Reckoning In The Rubble – My Awakening At the Battle for Mosul by Ash Gallagher (2020) – In the midst of the war in Iraq, war correspondent Ash Gallagher finds a spiritual awakening. Like so many, the fire of humanity’s least humane activity burns away parts of her life, leaving a different person behind.
Reading Ash Gallagher’s memoir of her time in Mosul is not like reading reports from the front. In fact, the tone of the storytelling struck me. This isn’t the clipped, professionally aloof approach of the journalist. Instead, she tells her story as if you are sitting in a quiet corner somewhere with the drink of choice sitting on the table. At times her story jumps around, an incident she will mention or person and promise to circle back on that. It is a personal journey with no attempt to burnish your image of her. This is Ash, a woman from the middle of America, who survives her family, a dirt-bag husband, office politics, and combat in a distant land.
In that story lies a revelation for her. In the book, she writes:
“What I encountered was something so sacred, so meaningful. It wasn’t just about the Christians who fled from there or even about the occupation of Daesh, it was a burning bush on a cool night in November, in the dark.”
Her encounters along the way are intense but often small and intimate. There is a moment early on when she exchanges a glance with a woman leading her children away from a sniper. Both Gallagher and the woman are in mortal peril, but there is a wrenching, human moment that she feels in an instant. Reading it, the scene was cinematic for me. In a movie, the action would slow, and their eyes meet. Later in the book, there are a few minutes with a small boy who offers her water and does his best to communicate past the language barrier. Surrounded by destruction, his bright spirit shines through. Of the many vivid scenes she paints throughout the book, these were the two that linger for me.
This is not a “religious” book. Her spiritual journey and her experiences in Mosul, Gaza, and Lebanon are pieces of the same story. She began in a shattered church with an unexpected prayer. Through people of different religious practices, Gallagher is led on the path set down for her. As I search for words to describe the story she shares with us, I keep returning to two – powerful and personal. The Ash Gallagher who tells us this story differs from the one who first went to Iraq. The power of hope, mercy, and reconciliation has taken the clay of her life until then and re-formed it into a stronger, more focused version of that young woman. The story she tells is one well worth reading.
You can find the book on Lulu, and Apple Books
Rating – **** Recommended
Stories Are My Life 