A Word on Words; 3402; Scott Simon

one john singleton welcome to word on words i guess is scott simon host of indians weekend edition also heard and seeing here before on a word on words welcome scott thank you welcome back to talk about three birds thank you pretty birds is your new book last time you hear we talked about baseball yes i'm in that book on chicago and it was a wonderful book and not just on chicago that was on baseball generally and then you sort of opened up it's a world tsarnaev by giving insights into sport always looked and i thought when i heard you in another book pretty birds would be something about batman rebirth says about her is about war was about brutality it's about inhumanity it's about a man who you know as we sit here on trial for

crimes against humanity and it's an all nonfiction so out of character for the guy who set then left with me about baseball this is psalm book and talk about a change of place you know it's interesting that people people say to me it's a theory it's out of character and the reviews have been wonderful beloved of the real loud reviews find it sort of out of character and i had i guess it is not that i feel that i have a dark side but i do have remained as a journalist i've had experience in a lot of zones of conflict over the years and i still think is a lot of humor in this book because you're really was often the only argument that was that was left the syrians but you know it's not a it's not a sports book it's a it's a it's a real novel is also not a journalistic that to happen to have a kind of thinly disguised wildlife there is a reporter went what i wanted to

try and do with respect for a profession of journalism is is to try and pierce beyond something like that because i think we've all had the experience of reporters of thinking we know situation really well and then years after the fact we come to terms with in terms of the fact that we can only go so deep in our knowledge and i think i finally decided over the years the differences with were exceptions we don't have a stake in the outcome of the story i mean when i covered the siege of syria though it arguably shared some of the same physical hazards i could've been shot by a sniper could've been killed by artillery shells sixty some reporters were killed covering the mill or in bosnia i you know maybe some privations of food and certainly no electricity and water but i didn't really have a stake in the outcome i could afford it to feel as if my life would pretty much go on undisturbed regardless of who prevailed which is obviously not true of the people in syria who certainly knew there were not only encircled in the siege but they certainly had word of the massacres that occurred over the country in places like pre adored local

bar and the destruction of the broken leg and they were being destroyed in the same merciless people this way and they certainly fell even if they had surrendered that they might well be slaughtered so i think it's really an important difference between journalists who cover the story and the people that they're covered we don't have a stake in the outcome so i wanted to write a book a novel that i hoped would reach people who wouldn't weren't necessarily written nonfiction book i want to write a story that kind of fierce beyond that we as journalists would know and identify with that the people that are actually involved in the story of the people covering you give us the family leader gives a young teenage girl a basketball player and a happy child but a woman to the young the river into the center of a young woman just discovering life as i just discovering life and just

discovering a basketball coach and the end of the basketball coach who's married discovering about bahrain it when i read the reviews captain stout make this work and houck at a possibly talk about a teenage girl being a sniper blowing up the book and i read the explanation of that yet and that's a fascinating aspect of the story when they were actually sure actual thinking of girls were snipers when when the seizures are evil began a young young teenage boys sixteen and really up to forty were were conscripted into the army and you do it and no doubt some of them became snipers but he would have been taking a soldier of the frontlines to make someone into a sniper and they discovered and i have since discovered that this is happening a few conflicts and probably quite a few over the years they subsequently discovered the teenage girls we're very good for this project if they had some kind of athletic background because they they could be top things they were athletic and

limber they could climb up this was all urban were first of they could climb up and the abandonment shout out buildings that are there and teenage girls tend to be meticulous in a way teenage boys god bless us aren't always wear that around and and many of them are quite good and accomplished another thing about young teenage athletes you know they hear their competitive that water do well that wants gore points that wannabe reward and so they can be trained the idea of love being trained to come very naturally it's not it i'm sure for every american really there to think about a young teenage girl one of our high school basketball players taking up a gun then undone we don't know whether they just i mean i know for a fact now that i've done the book there are you know there are young american women and british women french women who are not a whole

lot older than iran or receiving tighter credit now on the armed forces i mean it's you know we we do that they do they can do that and it's funny the day that somebody somebody sent me an email saying something like well how could how could young women carry the sniper rifle must've been very heavy and of course i happen to know him and m fourteen modified for snipers weighs about twenty four pounds the day i got the email of the day you are little girl who is two years old was the pediatrician we discovered that she was twenty four pounds and curse my wife character ouch ouch morales old i think women have been doing this for centuries so you've probably haven't gotten the recognition and padded knowledge for its own a sniper has trained commonly in this is as true for men or women are they're not trained issue human being betrayed issued a spot reprinted to hit something on someones really going through an aesthetic is telling her instructor and a recruiter her captain earlier yeah he brings are in first three floors and the next thing she

knows and she's sharing at that spot you talked about your blood it it seemed to me that one when he was talking to her and then when the mercenary mali mali a mercenary is talking through the south african they are it's almost as if they in particular mali trust of the human target by saying look at the spot and i learned that i've been interviewed a few snipers over the years my wife and i actually went to school with a couple of snipers first couple former snipers were not teaching snipers and there were quite forthcoming about talking about what they do and when you're a professional that's that's what they do you you should have targets you shoot a spotted own triggered a human being you know there's an actual human being involved yes but i think you know even the most baseless person without any conscience would probably find it difficult few human being after human being a

human being there's some conditioning aspect that they need to distance themselves from that and so you convince yourself you're shooting at a target you don't say i killed someone you say mission accomplished or the first sniper issues is yes i saw the midst of the mist is what happens when a believer still no and the first time for them when she'll explodes and there is a mist and someone tries to explain it to her and she said i think i got up there and you know you begin with herb heavy life or friends but they're right on the cost of the war and already they are saying look we're a multiethnic society i mean sure we are where muslims have their service and an unknown to zero and then dump i mean we are we were happy with our existence is almost as if they were saying we send this country we came from everywhere there but then she very

early on she and her parents are parents a wonderful characters of interesting things that you talk about humor and the laugh almost every time they open their mouths opposes it's its wisdom through words that make us many people now to talk about her father and mother and he was a he was a closely say it and also sit at a shop on the same disk in street in athens area though and even his whiteman high school their children in the sixties they were they were in high school as i have to during the during the revolutions of nineteen eighty eight and they grew up with beatles and leonard cohen and life singing all the songs that were coming in from the west with which they own with which they identified and you know they were they were happy children too and they and they were happy family together he wound up selling shirtsleeve he wrote poems he didn't obviously wind up becoming a professional poet his wife who sang in high school band winds up becoming what i

think still in eastern europe he would say if we refer to as being a housewife but very much a part of her husband's life of them and certainly the center of the family and with what i guess for particulate about the parents and it's very it's very tempting when you're writing a book about a teenager to i think make the parents into kind of hollywood sitcom parents were there'd be another they just kind of exist for the teenager to score points off and it was important for me too to try and make the parents comprehensible as as human beings is not just the parents of the teenage girl but also people whoever romance and there's between themselves that are going on you understand the love that they feel for each other over all the years also feel the sense of responsibility that critically <unk> mean you know this is something that i think is is one of the most difficult things to convey about war when you covered as a reporter is the importance of idleness you have a society which is in which people are used to working for living and being very active and suddenly that just stops more or less stops and

for someone like mr zara two has worked all of his life there's nothing for him to do it there's no no reason to keep lists there's no reason to have appointments there and there's you know what we're used to kind of animate him into getting up every time a white suit for customers and yet he would be back then sent as a postcard sent a matter of that and in any event i i wanted to kind of i want to kind of capture that if i could because idleness is its own kind of pain has its own kind of killing suffering that if you know the the point where i think the story really begin to the grammy awards slipped up or they didn't really expect men in black sweaters inject boots rifles to come watching an end and there is that scene early on where we are all huddled together and base and finally her father and another man wants it will handle this don't

want to leave people in there and the fellow says who's in there they'd use in their own right ragged and the next thing you know both of them in a down once did and their families and friends or cooped up in that area suddenly the reality and war is here and it's not going to go away and we know the history of a book to read that scene like you know the war just describe right up on them and they thought it was going to be you know it'll happen in six weeks from now their bills and purchase your ability to convey that through the words of the characters you created you really give us a sense of history at one point one of the characters says oh you know what they say about us in europe you know that's where the great war started right there in that place have been killing each other for centuries and suddenly it's not on the news very much more talk about that that you know the way you tell the story of history and his own story of

contemporary history through fictional characters were talking about very meaningful moments in the lives of their countries bosnia was created really in a welter of countries that spend his mom spun off from the former yugoslavia citizens not euphemistically called and when it was created and they had a real aspiration india in the spring of nineteen ninety two to be what a lot of bosnians called upon armed leninist isn't john lennon stake this they want to be the costa rica of the book is they felt that if they were unarmed didn't have an army no one would have a reason to attacks which somebody says in the law created country none of this so that it's a younger brother ellis says that will which is exactly what they did so they have to obviously make up for lost time but i think was instructive to me when when i talk to people going on what would talk about the facts syria one particular sophisticated cosmopolitan place just the sheer dullness of war didn't seem to didn't seem to fit that place and so each and every step of the way they taught himself what was

happening was in the war they were just though that these were just stupid hooligans these were you know these were people who if he might do something violent but in the end it would lead to a war they could be taken care of at a very low level and then we can get on with our lives and and that's very much i think what happened in the end it was difficult it was difficult for people living in syria but you accept ultimately that what they were pitch didn't it wasn't something that would just be over in a few weeks it was something that was you know that they may not survive and i think mentally that's very different because if you're if you know that there's some sort of time frame involved if it is like a hurricane you know once the hurricane passes you can pretty much if you survive you can pretty much you might have to rebuild that you can pick up your life and it was when syrians had to admit that what they were going through wasn't a period like that wasn't like i hurt it wasn't something with a finite end that they could kind of lived towards that something that they might not survive all that they understood that it was that it was a war and mentally and emotionally that's just very difficult they had lived through nothing like that

even those even those people who were old enough to have lived through the age of the second world war that was one of the cedars of course it was occupied by nazi germany but there were there was an active combat there in stereo jews were taken off certainly but there was an active combat there so this was it this was a new experience for for people of that generation and they really felt that they were more sophisticated than that for those who are just tuning in which our with scott simon scott simon de ramon weekend edition with npr when talking about his new book pretty birds pretty birds let's talk about the title seems so out of character to think about pretty birds in a time of why haven't heard in the book it was pretty bird based on apparent that i heard about when i covered the siege really a vote yes absolutely based on apparent i heard about a fan we know that the family had to let him go but it was meeting slandering the cesar is numbered seat available so they had to book the top of apartment building

during a lone sniper there and let the bergdahl and hope but he would fly to the other side of the city the serbs lot of the city and be discovered by a family who would say with a little wonderful burglar to take care of him and when the family told me this story was a family had been brutalized when they were turned out of their neighborhood and gerber these are the neighborhood that i set it in the book two and when they talk about being brutalized they were there were nonplussed there were that they registered no emotion when they talked about having to release their bird that's when they began to cry and sob that's when they actually give them to some of the feelings that have been building up and i remember when they told me the story cause read about heritage the serb paramilitary leader than i'd rather proudly declared he said don't our boys and our girls meaning that his troops and our tanks and air cannons have surrounded our of sorts area were so thick we not even a bird can get through and i remember thinking well i've heard about one bird oil can get through an analogy a lot of the story began with that because of course in real life i have no idea what happened that there

is but one of the satisfactions of writing fiction as i can make certain building tomorrow i could yeah i could make certain the birds okay i have thought that i thought that her training them to be a sniper in a way you'd left that part of story short of long for the third time you don't really understand what happened there it's hard it's hard to really think about this young basketball players but as i said at the outset you make her very human known girl mean she smokes and and then and this she does have the sexual relationship with his coach of america she pretty cool about that though she is she doesn't give much away and it's almost as if she gets for all relationships and she gives to have an id not disappointed when he sort of emails

that it said it's a placeholder relationship or i may refer to it that way it's a way of kind of forgive me getting her feet wet sexually spin added you know in getting a frequent sexual notes as it did you know she wouldn't sign the confessed along when you started talking about the notion that whole arm know at the time i wrote it i did absolutely not it's just it at some point when you really insert yourself in the middle of the experience of writing a novel it's quite true i don't mean to sound ethereal but the characters begin to tell you what the end it's an end this case as i read it you know she said i was growing up she said that was the lane independence from parents effect and this was a statement that really has asserted her in advance exactly exactly it was a way that was a way of saying i'm grown up on my own person you know what i'm with you know what i was doing on top of everything else our member of course without giving away a plot point there was a whole other secret life that she was living as a sniper that she couldn't share with her protests and so i think it was also a way that enough that she couldn't on that but she could tell them she could tell them about the basketball coach there's a

lovely tragic saying in which a medical doctor who has come from afar as having a conversation with a nurse their own a smoke and each is wondering about the other and then when of columbia move toward sensuality and for men shot bid they're right in front and then there follows an interrogation of her in which her only way to convince them that she hadn't set him up with to acknowledge you know that we're really a very human moment there it's funny you should mention that interrogation scene cause that's the scene that saw the book at random house oh i'm not surprised and finished the book at all i had written about a hundred pages but that one of it was is it i drew a line down the side of the stage went back to refer to it later on it was a it was a very telling moment yeah it had said that the person conducting the

same as the former high school assistant principal and he is one of these people it happens and more are the tube meat more sometimes a non entity until one of it comes to this lethal enterprise award and suddenly all of his talents and all of his gifts find an out they turned out to be quite masterful turns out to be quite a masterful amateur psychologist when that killing of the french doctor occurs he has to determine whether or not blighted by lighting a cigarette the nurse assigned to let him up as a targeted sector which is obviously something that he has to find out that would be the first suspicion so he had to he had to satisfy himself that it was in an innocent maybe not innocent relationship that it had nothing to do with the ad nothing to do with the overall conflict and he senses he puts things together he senses you know here's a woman of about forty years a doctor of about forty seven both attractive both sharing so much and he is able to have to sort of piece together from just a three minute conversation in which direction certainly their feelings were

leaning an empty month without giving anything away breaks or doubt be under he understands that about her in a way that you might not say that you know you think about where he got it you know really come from being the schoolteacher and started come from being silly thrust into a leadership role where he asked all right questions andy preston present preston timmy got woody you know the other part of it this tragic story has to do with the trial again without giving away the plot outline a bit betrayed by a friend he actually played basketball together and reminds you again that the differences that existed seems superficial but we're very deep

chill forced to choose sides here and today for now i mean every everybody and that's it was that at one point i had one of one of the characters describes someone coming to her her father and say look i have no idea what's going to turn out but i tell you what effect of muslims come into this neighborhood for muslim family will protect cue if serbs wind up winning you protect us what you say this way whatever happens each of us will survive and her father who was services look i would make a great story for the bbc that it's not a real offer that's not going to happen with every know away whatever happens it's not going to let that happen so i'm sorry it's you know it's it's not a real offer an and that's actually based on them on conversations that i had with people interestingly in kosovo women in your family an impression across a vocal actually were offered that kind of deal and they said look you know we'd like to guarantee saving your life but the fact is we can't even for families enter into that kind of agreement it won't save any of our lives it's not a real offer and adjust to the sense of

helplessness and it's not even just a matter of having to choose which the consequences of choosing an ism morally right choice at the same choices choosing will what's going to help you survive them you know one of the things you do so well in this book is surprise at all and i'm not going to give away i mean both of you watching if you won't read this book and not being given away at o'hare and in reach with that's at the very end but that twists turn my heart i was led to believe that one person had died and suddenly realize somebody else and die and i understood the betrayal better because of that tragic twist thong with only a couple minutes left and i know i having written three books two very light

but meaningful month and choose fiction book you now written a very powerful and a stunningly successful piece of fiction what's next did it i know you i know you don't write another book the yellow we have incited it so i have to be careful but it looks like several book contract and and it'll be fiction and about a couple of ideas couple of ideas knowledge officer one story is set in germany in the forties and the other story is set in contemporary chicago and they're both novels and i'm looking forward to it as a real sense of joy your budget nonfiction books were so successful and what is it that that has what is it about sarajevo that led to kick the habit of nonfiction i think novels can stay with people in a way that non fiction books even the great ones with some exceptions really don't because i think people who would necessarily provide nonfiction book about syria but mike by

of the novel about two compelling teenage girls it's a different audience it also honestly had it exercises different creative muscles in may and i think it's important to keep challenging yourself and learning how to do new things and undying i discovered i liked doing so like the metal on the emotional exercise i think it's a it's fascinating work to try and and keep all of that in your mind and creative create a life for characters that the joke and continue to travel with people after that closed the book i'm glad i made the chores we'd run out of time thanks for being with us my pleasure thank all of you for watching and johnson over word on words he prevailed