The Weight of a Mustard Seed
A journalist examines the life of an Iraqi general to understand why good people serve evil regimes.
He was remembered by many as a brave, simple, upright man. He prayed to his God, showed compassion to the needy, and was a caring father and husband.
Yet Kamel Sachet was also a pillar of a corrupt and murderous regime. As a general in the Iraqi Army (and a major hero of the Iraq-Iran war), Sachet did Saddam Hussein鈥檚 bidding for 30 years, so loyally that Saddam once gushed, 鈥淭he Iraqi soldier should be in every way like this...! Kamel Sachet is a commander I treasure.鈥�
Why does a man of character serve a tyrant? That was the question troubling journalist Wendell Steavenson. For it wasn鈥檛 just Sachet that she encountered but others like him. Men who seemed intelligent, just, and compassionate. They stood close enough to Saddam to see him clearly 鈥� and yet they did not leave.
鈥淲hy had they served such a regime? How had they accommodated their own morality...? How had they lived with themselves?鈥�
These are the questions that Steavenson tackles in The Weight of a Mustard Seed (the title comes from the Koranic saying that, in the day of divine reckoning, 鈥淚f there be the weight of a mustard seed and it were [hidden] in a rock ... God will bring it forth鈥�), her scrappy attempt to explain through the life of one man: 鈥淗ow do ordinary human cogs make up a torture machine?鈥�
Wendell Steavenson is a journalist in the mold of fabled Polish correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski. Like Kapuscinski, she has a taste for far-flung, uncomfortable assignments. She has lived in and reported from post-Soviet Georgia (about which she wrote 鈥淪tories I Stole鈥�), Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. She stayed on in Iraq beyond what many would have considered the point of good sense, continuing to sheath her blond hair and go out on assignments, even after the kidnapping of her colleague, former 海角大神 Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll.
But as Steavenson explains, 鈥淥nce a story is under your skin, time and distance become just more hurdles, along with sense and sensibility, that have to be reckoned with.鈥�
Steavenson demonstrates an enduring interest in the human condition and its mysteries. In the case of Sachet, however, she is never able to give us more than glimpses of the man. We hear of him through his family and his colleagues 鈥� many of whom are now expats living in Damascus or Beirut 鈥� but we never really know him. And certainly the mystery of evil is not resolved through his story (any more than it ever has been through case studies of Hitler鈥檚 henchmen).
Steavenson does succeed in demonstrating that Saddam created a regime of terror and that he distorted the Iraqi consciousness with a corrupt psychology. She then points to studies that demonstrate that many good people crumble under bad authority. None of this, however, really satisfies.
Yet Steavenson鈥檚 reporting and her ambition are both plucky and admirable. And as we travel with her through both Iraq and the expat centers of the Middle East, we are privileged to witness unusual scenes and conversations.
We glimpse Iraq and the US invasion through the eyes of Sachet鈥檚 family. We see Sachet on the battlefield (captured on videos treasured by the Sachet family) and hear of his encounters with Saddam. We get a taste of the terror that forced cohesion onto Iraqi society.
But perhaps most interestingly, we meet with other men like Sachet 鈥� Iraqis once in high positions in the Saddam regime, now wrestling with their futures and their consciences.
Steavenson encounters them 鈥渟itting in cafes or hotel lobbies or on a thin pallet in a refugee hovel drinking ... glasses of tea or orange juice, or cans of warm Pepsi.鈥� After awhile she has met so many that she jokes to her translator, 鈥淚 could pick one out of a crowded cafe.鈥�
Saddam鈥檚 former colleagues, she found, were generally friendly and affable, with wry senses of humor. 鈥淚 liked them, I joked with them, I sympathized with them,鈥� she writes. But she noted that all indulged in 鈥渧arying shades of hypocrisy鈥� and 鈥渘ot one ever looked [her] straight in the eye.鈥�
The conversations in 鈥淭he Weight of the Mustard Seed鈥� do not exonerate these men. But they do serve to deepen our understanding of the complexity of their situations.
We would all like to believe that under similar circumstances we would have rejected evil unflinchingly.
But a book like this can sometimes be an uncomfortable read. As Steavenson points out, there is only one 鈥渙riginal reason to tell stories in the first place,鈥� and that is to learn to 鈥渦nderstand ourselves in the other.鈥�
鈥淭he Weight of a Mustard Seed鈥� fails to take us all the way to understanding. But at least it dares to try. For readers hungry for the deeper 鈥渨hy鈥� lingering behind the headlines, Steavenson will be a writer to watch.
Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor鈥檚 book editor.