As foreign correspondent covering the Vietnam War for the German magazine "Der Spiegel," Tiziano Terzani was authorized to tag along with American grunts as they ventured into the jungle and to report on what the U.S. government officially called a "police action." He recalls that when he and the U.S. troops were being shot at, his immediate reaction was to view the Vietcong or NVA troops as the other, the enemy - to be eliminated.
Later during the course of the war, Terzani decided that in order to better understand the conflict, it would be necessary to spend time with "the others." So he hunkered down with the Vietcong.
This need to understand the many sides of a political equation - especially in war, where conflicts tend to be reduced to an "us-against-them" dichotomy - has marked Terzani's entire life.
Now officially retired after 30 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia - including long stints in Hong Kong, China, Japan, Thailand, and India - he is taking Italy by storm with his new book "Letters Against the War." The collection of epistles written after Sept. 11 blares a consistent message: The current war in Afghanistan is an act of barbarism; and if we are to go beyond such barbarism we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions.
At his book presentations, Terzani rivets his audiences' attention, weaving his message through reflections, anecdotes and tirades. A charismatic man with a sharp, irreverent sense of humor, he manages a fine balance between impassioned earnestness and self-deprecatory levity.
For the past eight years the 64-year-old Italian has been based in India, spending most of his time in a Himalayan village, where he has been trying to detach himself from the affairs of the world. That is, until Sept. 11 when, as he puts it, "Osama bin Laden smoked me out of my cave."
From his appearance and demeanor it's clear that the subcontinent has rubbed off on Terzani. His full white beard and long hair call to mind the sadhus - India's itinerant monks - that wander through the mountains and rhododendron forests he calls home. He shows up at book presentations in a variation of the loose-fitting white kurta pajama men commonly wear in northern India. To get comfortable for this interview in the lobby of an upscale Milan hotel he sits down in the armchair and immediately launches his feet into a half-lotus position. As he bends to sip his espresso he exudes a faint waft of sandalwood.
Yet Terzani is proud of being Florentine and tries to avoid the platitudes of Indian gurus. "I don't want to sound exotic," he says. "I'm already exotic-looking. So if I start sounding exotic as well, people will take me as a circus phenomenon."
And that, of course, would distract them from his current mission: to increase public awareness regarding the current war in Afghanistan. He's come to Italy from his mountain retreat not just to plug his book, "but on a pilgrimage of peace." And he's ready to talk to whoever will listen (as long as it doesn't mean appearing on a TV show, which he refuses to do). "I have no solutions to the problems of the world," he insists. "I only raise questions. I raise doubts."
It seems the key to jostling public awareness stems directly from his journalistic experience. "If you, as a journalist have been after the facts all your life, at one point you realize that the facts are not reality. In many cases the facts are a screen, hiding reality. And I think this war is a very good example of how facts and lies have hidden the truth. Whenever I speak in schools I like to provoke people by saying truth doesn't exist. Truth is an approximation. And you are no longer a journalist when you realize that the sacrosanctity of the facts is no longer your objective in life."
His book, published by Longanesi, has thus far had phenomenal success, shooting to number one on the best-seller list in Italy. It's gotten to the point where he can't walk down the streets of Milan without people thanking him or handing him notes of admiration.
But for all the fanfare surrounding Terzani's crusade for peace, he still insists that he's left it all behind. "I have given up," he says. "This is really something that people must understand. Thirty years, all the wars of Asia. The first book I ever wrote in 1973 was called 'Leopard Skin: Journal of a War Correspondent.' It started: 'War is sad. Even sadder is that you get used to it.' And I describe the first dead body I saw. My God, what a shock. And then they become just a quantity you go about counting. So after 30 years I realized that I still haven't got used to it."
Terzani likes to talk about his Asian experience in the context of bringing together opposite extremes. He waxes mystical about the yin and yang symbol of Taoist tradition, how it's the perfect expression of the world's dualistic nature reconciled: dark and light, male and female, us and them.
Yet there's no hint of detachment. He is anything but dispassionate. As soon as he takes the stage or enters a conversation he seems possessed by the fierce desire to make his simple message sink in - not just from the neck up, but with his heart and gut.
He is proud to be European and exhibits the caustic wit Tuscans are famous for. And like many left-leaning European writers, Terzani engages in a fair share of America-bashing. Back in the 60s, during a discussion of the Vietnam War, he was asked, "Why are you so anti-American?" And Terzani said, "Maybe because I don't know America."
So off he went on a Harkness scholarship to study for two years at Stamford and Columbia, where he graduated in Chinese studies. He saw America from the inside, but that didn't seem to attenuate his criticism.
In July 2001 he returned to the United States. "My impression of America was disastrous," he says. "It was an appalling feeling of an arrogant country, a country with no curiosity whatsoever about the rest of the world. A country so self-centered, so deeply convinced of being the expression of the ultimate civilization... as if they had reached the peak of something mankind had always been looking for."
One of the more poignant criticisms concerns the detention of so-called "unlawful combatants" at Guant�namo Bay: "One-hundred-fifty years it has taken to create the Geneva conventions. And the greatest power in the world, the most cultivated, the richest, disregards the most elementary rules that have tried to put some kind of veneer of humanity on the most inhuman act of war."
He likes to provoke his audiences into doubting the information they glean from the mass media. With regard to Sept. 11 he says, "I am not in a position to know what happened. I'm just sustaining that what we have been told is not the whole truth." When asked about the "smoking gun" video, in which Osama bin Laden admits to his involvement, Terzani says, "How do I know? I'm not an expert on videos. All I know is that the video comes from the same society that has produced 'Jurassic Park.' And if Hollywood is able to produce dinosaurs that get into bed with people and jump around kitchens, they can even produce Osama bin Laden."
He rails against the brazen materialism of the West and puts the division of faith and politics into question: "The idea that you can separate the political man from the spiritual man is nonsense. Now people have been pushed so much toward this dichotomy that they've lost the spirit, they have become just bodies - bodies to be fed, to be muscle-trained. And they have lost the soul. That is the need that I feel everywhere. They see that they are not only bodies, that there's something beyond the body. They feel that there is another set of laws beyond the laws of the market. Because we are human beings and not only consumers. And this is the big problem."
Despite the reporting experience that has honed his eye to political minutia and their cause and effect relationships (or perhaps because of it) Terzani is particularly averse to discussing the nuts and bolts of policy analysis. "I'm interested in something above the little melee. George W. Bush, he will go away. Everything passes," he says as his voice approaches a vatic timbre.
When prodded to offer a pragmatic alternative, his impeccable English thunders through the lobby: "I hate pragmatism. I'm not pragmatic. It is just this mentality of pragmatism and efficiency that has brought man to the verge of disaster and elimination!" People at the neighboring tables turn their heads to see what the excitement is about.
"If we want to discover the unity of this man," he continues, "we have to go back to the idea that we are both body and something else. If we realize that, then we have to accept that the harmony of life is made of the balance of opposites. Therefore, it is hypocritical and sacrilegious to think that we can eliminate what is different from what we are. George W. Bush wants to eliminate evil. But Osama bin Laden sees George W. Bush as evil. And they both want to eliminate each other. And both of them make their massacres in the name of God. But their massacres don't become more divine because of that."
Is Terzani a hyperbolic - albeit charismatic - hodge-podge of idealism and contradictions, as his detractors might say? Or is he a finely wrought amalgam of extremes, a living embodiment of coincidentia oppositorum, the reconciliation of opposites? Or perhaps just a man sick of war with a simple message of peace? Whatever the case may be, Terzani's presence is not easy to ignore - and in these troubled times, that could be a boon for admirers and detractors alike.
© 2003 Stash Luczkiw
Stash Luczkiw was born in New York City and now lives in Milan, Italy, where he writes poetry and fiction. He is also the editor of Cartier Art magazine. Email: [email protected]
