TO BE A FRIEND IS FATAL

From "one of the few genuine heroes of America's war in Iraq" (Dexter Filkins), this is a remarkable memoir by political wunderkind Kirk Johnson, detailing his experience as an aid worker in Iraq, the PTSD-induced depression that followed, his incredible re-emergence as founder of The List Project, and the harrowing stories of four persecuted Iraqis he has sought to save.

Within weeks of 9/11, the National Security Agency approached Kirk Johnson—son of an Illinois politician and a precocious Arabic student at the University of Chicago—with a job offer. Turning it down, he instead traveled on a Fulbright to Cairo, where he watched the region boil over with anger at the invasion of Iraq. Though opposed to the war, Johnson—with his family tradition of public service—felt an ethical obligation to help in the efforts to rebuild Iraq. In January 2005 he arrived in Baghdad as USAID’s only American employee who spoke Arabic. Whereas most civilians in Iraq never left the Green Zone and its gin-soaked parties, Johnson asked for placement in the field, hopping the Marine “milk run” each week to Fallujah, where he worked amid the city’s IED-strewn streets. As one of the few Arabic-speaking Americans in Iraq, Johnson found himself working alongside dozens of eager, idealistic Iraqi translators— young men and women sick of Saddam and filled with slang from American movies, who joined the U.S. reconstruction effort with hopes for a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be. As sectarian violence and terrorism escalated, these U.S.-employed Iraqis, once full of hope, now found themselves subject to unimaginable threats as the Iraqi public turned against its occupiers. With each new mortar, car bomb, and American causality, Iraqi employees also saw the frail trust Americans had in them chip away. In December 2005, on a brief trip away from Iraq, Johnson, swept into what doctors later described as a “fugue state,” walked to his hotel window, crawled onto the ledge, and plunged. The concrete that broke Kirk’s fall shattered his wrists, jaw and skull. He would spend the next year in an abyss of depression, surgeries, and the corrosive feeling that he had failed in Iraq. In Baghdad, Johnson’s closest friend, Murad, remained faithfully committed to USAID even as the war effort faltered. One day, leaving the Green Zone, Murad was spotted by a militiaman. His cover was blown. The next morning he emerged from his house to find the severed head of a dog and a death threat. The Americans offered him no protection. He fled to Syria. In Damascus, surrounded by other refugees, Murad wrote Johnson a surreptitious email: People are trying to kill me and I need your help. That email propelled Johnson out of his depression and launched a now-six-year struggle to convince the U.S. government that Murad and thousands more deserve help. The List Project was born. He testified before Congress and met with State Department and White House officials. Now, with the cases of more than 20,000 Iraqis documented and a team of 300 pro bono lawyers worker on their behalf, the organization has helped more than 1,500 endangered Iraqis find new life outside their homeland. It is only the beginning.
Kirk Johnson has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, the American Academy in Berlin, and the Wurlitzer Foundation--an extraordinary achievement, given that this will be his first book. His journalism and opinion writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post Magazine, and Foreign Policy. Unlike so many books in this territory, Kirk is a real writer and this book will be solely written by him.