Denial (31 page)

“Sidney was my eyes and ears. He was giving me up-to-the-minute news. He was my closest friend, and he was there looking out for you. I don't know what anyone could have done for you, beyond that.” He did not speak to Lisa at all during that period, he says.

I wonder if my father is actually remembering what happened, or imagining what he thinks must have happened.

“Even if I had tried to come home right away, I would only
have arrived twelve hours earlier,” he says. He has said this before, even despite what he knows that the police said, and despite what he wrote to me twenty years ago, when he explained that it was important for him to finish his work there. But I don't believe he is lying. He does not remember anymore. He cannot bear to remember. I understand this.

“This is not consistent with what you've just told me about those four or five calls to Sidney,” I say, annoyed now by his denial. Annoyed, even more, by myself and my inability to let go. But I am not going to let him off the hook. I can forgive him; I forgave him long ago. But I will no longer absorb the impact of his denial. And there is more: I want to relieve my father of a pain that he insists that he doesn't feel.

I do not believe in “forgive and forget.” To forgive in the truest sense, we must remember first and then forgive, even in regard to ourselves.

Now he concedes, “It's not that I admire what I did. But I remember what I was thinking at the time. If I got there and you rejected me, I would have felt terrible. I suppose that I was protecting myself,” he says.

His honesty is piercing my heart.

“You might say I'm really sorry that you were so hurt and for the role I played in it,” I propose to my father, at the risk of annoying him still further with this refrain.

“I'm sorry that circumstances exposed you to all that hurt.” He is choosing his words carefully now. “I wish I could have changed that, but it was beyond my power.

“If you want me to say I'm sorry about what happened after your rape, I don't feel sorry,” he says, with some finality now. “I did what I could. I was following up on you through Sidney. Until I showed up. When I did show up, I was unable to help you.”

But then my father adds a heartbreaking summary of his rea
sons for not returning to us right away: “I thought having to deal with me as well as the rape would have put an added burden on you.”

So here we are, my father and I, talking freely about my mother's death and about my rape, as if they weren't taboo subjects. This feels like the end of an age. The end of an age of denial. My feet can finally settle, safely now on the ground.

Now I read out loud to my father the pages from the beginning of this chapter. I look up periodically to check on his reaction. I see what looks like rapt attention on his face, as if I were reading him a fascinating story. I am puzzled.

“Can you hear me?” I ask, uncertain as to whether my father put his hearing aid in. It is a warm day. We can't see the bird feeder from here, but you can hear the birds singing. Perhaps he is listening to birdsong.

“Yes!” he says, with a look of something like guilty pleasure. So. My father is enjoying the story.

When I get to the part about our mountain-climbing trips, I pause to say, “So you see! Those trips meant as much to me as they did to you.” He cannot hide his pleasure, though he would like to.

He says, “Such flights of fancy!” He is the engineer, and I am the daughter. But when he hears that we children found the scent of his sweat comforting, he scoffs, “Oy vey.”

Now that we've dispensed with this rape and trauma business, I have a more important question for my father.

“Do you believe in God?” I ask him.

Some families talk easily about life's most important questions. Mine isn't one of them. But a terrible weight is lifted between us now, and I feel I might ask my father anything.

“The things that are inexplicable are what I call God. Certain aspects of creation. What caused the big bang? What came
before? Some features of evolution are incredible. Look around you. It's so damn beautiful,” he says.

I take in the trees beyond our window, the emerald shade.

“And the more we learn about genetics, the more we realize that all life is related. Every person is seven times removed. That tree is about ten times removed from me genetically!” he says, pointing to a white oak.

It is indeed a beautiful tree.

“And so. When I think about it, I can't believe this happened by accident. In some other time in some other place within the universe, the germ of life was begun. How? I can't believe it's just on earth. I think life can move among the stars in the form of spores that can outlast all kinds of environmental abuse.”

I want to bring us back to the earth.

“What about the Nazis?” I ask. “Didn't living through that period in Germany make you question the existence of God?”

“I don't believe that there is an old man with a beard like that painting by Leonardo da Vinci. My mother's God does not exist. God is a life force, the prime mover that created a whole world of possibilities, including Mozart and including the Nazis. I don't know if ‘He' was conscious of what he created.” My father indicated that “He” should be in quotes.

And then he adds, with an unusually fatherlike tone, “It's even worse what happened in Rwanda. Stay away from war zones. Stay away from soldiers.”

His warning about war reverberates in my mind. I have a premonition that I will remember his words.

 

People often ask me if studying violent people has led me to lose faith in human nature. It hasn't. On the contrary, when you see all the terrible things that people persuade themselves they are
doing for the good of humanity, or to right some terrible wrong, it makes you appreciate the possibility of good even more.

I've heard it said that there is no faith without doubt. I will confess to many doubts. My faith has been tested time and again. I am not the sort of person who believes that evil doesn't exist. I know that it does.

It's harder to have faith in God when strange, senseless things seem to happen to you or your family. Why did my grandfather irradiate my mother? Why did the radiation kill her? God does not play dice! These questions—Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good people do bad things?—have come up repeatedly in my life.

Philosophers traditionally identify three kinds of evil: moral evil—suffering caused by the deliberate imposition of pain on sentient beings; natural evil—suffering caused by natural processes such as disease or natural disaster; and metaphysical evil—suffering caused by imperfections in the cosmos or by chance, such as a murderer going unpunished as a result of random imperfections in the court system. The use of the word
evil
to describe such disparate phenomena is a remnant of pre-Enlightenment thinking, which viewed suffering (natural and metaphysical evil) as punishment for sin (moral evil).
⁷

It seems to me now that there is a spectrum between these forms of evil. Cancer is usually thought of as natural evil. But what about my mother's death? My grandfather believed in the health-giving properties of massive doses of radiation. When he irradiated my mother, he thought he was protecting her. But it turned out he was killing her. A kind of zealotry led him to maintain an X-ray machine at home and then use it repeatedly on his own daughter.

What about the evil of rape? What if the perpetrator is mentally ill? What if he has been severely traumatized, as was the
case with my rapist? Psychoanalysts believe that when the pain of trauma is so great that the victim cannot sustain feeling, the victim becomes susceptible to preying on others.
⁸
In this case, the suffering of trauma can lead to the sin of violence, rather than—as pre-Enlightenment philosophers believed—sin leading to suffering.
⁹
Thus, violence might sometimes be a mixture of natural evil, arising from disease, and moral evil. I am not suggesting here that we not hold perpetrators fully responsible for their crimes. We must act as if they were, in order to prevent further violence.

What about the evil of terrorism? What of the evil of war? Absent intervention, victims of torture or terror or war may raise tortured children who, in turn, are more susceptible to harm their own children psychologically.
¹⁰
Male children raised in cultures of violence are more likely to become delinquents or violent criminals.
¹¹
For Jung, evil was inherent, not only in every human being, but also in God. He viewed evil as an archetypal Shadow, an aspect of the unconscious that cannot be controlled, but can be integrated. When it is integrated, it becomes a source of creativity. When it is repressed, it can lead to overt acts of evil. All of these approaches to evil seem to me to be important for comprehending the monstrous acts of a man like Brian Beat, and the difficulty people have believing that he was guilty.

 

“What do you think happens after death? Are you going to visit me after you die?” I ask my father, conscious of an embarrassing, childlike longing, which I am finally able to reveal.

“After you die, you are in the minds of others, in the perturbations and resonances that you created in society while you were alive. Societal evolution is a thousand times more rapid than the evolution of creatures or life. We have an opportunity to modify social structures according to our values. Talking to
you is a way of accomplishing some of that, for example. Talking to Evan. I did that through my work.”

And then he concludes, “Having the opportunity to contribute is our most sacred job,” he says. I agree completely. I believe he has. I hope we have.

T
he process of writing this book has taught me a great deal about the lingering effects of severe trauma. It is important to point out that no two victims of trauma will have precisely the same symptoms. But some symptoms are common among people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. One is difficulty accepting love, or trusting others to take care of you. Another is the sensation of numbness. Another is difficulty recognizing the feeling of fear.

For each individual who has suffered extreme trauma, there will be specific triggers that alter one's receptivity to inputs—causing hypervigilance, on the one extreme, and hypovigilance, a frustrating feeling of calm, on the other. I fear that I may always be subject to these altered states. Hypervigilance makes it possible rapidly to scan one's surroundings for any kind of threat. I am able to react extraordinarily quickly, while feeling relatively calm and in control. In this state, I become efficient
and can accomplish many tasks, but I am likely to be unintentionally curt and rude. It can feel like a kind of high, as Skip Shea explained. One can become a “prisoner of detail,” as Skip described it, as I was when observing the customers in the gas station after I interviewed Erik. Afterward it is shattering. You feel “physically and emotionally low,” to use my father's words, as if you had been dropped halfway into your own death. Sometimes I experience a calm so deep that I cannot focus. It is as if I were underwater. It is almost impossible to drive when I am in this state; I can get lost in places that I know very well.

These altered states can be useful if you know how to harness them; but they can also be quite debilitating. The confusion and pain of transitioning from hyperarousal to an almost complete absence of feeling can make victims turn to drink or drugs or promiscuous sex. In extreme cases, victims are susceptible to suicide or violence against others. A girl who was raped right after my sister and me, probably by the same rapist, killed herself soon afterward.

The soldiers returning from the wars on terrorism are especially prone to suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Because they are fighting in cities, the soldiers are more likely to cause or encounter civilian deaths. And because improved medical technologies have made it possible to keep severely wounded troops alive, they are returning with more extreme injuries and more horrifying memories. In the absence of effective treatment, it is likely that some of them will be vulnerable to alcoholism, drug abuse, and violence—against themselves and others—for many years to come.

Victims of trauma often suffer flashbacks in the form of violent nightmares or puzzling reactions to triggers, such as sounds or scents. It can take a very long time to recognize these triggers. It could be something as mundane as the scent of tuna fish, for example, which might bring back the feeling of
terror, if not the memory, of being shot in the leg while eating a sandwich.

Some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder can be positive in some situations. It is possible to experience what psychologists call post-traumatic growth. The ability to stay calm when endangered can be a tremendous advantage. Survivors are sometimes able to contemplate painful truths that other people prefer to deny, such as hidden malevolence or dangers. This, too, can be an advantage, although it can be annoying to people who prefer to look away. There can also be a heightened awareness of the fragility (and preciousness) of life—one's own and the lives of others. People who have been repeatedly exposed to severe trauma can contribute greatly to society, for example, by joining humanitarian missions in dangerous places or by serving in the Special Forces.

In my case, I know that I will never be “cured.” I understand that I am at risk of overprotecting my son or, conversely, exposing him to unnecessary danger or ignoring his needs. I am also at risk of trying to train him to survive dangers he is unlikely to encounter outside my imagination. The goal, it seems to me, should be to learn to manage one's symptoms—to learn techniques for remaining in the present, not just in one's thoughts but also in one's feelings—even when there is no danger or urgency to fix one's gaze. To recognize that danger or urgency—which makes PTSD sufferers feel calm—can become addictive. To learn to distinguish one's reactions to “then” from reactions to “now.” To recognize triggers and one's reactions to them, and to use them as clues about how to create a meaningful life.

Like many people with PTSD, I strongly resisted the diagnosis, which I considered to be a fad, and strongly resisted treatment as well. Because of my professional interest in national security affairs, I knew about soldiers returning from war with PTSD. It seemed patently absurd to me that a victim of sexual or
relational trauma would suffer the same physiological effects as a soldier returning from war. It took a long time for me to accept the idea that treatment could help me. Once I surrendered to treatment, the results were not entirely positive. I got a lot more accomplished before undergoing treatment. I was a whirling dervish, extraordinarily energetic much of the time. The only problem was that I couldn't sit still. Sustaining that kind of pace precludes intimacy, even with one's children. At some point, intimacy began to feel more important to me than efficiency. But for many people who suffer PTSD, the tradeoff might not be worthwhile. I won't pretend that there aren't grave losses if you choose to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, even if, in my case, there were also many gains.

Here is what is most important in my case: I have learned to recognize the sensation of fear. I have learned, I hope, how to love.

 

Now I want to go out on a limb and propose some hypotheses about possible connections between the two things I now know the most about—terrorism and terror. At this point I am presenting intuitions, rather than conclusions.

I have been researching and writing about terrorism since the mid-1980s. As part of this work, I have interviewed religious-extremist terrorists in America, India, Indonesia, Israel, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Palestine. There were many differences among the terrorists I interviewed. Some were intellectuals. Some appeared to be on a spiritual high; others seemed pumped up on adrenaline or the adventure of living at least partly on the run. Some clearly enjoyed their status and power. Sheikh Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah who was said to have survived an alleged CIA-led attempt on his life in 1985, exuded the air of a man who feels he has the best possible job in the world.
Some were obviously angry. I sensed in many that their commitment to the cause was a thin veneer covering some deeper, more personal need. For some, jihad had become a high-paying job; a few admitted they would like to quit but couldn't afford to. Some were unexpectedly rich, while others lived in slums. Some spoke of grievances that were widely held in their societies, while others had complaints that were not widely shared.

While the terrorists I met described a variety of grievances, almost every one talked about humiliation. An Identity Christian cultist told me he suffered from chronic bronchitis as a child, and his mother discouraged him from exerting himself. He had been forced to attend the girls' physical education classes because he couldn't keep up with the boys. “I don't know if I ever got over the shame and humiliation of not being able to keep up with the other boys—or even with some of the girls,” he said. The first time he felt strong was when he was living on an armed compound, surrounded by armed men.

A man involved in the violent wing of the antiabortion movement told me he was “vaginally defeated,” but now he is “free,” by which he meant celibate and beyond the influence of women. A Kashmiri militant founded his group because he wanted to re-create the golden period of Islam, “to recover what we lost…. Muslims have been overpowered by the West. Our ego hurts…we are not able to live up to our own standards for ourselves.”

The notion that perceived humiliation could be an important factor in explaining terrorism struck some of my colleagues, at least initially, as far-fetched. But my argument is not that humiliation alone is sufficient to create a terrorist. My hypothesis is that humiliation is a risk factor for terrorism.

And then there is the question of rape and torture. Why did interrogators in Iraq and at Guantanamo employ rape and sexual torture? Is it possible that they were exorcising their own shame,
even as they believed that sexual torture was a necessary means for extracting information from people they believed to be terrorists?

It is only after commencing the research I describe in this book that I realize the possible importance of the frequency of rape at the radical madrassas I studied in Pakistan. Sexual abuse of madrassa students is widely covered in the Pakistani press, but rarely discussed in the West. I have felt, in my interviews of terrorists, that there was an element of sexual humiliation, but it was rarely more than an intuition, and I have never explored this issue.
¹²
Also troubling is the rape of boys by warlords, the Afghan National Army, or the police in Afghanistan. Such abuses are commonplace on Thursdays, also known as “man-loving day,” because Friday prayers are considered to absolve sinners of all wrongdoing. David Whetham, a specialist on military ethics at King's College in London, reports that security checkpoints set up by the Afghan police and military have been used by some personnel to troll for attractive young men and boys on Thursday nights. The local population has been forced to accept these episodes as par for the course: they cannot imagine defying the all-powerful Afghan commanders. Could such sexual traumas be a form of humiliation that contributes to contemporary Islamist terrorism?

Aside from the question of preexisting personal trauma, consider the impact of a terrorist's lifestyle on his psychology. Exposure to violence, especially for those who become fighters, can cause lasting, haunting changes in the body and the mind. Terrorists are “at war,” at least from their perspective, and like soldiers, they, too, may be at risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. Those who were detained may have been subjected to torture and left with even more serious psychological wounds. A number of governments are attempting to “rehabilitate” low-level terrorists. For example, the U.S. military has been attempting to
rehabilitate detainees held in U.S.-controlled detention facilities in Iraq. It will be critically important to incorporate some of what the medical community is learning about PTSD in these efforts, not because terrorists deserve sympathy, but because understanding their state of mind is necessary to limiting the risk that they will return to violence.

 

As I write this book, thousands of soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these soldiers will be affected by the experience of combat, both physically and mentally. Studies suggest that the majority of soldiers recover, psychologically, within several months of their return.
¹³
Some returning veterans—perhaps many—will experience what psychologists call post-traumatic growth.
¹⁴
The army is working together with psychologists to develop a training program to improve combat veterans' emotional resiliency, with the aim of improving combat performance as well as reducing the frequency of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide.
¹⁵

An estimated 20 to 30 percent of those who return report lingering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, a significantly higher percentage than was reported in previous wars.
¹⁶
There are many possible reasons for the higher rate of reported cases. Deployments have been longer, and breaks between deployments are less frequent than in previous wars.
¹⁷
The pace of deployments is unprecedented in the history of the all-volunteer force.
¹⁸
Redeployment is a major risk factor for PTSD.
¹⁹
At the same time, advances in medical technology and in body armor have reduced casualty rates.
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Soldiers are surviving combat situations that would have killed them in the past, but returning with traumatic brain injuries and with the memory of mind-breaking horrors. The difficulty of persuading soldiers to redeploy is putting enormous pressure on recruiters,
who are increasingly overlooking known mental health problems, increasing the risk that troops will return with more severe psychological illness. All of these factors have increased the incidence of PTSD. The impact of soldiers' untreated despair and hypervigilance will be borne, not only by the soldiers and their families, but also by society at large.

When we train soldiers for battle, we deliberately inculcate in them qualities that, when they return, we will refer to as symptoms of PTSD.
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Soldiers must be able to dissociate, to cut off emotion. A soldier who collapsed in tears because one of his comrades was killed or because he saw the remains of a shattered baby on the sidewalk would put his own life and the lives of others at risk. Soldiers must be able rapidly to scan their environment and respond immediately to threats. These qualities are components of what we often call strength and courage. They are the qualities that keep soldiers alive and allow them to protect their comrades.

Numbness and hypervigilance can keep you alive when you're literally under the gun. They can even make you more efficient when you are under the gun metaphorically. But these very same qualities, necessary to keep us alive when we are threatened with death, get in the way of normal life and of human relationships. The same hypervigilance that keeps a soldier alive can make him throw himself on the floor when he hears a car backfiring. For the most traumatized soldiers, sounds or situations that trigger emotions they don't recognize or understand can lead them to hurt themselves or others.

In the moment that a person's life is threatened, the separation of thought and feeling may be necessary to sustain life. But this separation can become a habit, and when it does, we are only half alive. This book is a memoir—not of specific life events, but of the processes of dissociation, and of reenlivening emotions that are shameful to admit or even to feel. It is an account
of the altered states that trauma induces, which make it possible to survive a life-threatening event but impair the capacity to feel fear, and worse still, impair the ability to love.