bad news

On Sunday, May 16, 2004, I finished up a day of work at the pub and then biked to an Islamic Awareness dinner at Stanford University. The topic for the week was the bias against Muslims and Arabs in the media and what we can do to educate others and raise awareness about it. The speaker said during World War I, the Germans were painted as bloodthirsty Huns with a fundamentally violent culture, then in World War II the Japanese were victims of unreasonable propaganda campaigns and unlawful detentions, and when I was a kid the Russians were the ‘bad guys,’ and now it’s the Arabs and Muslims getting bad press.

We tend to paint vast conglomerations of complex and diverse individuals as ‘fundamentalists,’ or ‘extremists,’ or ‘terrorists,’ or whatever. In fact, of course, the majority of people are kind and reasonable when given half a chance and generally have kids and homes and dreams not unlike our own. I was well-impressed by my treatment in the Middle East. People were hospitable and open-minded and interested to learn about my country despite all that was going on. I found their attitude humbling and inspiring.

After the talk I went to the computer cluster on campus to check my email. I saw Ronan’s name in my inbox, and a surge of joy was quickly killed because beside it were the words, “I REGRET TO INFORM YOU.” That didn’t sound like Ronan.

I clicked it absently and saw the words, “DEAR MS OLSON. WITH GREAT SADNESS I MUST INFORM YOU OF THE DEATH OF SGT. RONAN (NEO) COVENEY. HE WAS KILLED IN ACTION IN…”

I quickly clicked back to my inbox and checked my other messages. I pretended I hadn’t seen it. There was no way news like that could come out of the blue on a Sunday night.

I knew I was being foolish, but I felt too dizzy to make sense of anything. I took a deep breath and clicked the message again.

I collapsed in tears. I couldn’t finish reading it. The details didn’t matter. He was gone.

I kept thinking that no funeral or book or movie or song or Psalm had remotely prepared me for the feeling I had now that Ronan was dead. It had all been jokes and rituals. I’d read the Bible that summer as background reading for the Middle East, and people kept dying in horrible ways, and miserable survivors kept tearing their clothes and putting dirt on their heads as shows of grief. It seemed so simple, kind of poetic, and also kind of pathetic. It was something anyway.

But I couldn’t begin to get past the fact that I’d never get to ride on the back of his Harley in southern Ireland and talk all day over coffee and Guinnesses like we’d planned. I had no idea how to live with the prospect of going decades at a time without hearing him laugh. For days I was hyper-aware of every sensation, knowing with irremediable dread that he could never feel them again.

I wished I had something to hold onto, something to console myself with, some ritual that might help. There was nothing I could think of that didn’t seem false and stupid and insulting to his shatteringly singular life and death.

I’d grown so much since I met him, I’d striven toward his example, and now we had so much more to talk about. I had so much more to learn. And years and years from now we could sit back and joke about it all, maybe in a nice house near Cork, a couple of salty dogs, him always light-years ahead of me. I hadn’t realized how thick and strong and important our shining future prospects together had become to me until they were eviscerated.

That night I wrote through blinding tears:

In death
we foolish people try
to rise to the occasion
with silken words like
condolence and
remembrance.
But these words are false
and ceremonious.
They mean nothing
to the grieving soul
whose sole experience
it is
to feel new emptiness
and hollowness
in the fabric of her life.
The smile that was just for her
no longer has a place
on earth.
This tragedy
is greater than the oceans,
more dreadful than fear can touch,
as old as the First Life,
and as novel as any newborn.
Don’t water me down
with false,
ceremonious words.
The chasm can never be filled,
but we can reach across it.
We have to.
We still exist.

A housemate saw me writing in my journal and crying. He asked me what was wrong and I told him. He said he didn’t know what to say, but he handed me his copy of The Prophet, published in 1923 by Kahlil Gibran who was from Christian northern Lebanon. It seemed vaguely appropriate since Ronan had met both his best friend and his worst enemy in Lebanon. I read the chapter on Giving:

Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.
And he answered:
You give but a little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep
and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?...
And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full,
the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have—
and they give it for recognition
and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.

There are those who give with joy,
and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving,
nor do they seek joy,
nor give with mindfulness of virtue;
They give as in yonder valley the myrtle
breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks,
and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth.

And then I read the chapter on Love:

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon them.
And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you
yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions
may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height
and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots
and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge
become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace
and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness
and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
but not all of your laughter,
and weep,
but not all of your tears.

The next morning, as I woke up gutted by the prospect of facing another day in a world without him in it, these words were taking form in my head:

You are gone
and in your place
a newborn pain.
This child is mine forever
to raise,
God willing,
to a flower of maturity
full of meaning,
to bring your richness
in whatever ways I can
to the world
in your place.
If I kill this infant
or neglect it
or spoil it
or deny it,
If I try to bend it
to my furious will
or stray from the knowledge
in my heart,
I diminish myself
and you.
And I can't bear to do that.

I didn’t know how to be strong or how to honor his memory, but I knew I had to try, and I had to do it alone. The very worst part was that I hadn’t seen him in over a year. I hadn’t felt his body heat since the past spring in Miami. I was sick with jealousy that his friends and partners got to spend months at a time with him while he and I were apart. They got to be there when he died, to hear his last joke, his last words. In the course of a year, the intensity of his memory had faded to some degree, and now I could never, ever get it back. It was worse than death. It was like stillbirth.

My saving grace was Scott, Ronan’s partner in the UN. He had access to Ronan’s email account, and he was the one who let me know Ronan had died.

He wrote that Ronan was killed on May 1st while his unit was doing a recon patrol in southeastern Iraq not far from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Out of nowhere a sniper fired on their unit. A radio operator from South Africa was hit in the chest and went down screaming. The foreign aid workers nearby dove for cover as did Ronan’s men, but a small Iraqi girl, maybe eight years old, was left crying in the middle of the road. The UN soldiers returned fire but had no idea where the sniper was. Ronan knew that the sniper would take a shot at the girl, the wounded radio operator, or the aid workers to draw them out of cover. He couldn’t leave them there helpless.

Ronan leapt to his feet, grabbed the girl, and pushed her through an open door. It drew the sniper’s fire long enough to let the medic get the radio man to cover. But, in Scott’s words, “The most unstoppable guy I ever met got stopped.” Ronan was hit by four bullets, one to the left shoulder, two to the chest, and one to the left hip. His last words were, “Did I do OK, are they safe?”

Scott didn’t ask the name of the girl Ronan had saved, but he said she was beautiful and had no idea what was happening around her. To the best of his knowledge she was Iraqi. He said he “was so caught up in the situation that I wasn’t thinking right. Only one man would have a cool head in a situation like that and he was dying.”

Scott had seen the flash of the muzzle in a nearby building. They flanked the sniper’s position, and Scott killed him. They recognized his dead body. It was Abdullah Niva, the same man who had been Ronan’s commanding officer in Lebanon. Ronan died in 2004 saving a child from the man who had not let him save the four-year-old boy in 1999.

I couldn’t believe it. I wrote to Scott and asked him to tell me more. He said Niva was UN officer from France, and when he and Ronan served together in southern Lebanon, the only thing they had in common was a very strong personality. He said, “When you get two people so different and not willing to back down, and they are thrown together in a war zone, sparks will fly.”

In 1999, when the incident with the Israeli soldier was taking place, Ronan was screaming down the radio to intervene to save the kid’s life, but only Niva was on the other end. God only knows why, but he would not give them clearance.

After Scott punched him in the face, Niva tried to have Scott and Ronan court martialed. But Ronan pulled some stunt and got them shipped out of Dodge.

Niva was dishonorably discharged from the UN. He held a big grudge against both Ronan and the UN and vowed revenge against Ronan. He was offered a lot of money to leave the UN and ‘turn to the dark side’ and decided to hire out his skill as a sniper to the highest bidder.

After tours in many countries as a mercenary, he ended up in Iraq. Scott guessed that he was on a mission as a head hunter with orders to kill as many UN troops as he could in an allotted time and get paid per head or dog tag collected. He likely picked the area near Ronan’s home camp knowing he might get a shot at him.

He had identified Ronan in his group of Rangers by his Styer 5.56 semi-automatic and knew how to draw him into the open. He knew Ronan would not let another child be killed.

Scott wrote to me, “He was a hero. He died on his feet doing something only he could do.”

The radio operator survived. He is still in denial that Ronan is gone and talks to him every night before he sleeps. He is hospitalized, and probably will never soldier again, but he is alive. The aid workers were fine, and so was the girl.

Services were held in his Ranger Headquarters in Iraq and in Naval HQ, Dublin. Ronan was presented with the Irish Navy Cross for services rendered above and beyond the call of duty. He wouldn’t have cared about the medal. He just did what he had to do.

The story of his death was officially covered up by the UN. If it were reported that a mercenary killed Ronan, they could figure out that the only one working in his area was Niva. Niva could be traced back to the incident in southern Lebanon and the child murder. That was a UN officer indirectly causing the death of four innocent people, and also covered up. Officially, in fact, there were no Ranger soldiers on active service in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon at all.

But everything is written down and filed. The Secretary General of the UN just has to order it open. If he does, it’s very likely some heads in high places will roll. It probably won’t happen, though.

Scott wrote in his first letter to me, “On a personal note, Neo and I fought in many places together and witnessed many sad and terrible things. One thing that kept him strong was his memories of you. He spoke many times of Croatia and of Florida and the fun you had together. Keep him close to your heart as I will to mine.”

A few days later he wrote, “I’m not sure if I told you already but Ronan loved you. He talked of you all the time. He had the same dreams as you, house, children, but he wanted somewhere a little warmer like his favourite Malta. He said one morning that he had a dream of you and him walking along a beach, he was holding your hand, you were married and you were expecting a child. I would laugh at him and tell him to call you, but he would give the ‘what use am I’ line again.”

I was devastated because I’d tried so hard to get in touch all those months, and maybe he didn’t get back to me so much because he didn’t know how I felt. I never made it clear enough. I thought there was plenty of time to go our own ways, have fun while we were young and independent, and then later I could tell him everything.

I asked Scott if he would share some memories of Ronan with me. He told me the story of their first meeting, which I related in the Croatia story, and continued,

He was always up to things like that. Another time I was in Kosovo with him and we were pinned down by heavy gunfire, but we found an old trench and called for support that was five hours away. Ronan gave the order to conserve ammo, ‘play dead,’ and when they get to the edge of the trench give ‘em hell. We did and it drove them back, buying us a little time. We had one killed in action. Neo held the young KIA in his arms and promised his lifeless body to bring him home. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘I hate losin’ the young lads.’

He put the body up on his back, ordered covering fire, and he humped that body ten km back to base and didn’t leave its side until it was put on a plane and shipped home to Texas two days later…

P.S. We found this poem in his locker. He wrote it after his grandfather died.

The life of one we love is never lost…..
its influence goes through all the
lives it ever touched.

Don’t grieve for me for now I’m free,
I’m following the path God made for me.
I took his hand when I heard Him call,
I turned my back and left it all.
I could not stay another day,
to laugh, to love, to work or play.
Tasks left undone must stay that way.
I found my peace at the end of day.
If my parting has left a void,
then fill it with remembered joy.
A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss,
ah yes, these things too I will miss.
Be not burdened with times of sorrow,
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My life’s been full, I’ve savoured much,
good friends, good times, a loved one’s touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief;
don’t lengthen it now with undue grief;
Lift up your heads and say with me,
‘God wanted me now,
He set me free.’


We thought it summed Neo up.

Scott told me Ronan had spoken to him once “about a website you have about memories, travel, and your life. Can you write something nice about him and send on the address so fellow soldiers can know he had a life away from this hellish place. The best a soldier can hope for is to be remembered.”

I cried again at the thought of Ronan spending the last year of his life in hell. I told Scott I would do my best.

He wrote later, “I look at the news and I see the abuse of Iraqi detainees, then I look at Ronan and his life. Those abusers make a mockery of what Ronan stood for. He used words like honor, pride, courage, but also compassion, selflessness, and friendship.” He said that “the Irish Rangers are keeping alive what little morale is here.”

He wrote to me:

I think the perception in the States is that we have this conflict under control. We don’t. What the photos that came out about abuses in Abu Ghraib mean is that anyone who was partial to the Coalition forces are becoming hostile. They burn US, British and UN flags on a daily basis. I think it would have broke Ronan’s heart to see the people he was trying to protect burn his precious UN flag. Saddam’s forces are getting stronger as our will to fight gets weaker. Sometimes I think of something Ronan said: ‘We are supporting another Saddam in Washington, but he is far stronger.’

Ronan fought for freedom. For the freedom to go to the ‘pub and get a beer’ and feel safe. For the right to feel safe. The problem is, no side in this conflict offers that security.

This is a sandy Vietnam. We are losing this war.

Tell the people what it is like out here. How some soldiers in the American military out here are ashamed to wear the Stars and Stripes on their uniform. Tell them what Ronan stood for and how our fucked up country betrayed the most outstanding S.O.B. I ever met.

Do him proud.

On Monday, May 17, the day after I found out about Ronan’s death, I was having lunch with a girlfriend in Palo Alto. An attractive guy about our age stopped by and sat at our sidewalk table to talk a while, and my friend introduced him as David. He was on his way to Indonesia or something, and he oozed cavalier wealth. It came out that I was on my way to Palestine, and we talked about that for a bit. My friend looked kind of nervous. I wasn’t sure why.

After he left, my friend whispered, “Do you know who that was?”

“No, who?”

“Paul Wolfowitz’s son!”

My eyes widened. “Really?”

I thought a minute and then mumbled, “I should have asked him to tell his father cards or flowers would be appreciated.”

The next day I had my weekly Existential Tuesday lunch with a math major friend of mine. We were wondering how powerful people in America could manage to make so many otherwise intelligent people believe in diametrically illogical notions like

Tax cuts for the rich help the poor.
Unprovoked wars promote peace.
Taking away civil liberties promotes freedom.

How are they getting away with this?

“What luck for rulers that men do not think.”

~attributed to Adolph Hitler

I talked with a lot of very intelligent people that spring, most of them quite high on the access-to-resources ladder. They generally seemed extremely satisfied with the narratives of mainstream America. No matter how uncompassionate or demonstrably at odds with reality their views of the world were, they didn’t seem able to see beyond them. I felt like I failed even in helping them understand my perspective, and some refused to believe things I had witnessed firsthand. I thought of what George Orwell’s character Winston Smith said about O’Brien in 1984:

“What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself,
who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?”

My math major friend, one of the most thoughtful people I know, said, “You can’t argue with the people in power. That doesn’t help anything. They’re not going to voluntarily give up their power. You have to argue with the people being oppressed and get them to stand up for themselves in a very fundamental way.”

He said, “If more people had rational thinking skills, there’s no way a couple of people with fucked up ideas could control everybody.”

That evening I had dinner with a friend of mine who went to Yale and Harvard and became a very successful corporate lawyer, and then one day woke up and realized he was miserable. After a good deal of contemplation, he liquidated his assets and started a non-profit organization and intentional community called Magic in Palo Alto, California. I consider it a sanctuary of compassion and sanity, and I consider him one of the wisest and most satisfied people I know.

Among countless other projects, he is currently helping to raise two twin girls who are just turning five, two of the smartest and sweetest and strongest girls I’ve ever met. Another woman in the community just had a baby boy who is sure to grow up to be a saint among men. Kurt Vonnegut defines a saint as “someone who behaves decently in an indecent society.”

I told my friend over dinner that I had searched in my heart and found no hatred or blame for the Iraqi who had killed Ronan. I felt like the Iraqi was reacting to circumstances, and I couldn’t say I would have done anything differently if somebody had invaded my country. (This was before I knew that a French mercenary killed him.) But I did find some hatred and blame for the Bush administration, and for all people who abuse their positions of power in cruel ways and cause tremendous suffering.

He said, “See if you can find the same compassion for the guys in the Bush administration. I know these guys. I was in the same Yale class as George W. Bush. I think they feel completely impotent to do anything else.”

I said, “You did something else.”

Next: An Iraqi Poet

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