Fighting Words
Åsne Seierstad in front of Saddam Hussein's palace yard in 2003. Photo: Courtesy of Åsne Seierstad
By Liu Xuan
On September 11 2001, 31-year-old Norwegian journalist sne Seierstad was on vacation in Venice. As an experienced war correspondent, she saw the significance immediately: This is going to change the whole world.
The next day, she flew back to Oslo, and immediately she began to call some TV stations that I worked with before and asked if they needed reporting from Afghanistan.ï‚"
Two weeks later, Seierstad was in Afghanistan. Four months later, in Kabul, she met Shah Mohammed Rais in his bookshop. Rais efforts to preserve books amid the political turmoil of his country impressed Seierstad. For the next 4 months, she lived with his family as a journalist, and the next year, an international best seller was born: The Bookseller of Kabul, a portrait of Rais and his family.
But Rais became angry after he read the book‘s English version in 2003. He felt he had been slandered by the journalist, and set off to file suit against Seierstad. The drama of journalist of Oslo Vs bookseller of Kabulï‚" stirred up heated debate in the media and The Bookseller of Kabul stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for a year.
All his activities just made the controversy more lively and lasting, says Seierstad, during her recent visit to Beijing for the Bookworm International Literary Festival; I got the impression that he liked it and just wanted things to keep going on.ï‚"
If time could go back, I would have kept several things out of the book, but it would also make it boring, says Seierstad, when asked if she had any regrets about the episode. I believe he is a hero, but what he told me about his family life is not true. As a journalist I have to write what I saw.ï‚"
Despite this dispute, Seierstad still keeps in contact with Rais family, especially his youngest sister Leila, an intelligent lady who has been struggling to live a more independent and meaningful life. And The Bookseller of Kabul has become the most successful non-fiction book in Norway’s publishing history.
Real life
Seierstad was born on February 10th, 1970, the second daughter to a political scientist father and feminist writer mother. My family identity is like the second child type: I‘ve been very much doing what I want and been independent. In her college years, Seierstad was very serious. She studied Spanish, Russian and Philosophy, and planned to be a diplomat. Things did not turn out as planned.
Suddenly I was a journalist, and I am really happy for that, laughs Seierstad, I don’t have the patience to be a diplomat.ï‚"
Seierstad was working in a Norwegian newspaper‘s Moscow bureau, when the first Chechen war broke out in 1994. She asked to go. The situation was extremely dangerous: It was war without any frontlines, says Seierstad.
Disguised and hidden in a military truck, the then 24-year-old blond traveled to Chechnya, without knowing that this trip would direct the next 15 years of her career to war reporting.
Chechens were waging a daily war between life and death. Their lives were on the edge every minute, men and women fighting and dying for freedom and liberty. It was so intense and dramatic, and I thought I had to witness and report, even though it was very dangerous.ï‚"
Seierstad is not interested in military hardware and troop movements. I’m concerned more about the warï‚'s effect on people, how it changes peoples lives, she says, to witness and report real life has been my intellectual interest.ï‚"
The Russian government eventually became hostile toward the Western presence in Chechnya and some journalists and Red Cross staff were reported being threatened, kidnapped, or even killed.
I thought about death every day, but I am very forgetful. When I escaped from the situation, I just forgot what Iï‚'ve been through, says Seierstad, I was extremely lucky.ï‚"
Only later she was told that her desperate editor came to morning meetings and said: I cannot take anymore phone calls from snes mother. From that point, Seierstad started keeping her parents uninformed about the dangers she faced in work.
In my life, work is very important. For some years, it took over my life and I didn‘t have a personal life. I just lived through the people I met and my job, says Seierstad. I think it’s fine. Life is long and you have to let something take it over.ï‚"
As a young journalist, Seierstad was quite emotional and impressionable. I am easy to influence, like [if ] people said this was interesting and important, I would pack up and go. This active attitude also brought Seierstad to China in 1997 when people began to talk rising of the dragon, but she only stayed a short time before going to report the war in Serbia.
I‘ve been a very difficult journalist, because I am so independent, she says. Despite the modest self-confession, Seierstad is a good listener, clearly seen by anyone who spends time with her.
Chechnya
Grozny book ended Seierstadï‚'s war reporting career, from 1994 to 2008. The name betrays its tragic history: In Russian, the name ï‚"Groznyï‚" means fearsome, menacing or terrible. The two Chechen wars halved the population, leaving no family untouched.
In 2006, as the Russian canons turned mute and Grozny was left as silent rubble, the worldï‚'s attention swiftly moved to the next hot spot. Seierstad returned. Disguising herself, she moved into a run-down orphanage in Grozny. For four months, she shared a stove-heated bed with Hadijat Gatayeva, a woman who founded the orphanage, listening to the orphansï‚' terrible stories and memories.
To survive mentally at this job, you have to have a barrier between what you experienced and who you are,ï‚" says Seierstad. She has been professional and successful in separating work and life in the past, but this time, Seierstad felt vulnerable in facing these Chechen orphans: Many amputated in body and almost all maimed in heart.
These children there are so destroyed and brutalized. The way they live their life is like suicide. When you get close to them you get scared. This time, I have the feeling that I am living their lives. I decided that this is going to be my last book in a while,ï‚" says Seierstad.
Her experiences formed the basis for her book Angel in Grozny. When the book was handed to her publishers in 2008, Seierstad welcomed her own angel: In July 2008, her son Embrik was born.
Now heï‚'s taken over my life,ï‚" says the happy 40-year-old mother with a radiant smile. ï‚"After 15 yearsï‚' [living through wars] I now think real life is not the only things that are dramatic and intense. Also I now have more responsibility as a mother, so I think in the near future I am going to cover more peaceful conflicts and hidden tensions.ï‚"
I hope that reading my books, people will find out that the effect of war is so grave. That war should always be the last resolution. Never wage war if there is another way out,ï‚" says sne Seierstad, war correspondent and bestseller.