Book Report: Missionaries

3. Phil Klay, Missionaries (2020) (1/10/21)

This ambitious book tackles the complicated politics and war-torn society of Colombia, dipping as well into the eternal war of Afghanistan—both arenas very much influenced by American neocolonialism. The first half introduces us, in alternating first-person accounts, to four main characters: the poor Colombian Abel, a paramilitary foot soldier and young victim of violence who is trying to go legit; Lisette, a cynically skeptical yet compassionately curious American wire reporter; Mason, a former Special Forces medic in Afghanistan turned liaison in Colombia; and Juan Pablo, a well-to-do, conservative lieutenant colonel in the Colombian army. The story then shifts to a town in the northern part of the country where events—and our main characters, along with a good dozen more—coalesce in 2015, following a U.S.-assisted raid on a drug kingpin and shortly before a national referendum on an internationally brokered peace. 

It is difficult to summarize the complex plot, or array of plots, which cover some thirty years as background is established and the convolutions of Colombian politics—a constantly shifting balance of government, left-wing guerrilla forces, right-wing paramilitary actors, and coca growers and distributors—are laid out. Violence is at the heart of this society, and capriciousness, and loyalty. Writ large, the book is about globalized warfare of the 21st century, but on a smaller scale it is about people struggling simply to survive in a slippery world.

Here are a couple of passages for a taste of the excellent writing. First, Abel:

Most people think that a person is whatever you see before you, walking around in bone and meat and blood, but that is an idiocy. Bone and meat and blood just exists, but to exist is not to live, and bone and meat and blood alone is not a person. A person is what happens when there is a family, and a town, a place where you are known. Where every person who knows you holds a small, invisible mirror, and in each mirror, held by family and friends and enemies, is a different reflection. In one mirror, the sweet fat boy I was to my mother. In another, the little imp I was to my father. In another, the irritating brat I was to Gustavo. A person is what happens when you gather all these reflections around a body. So what happens when one by one the people holding those mirrors are taken from you? It's simple. The person dies. And the bone and meat and blood goes on, walking the earth as if the person still existed, when God and the angels know he doesn't.
     So let's not talk about this boy as if he and I are the same person and not two strangers, one who walked in this body before the burning, and one who did after. Let's talk about this boy, whose memories and face I share, as the dead child he is. We can call him Abelito.

And here's Lisette, in Kabul, Afghanistan, about to head out the door to cover a bombing:

Moments like these, they're the best part of the job. The part where something awful happens, and I get assigned to do something about it. To write the story. To sort through the chaos and find narrative, meaning. Sure, it's not giving blood, picking up the bodies, or hunting down the killers. And maybe those lines we recite about journalists writing the first draft of history, maybe those lines will rub the wrong way after you've filed the story. You've sent your work out into the void enough times with only the smallest hope that anybody will care. It even becomes funny when a colleague sends you an email from Washington telling you, "You know I got back from Afghanistan only a month ago and already I catch myself talking about the war as if it's not still happening." And you think, what am I doing here? But before I file, when I'm talking to survivors, when I'm gathering the pieces, and finally when I'm writing, when I'm piecing together the awful parts into some kind of whole that readers can accept and digest, I'm a believer. Doing something means believing in it. It means faith. So when horror happens, I don't just have to endure it, the way most people here do. I get to act.