ABOUT THIS BOOK

They bear labels instead of names—noncombatant, unintended victim, collateral damage. Theirs are the blurred faces and forms seen in news footage shot from a moving vehicle. And when soldiers, media, and profiteers move on to the next conflict, they stay behind to cope amid the wreckage. They have stories to tell to anyone who will pause long enough to hear them.

In What Wars Leave Behind, J. Malcolm Garcia reveals the people and pain behind the statistics. He writes about impoverished families scraping by in Cairo’s city of the dead, ordinary Syrians pretending all is well as shells explode around them, and others caught in conflicts that rage long after the cameramen have packed up and gone away.

Garcia describes his travels in some of the world’s hotspots in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In a series of personal travel essays that read like short stories, he exposes the endless messiness of war and the failings of good intentions, and he traces their impact on the lives of natives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Kosovo, Chad, and Syria. He discovers amazing resilience among people who must struggle just to survive each day.

Garcia gives readers the sort of gritty detail learned from immersing himself in other cultures. He eats the food, drinks the tea, and endures the oppressive heat. These are the stories of how a middle-class guy from the Midwest with a social work degree learned to experience and embrace the cultures of Third World countries in conflict—and lived to tell the tale.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

J. Malcolm Garcia is the author of The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul (2009) and Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron’s Ghost (2012). His stories have been featured in Best American Travel Writing and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives outside Chicago.

REVIEWS

"I don't know if he's unheralded, but there's a writer named J. Malcolm Garcia who continually astounds me with his energy and empathy. He writes powerful and lyrical nonfiction from Afghanistan, from Buenos Aires, from Mississippi, all of it urgent and provocative. I've been following him wherever he goes."—Dave Eggers, author of The Circle and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“Garcia is an exceptionally powerful voice on behalf of the people about whom he writes. As he illustrates the results of America’s military adventuring, Garcia not only takes us to the physical space of the people who are the victims of our drone attacks, our bombs, and our bullets, but he also goes where few nonfiction writers have the skill to venture—he takes us inside their heads.”—Dale Maharidge, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

"Highly engaging. As for its potential classroom use, the book is best as inspiration and exemplar for the advanced student of the writer’s craft. Its style is not one that a fledgling journalist could emulate in either form or substance. The strength of What Wars Leave Behind is its demonstration of how a journalist can capture detail and weave dialog to bring home a point rich with humanity and emotion-lending inspiration and reality to the potential power of the written word and the struggles that must be faced to attain it."—Journalism and Mass Communication Educator

"J. Malcolm Garcia is the keeper of forgotten stories. He is an invaluable witness and a compassionate observer of today's wars."—Fatima Bhutto, author of Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: Conflict Zones

1. Securing District 4

2. Beneath Us the Ground Still Moves

3. African Promise

4. Who Is in the Power?

5. The Dead Lieutenant

6. Revolution Download

Part 2: Lost and Gone

7. You Cannot Tell from the Expressions on Our Faces What We Are Feeling

8. Missing

9. Here Everything Is Poison

10. Bed 18

11. Pyramid Schemes

12. War Wounds

13. Maybe the Children Will Forget

Part 3: Home Bound

14. Unpaid Leave

15. City of the Dead

Credits

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