By STEVE PFARRER
Staff Writer
“Ghazals for Foley,” the poetry collection that honors the memory of murdered journalist James Foley, also includes a short story by Foley, “Compound Memorandum,” that’s based partly on his experiences working in combat zones and other overseas locales such as Iraq.
It’s a portrait of various people, including a correspondent, in an unidentified “conflict zone” where car bombs, blasted infrastructure, and armored convoys are the daily bread of a “smaller country that was ripped apart when the larger country invaded for the purpose of bringing freedom to the smaller country’s people.”
At one point, the correspondent witnesses the aftermath of a car bombing and admits to a feeling “not of horror or disgust, but a rush, the kind of Gatling gun of endorphins of which he’d never experienced even on his best artificially induced or thrill-seeking trip.”
It’s an interesting observation, given that, in the spring of 2011, more than a year before he was abducted by ISIS members in Syria, Foley had been beaten and held captive for 44 days in Libya while reporting on that country’s civil war. He and a number of other journalists had been taken prisoner one day by troops loyal to former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, whom rebel forces were trying to overthrow; a friend of Foley’s, a South African cameraman, was shot to death during the incident.
After his release, some wondered why Foley was willing to return to war-zone reporting, first in Libya — he was back there in October 2011 to report on Gaddafi’s capture and execution by rebel forces — and then in Syria. Was he drawn by the “rush” of working in dangerous spots?
Brian Jordan, a friend and colleague of Foley from the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA writing program, doubts that’s the case.
“We never talked directly about the motivations for his work,” said Jordan, a Boston writer and ESL teacher. “But I think the reporter [in his story] is probably some kind of composite figure, not a self-portrait. Jim was really dedicated to telling people’s stories. I think it was a calling to him — he had a sense of mission about it.”
Another friend, poet Daniel Johnson of Boston, says Foley may have “felt the lure” of reporting from dangerous spaces, but he believes Foley was also trying to build a career in journalism after getting a late start in the trade. More importantly, Johnson says, Foley wanted to give voice to people who suffered injustice or were caught up in dramatic and difficult circumstances.
“He was really interested in the humanity of people,” Johnson said.
Indeed, Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch’s director of emergency research, worked side by side with Foley in Libya and came to know him well. In an interview shortly after Foley’s death, Bouckaert remembered him as a brave but calm and caring person in a field typically filled with “a lot of testosterone and machismo.”
“Jim was the exact opposite,” Bouckaert told GlobalPost, a Boston-based digital news service that Foley had worked for. “He was not the kind of guy who would just show up for a week or two, write a story and add it to his resume. He really wanted to delve deeply into these crises and understand them.”