerners there. And the life in al-Hamra Hotel, where the journalists stayed, where there would be these nights of drinking and telling stories round the pool. But I changed elements to fit the story and shared my experiences between different characters. The setting of the book is accurate, it takes place against the backdrop of what it was really like in Iraq, the way you had to live, but the individual characters and their stories are invented.

This is your first book, so do you have plans for another?

Yes, I’m writing a second novel now, one that’s completely different from Burden of the Desert. The new book is set in Jersey, where I grew up, and it’s narrated by a nine-year-old boy telling the story of how his uncle, who lost his leg reporting on the war in Afghanistan in the eighties, came to live with them in this quiet, peaceful island that couldn’t be more different, and how he changed their lives.

Tell us about your worst point while you were in Iraq.

It was probably when the kidnapping started, and the extremists were beheading Western hostages and then releasing videos of their killings. Baghdad was incredibly dangerous then: if you set foot outside the hotel you were at risk of being kidnapped. We would never go anywhere for more than a few minutes, never make appointments or tell anyone where we were going. And I found myself lying awake at night wondering how I’d cope if I was kidnapped, and what I’d want to say on the video before the knife came down. It was dangerous to stay in the hotel as well, there were suicide bombings almost every day, and for some reason they were always around 9am. At first I used to be ready to run every morning, with an escape route planned, but after a while I became fatalistic about it and used to deliberately sleep in so I wouldn’t know about it if the hotel got hit.

What surprised you most while writing this book?

What surprised me was the way the book helped me come to terms with what I’d experienced in Iraq, the things that had left me traumatised. I’d seen everything in Iraq from a reporter’s point of view, and we’d become involved in the story: we weren’t bystanders any more; people were trying to kill us. I set out to write the book from multiple viewpoints, and see the story through the eyes of an American soldier, and even through those of an insurgent who was trying to kill us. I was very frightened in Iraq, and angry at the people who wanted me dead. I was nervous of the Americans too: they didn’t mean me any harm, but they were constantly under threat and quick to shoot back, and it was easy to get caught in the crossfire. And they were the visible part of an occupation that was going wrong. But in writing the book, I realised the American officer might not like the way things were any more than me. And even though I vehemently disagreed with the insurgent, I found seeing that he was human, that he had reasons for what he did, however wrong, helped me come to terms with the memories that haunted me.

When did you first become interested in the idea of working as a war correspondent?

The funny thing is I never wanted to be a war correspondent. When I started as a journalist I was vehement I wasn’t going to do wars. I remember the day before I flew into Afghanistan in 2001 a friend saying “You said you wouldn’t do wars and now you’re going to the biggest war in the world”. But I think that if you’re a journalist you want to be where the story is, in the place the whole world is watching. And so if there’s a major war, you inevitably get drawn there. And it’s interesting to experience life under such extremes but I have to say I’m also very glad I don’t cover wars any more.

What is your educational background?

I was sent to a traditional British boarding school, Winchester, which was incredibly eccentric and pretty much like Hogwart’s without the magic. After that I went to Oxford, where I studied English at Corpus Christi College. I had no formal training as a journalist, I just started freelancing.

What is next for you?

Well, I’m writing the second novel set in Jersey, and I’m also working on a book of memoirs of my time as a foreign correspondent, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and living in India for eight years, and all the strange and crazy places I got sent. And I’m still working as a freelance journalist – but I’m staying away from wars these days.

Burden of the Desert by Justin Huggler is published on 18th March and available on amazon.

http://www.justinhuggler.com/

by Lucy Moore for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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