Daily Iowan

Issue date: 2/15/07 Section: 80 Hours

[Click to enlarge]

"This is a human story. It is all real," says playwright Joshua Casteel. "There are some combined and composite characters and the names may not be exact, but it is all factual information."

Not only does his new play, Returns, expose the harsh realities of U.S. involvement in Iraq so easily forgotten by citizens at home, it also focuses on the mental effects that war and post-traumatic stress disorder have on returning soldiers. Something this first-time playwright and Army interrogator turned conscientious objector knows a lot about, considering the story is his own.

In June 2004, the Cedar Rapids native was sent as an interrogator to Abu Ghraib as part of the team intended to "clean up" the operation and the scandal that had engulfed it. Casteel's unit split day and night shifts doing interrogations, but with few soldiers trained in Arabic, they also had to act as their own prisoner screeners.

"There was supposed to be a screening process before we even got to the interrogation process, but we were the only ones who spoke the language," Casteel said. "The majority of people we talked to were cab drivers and farmers. I did around 130 interrogations, and I can count on one hand the number of people who would be considered 'bad guys.' "

Bad intelligence? Casteel says not necessarily, at least from a military standpoint. Iraq was, and still is, facing an insurgency that demanded an appropriate military response. But the tactics often used, he says, were ineffective. "Soldiers would go into villages, arrest all the males over the age of 14, and all of those people would be sent to the prison." It was, he says now, a mess.

The conflation of local armed protection services with insurgent or terrorist violence was widespread, and Casteel said resulted in many instances of wrongful arrest. "An uneducated soldier from Louisiana sees a man with a gun and a towel on his head, and he immediately assumes he's a terrorist, when in reality he is probably just trying to protect his village," Casteel said. These men inevitably were sent to prisons such as Abu Ghraib for Casteel and soldiers like him to contend with.

When a prisoner reached Abu Ghraib, Casteel was required to "exploit the greatest amount of information in the least amount of time." Even after the torture scandal at the prison had become common knowledge, his superiors never discouraged its use.

"You have to reduce a person to exploitation and reduce yourself to the exploiter," Casteel said. "You use torture. You induce hypothermia by stripping a man naked during winter, pour buckets of water on him while he's in front of an air conditioner, and then take his temperature rectally to make sure he isn't actually too cold. These are common tactics."

This is not apolitical theater, nor a feel-good narrative about a young Midwesterner who joins the Army, explores the world, and finds all is well.

"I'm trying to reintroduce the person into politics," Casteel said. "We never recognize the implications [of war] on the personal level." He stresses that the plot of Returns describes what happened to him and the people he knew; the play is not meant to set the record straight on a grand scale, but to give a soldier's-eye-view on it.

"I want the stories of the people who are being tortured, the stories of the torturers, to be brought back out into public, and for the people to remember this is not an abstract world," he said. "This is not a set of '24.' It's not Jack Bauer. These are my friends, who are being asked to sacrifice their own psychological well-being, to sacrifice their souls, for legislators sitting behind desks."

Invoking religious language about the soul and the spirit is no coincidence. Casteel is a deeply religious man. Raised in an Evangelical household, his parents were both Christian marriage therapists, and his father was also an ordained minister. Casteel was the type of kid who went to church every week and to church camps in the summer. But his time in Iraq precipitated a full-on spiritual crisis of conscience.

One day, he interrogated a Saudi national, who, unlike most of the prisoners he was assigned, actually was a self-avowed jihadist. A devout Muslim who had never fired a gun, to Casteel's ears the prisoner's justification for wanting to fight - to rid an invading army from Arab-held lands - sounded like an echo of Western just-war theory.

Casteel describes the young man as his double in the Islamic faith. Over the course of a two-hour interview, the Saudi talked to Casteel about the peace and solace he found in Islam. "It brought me back to all the conversations I had with kids in my high school about the peace and solace of Jesus," the Iowa native said. "He finally told me that I wasn't following the [teachings of the New Testament] - love my enemies, turn the other cheek, pray for those who persecute me - and basically made me realize that my participation in the war was not truly what I believed in."

The Saudi's words, Casteel said, cut deeply: "I asked him why he came to kill us, and he asked me the same thing. I had grown weary." After the interrogation, Casteel told his chain of command that he had lost his objectivity and that if they wanted this man interrogated more, it would have to be by someone else.

Although he had already considered applying for conscientious-objector status, this interrogation session sparked the fire. His application required him to write about an event called a C.O.C., or crystallization of conscience, and this was it. Casteel had to persuade his superiors of his feelings, first by filing forms and then by submitting to an investigation that involved interviews with family and friends. Eventually, the Army concluded that his assertions was true.

After his release from the military, Casteel applied to the University of California-Berkeley, but ultimately his family and the prestige of the Iowa Playwrights' Workshop drew him back home.

Returns is the play based on his experiences. It centers on James, played by Casteel, an Iraq interrogator who has just come home. James suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is haunted by the faces of the men he interrogated. A man of faith, James is nicknamed "Priest" by his Army buddies, which he resents for the holiness it implies, and wishes he still possessed.

Because the play focuses on a character with post-traumatic stress disorder, it mimics the symptoms of the disorder, which include feelings of dislocation, flashbacks, and hallucinations. "At one point we're in Baghdad and the next the cliffs of Oregon, which requires totally different demeanors. It really stresses change in memory," Casteel said. "It's very simple and subtle, with religious imagery and war paraphernalia." The use of this shifting visual style can be credited to friend and renowned director David Gothard.

The associate director of the Abbey Theatre, the national theater of the Republic of Ireland, Gothard splits time between Dublin and London, along with one month per year here at the Playwrights' Workshop. "I enjoy discovering new writers," he said with a smile. "I want Josh to see his work as a writer."

Casteel and Gothard met in London, where their friendship blossomed. While in Iraq, Casteel wrote e-mails to Gothard. "David acted as my sanity. He kept me creative while I was doing monotonous tasks, such as shining my boots, and eventually he turned into a confidant."

So Casteel asked Gothard to direct his play. "He was my highest hope, but I didn't know if it was worth his time," the young playwright said. Gothard couldn't refuse the chance to be involved with a work he feels will soon have a national profile. And the director is also excited about Casteel's potential as a literary figure who writes from a religious perspective. "Josh is able to present Christianity in a normal voice," Gothard said. "And not since T.S. Eliot has someone presented religion in this way or so well. He is very humanistic."

"David is a mastermind of visuals," Casteel said. "He uses the Peter Brook style of directing, where the actors show the director what they interpret and he works from there." David Blum, a UI theater student who plays two Iraqi characters in Returns, agrees. "David [Gothard] brings a new level of professionalism. We're usually used to undergrad directors, and David is just at a much higher level. He really gets you to read into the humanity of characters."

Returns will open tonight and run through Feb. 18 in Theatre Building Theatre B. Besides Returns, Casteel has two other projects in the works. In the fall of this year, his book Letters From Abu Ghraib, a collection of letters that he wrote during his stay at the prison, will be published by Essay Press, and a memoir called The Book of Joshua is still looking for a publisher.

Just as Casteel says, Returns is a human story, and while the play may not be able to explain the war on a grand scale, it presents a story that Casteel, a man who has looked into the soul of the enemy, seen only his reflection, and had the strength and conviction to change himself, is more than justified to tell.

E-mail DI reporter Nathan Ley at:
nathan-ley@uiowa.edu

Post-traumatic stress disorder

What: Post-traumatic stress disorder is a delayed reaction to any traumatic experience. It usually manifests itself with insomnia, reliving of the event, nightmares, and feelings of stress, paranoia, and guilt. Hallucinations are common and are usually triggered by something normal.

Who: Anyone who experiences a traumatic event can be affected. Most common are returning soldiers. Post-traumatic stress disorder affects an estimated 5.2 million Americans, and an unknown number of Iraqis.

When: Post-traumatic stress disorder was not acknowledged as a problem until the 1970s, following the experiences of soldiers returning from Vietnam. The incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder is often affected by the perceived validity of the justifications for a given war.

The estimated risk for post-traumatic stress disorder following service in the Iraq war is 18 percent, and the estimated risk for post-traumatic stress disorder from the Afghanistan mission is 11 percent.

Treatment: Therapy and prescription medication, if the disorder is associated with anxiety or depression. Treatment is most successful when the disorder is caught before negative coping methods, such as drugs and alcohol, are abused.

Veterans who believe they are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder can contact their local VA hospital or Veterans' Center, or call the VA Health Benefits Service Center at 1-877-222-VETS.

Sources:

United States Department of Veteran's Affairs

Chicago Institute of Psychology

Click here to watch video of Joshua Casteel speaking at an Iowa City anti-war event

For more information on post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers, go to this page on the Iraq War Veterans Organization site

Read an essay Casteel wrote while he was still stationed at Abu Ghraib/a>

Article Tools