Book Report - Tell Them I Didn’t Cry

Jackie Spinner is the staff writer for the Washington Post, where she has been a reporter since May 1995. This is her first book. “Tell Them I didn't Cry” is a deeply personal story of Jackie Spinner's “joy, loss, and survival in Iraq.” The book is a personal account of the more than nine months that she spent in Iraq as a reporter. She went to Iraq for a brief visit in January 2004, while embedded with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and returned in May -arriving eight days after U.S. Soldiers on a routine patrol found the decapitated body of American businessman Nick Berg on a highway overpass west of the Iraqi capital. His videotaped execution at the hands of the insurgents-coupled with the deaths of four U.S. Contractors whose mutilated bodies were strung from the bridge in the city of Fallujah- marked what we now realize was a free fall into a dark cavern of blood and violence.

Jackie introduces every single one of her colleagues in the Iraqi staff . She introduces Omar Feikeiki, who had paid many bribes to avoid military service since he refused to support anything to do with Hussein. He had studied English in a private college in Baghdad and became one of Jackie's fellow friends and translator. Huma who was the lone female translator that worked with the Washington Post. Little Nasser who had spent three years in the Iraqi army that he could not escape unless he had enough money to cover the bribe. Little Nasser that felt free when he was working also has a translator. Basam who was a jet plane pilot but had gotten kicked out of his position due to the fact that he had too many relatives living outside Iraq.

She introduces the drivers , the cooks, the photographers, the night guards at the hotel where the Washington Post people were staying at. All this people that have double lives , they have to keep their job at the Post has a secret, only the closest family members know, like the wife, or the parents. They live at risk everyday, at risk that they might be kidnapped and killed just because they are helping the Americans. Because that's what makes them infidels and insurgents don't forgive traitors. Jackie gives a complete view of how life for normal Iraqi people is really like.

She writes that there are sometimes in Iraq when life feels normal. When kids play soccer barefoot on the streets, when men go into cafes to talk about their job, when women are in the market buying the necessary things to make dinner that day. But that there are also days when it feels like there is no place more dangerous than where you're living. Her writing is not biased, she gives the opinions of people that are glad that Saddam is not in power, that they are finally free that they can do things they have never done before. Like talk from a satellite telephone that would permit them communicate to family members in other parts of the world. Or like having and understanding the idea of democracy. However, she also gives the opinion of other people that say that having Americans are bringing too much violence into their country, that they are just taking advantage of the Iraqis, taking their fuel since they have been in shortage all through the war. People that say that Americans promised electricity and fresh water, but that they have gotten nothing.

Jackie describes the fears of a reporter. I have never been a fan of reporters, but her story changed my mind about many of the opinions I had about them. Jackie risked her life to get a story because she didn't want to be just sitting behind a desk thinking and writing about what the war was like. She wanted to have first hand facts, she wanted to have a one-on -one war ( and Iraqi life) experience. She had to convince many people to let her, and her translator, stay the night at Abu Ghraib the prison in Iraq. She wanted to know the detainees opinions on the accusations about the seven U.S. Army soldiers accused of humiliating the Iraqis. She spent the night which was a very brave thing to do, and the next day she is almost kidnapped by insurgents. Nobody was close enough to rescue her and nobody asked for help because they saw she was Westerner. If anybody helped a Westerner they were considered infidels. Luckily