Word: desertions
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Between the journalist and his subject lies an unbridgeable chasm. Invisible in peacetime, in war the division becomes as clear as the desert horizon. Confronted even by tragedy or death, the witness must stay detached, or risk being consumed...
...Kopperud spins some memorable scenes: a desert girl in a white T shirt dancing to Bob Marley, a boy monk in a burnished temple dispensing wisdom with a marble. The best of these freight the tale with visual and emotional meaning. Longing needs the ballast. Kopperud has a philosophy student's weakness for spiraling, unanswerable rhetorical queries...
...story is the stuff of fiction: the daughter of Somali desert nomads, Waris ("desert flower" in Somali) Dirie fled her family when she was about 13 to escape marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather. She landed in London as a servant to wealthy relatives and worked as a cleaner at McDonald's before becoming a supermodel, a James Bond girl, a U.N. special ambassador and a best-selling writer. Her second book, Desert Dawn, was published in Britain last week. Hard to believe? Only until you meet Dirie. A warm but somehow elusive woman...
TIME: And the movie Elton John was going to make of your life? Dirie: That has faded out. TIME: What next? Dirie: I have started the Desert Dawn Foundation to raise money for schools and clinics in Somalia. What I saw there broke my heart. These people have nothing, really nothing...
When I finally returned to civilization, I was welcomed by the campaign manager, a beer and the overwhelming desert heat. Had you forgotten about the heat? I had, in the cool altitudes of the Sierra Nevadas. But there it was, oppressive as always, drawing me to the air conditioning and bottled water. I returned to the Berkley campaign the next day, far away from ex-felons and homeless instigators. Back into the world of candidates’ forums and fundraisers, to speaking engagements and late nights. I was back to nights marked by sweaty sleep and parched throats. Back...