I Can Hear Her Breathing

A review of David Barsamian's The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Interviews with Arundhati Roy

By Jonathan Callard

When the world is too much for us, we often turn to fiction. For Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, however, a story does not anesthetize, but “plugs you directly into the world.” Her conversations with Alternative Radio host David Barsamian, compiled by South End Press in a 2004 collection entitled The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile , dare us to choose between two worlds of the most real – the world that roars versus the one that whispers; the ugly versus the beautiful; Western imperialism versus freedom for all.

Barsamian's interviews with Roy reveal a woman who is fiercely alive, hopelessly in love with the world's have-nots, who revels in exposing tyrants wearing democratic clothes. . . She writes, she says, “to create links, to join the dots, to tell politics like a story.”

Covering a span of time from pre-9/11 to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in the spring of 2003, Barsamian's interviews with Roy reveal a woman who is fiercely alive, hopelessly in love with the world's have-nots, who revels in exposing tyrants wearing democratic clothes. Separated into four chapters, the book is an exhortation against corporate globalization, offering Westerners the chance to examine their own culture of imperialism through the eyes of a non-Westerner, a black woman from a developing country who sees little difference between her award-winning 1997 novel The God of Small Things and her political essays. She writes, she says, “to create links, to join the dots, to tell politics like a story.”

Roy not only casts a critical eye on the behavior of the U.S., which she calls the “nodal point” of global empire, but also on the actions of her own government in India. Through media propaganda that inflames and divides tribes, through its contracts with hungry U.S. companies, the Hindu nationalist party apes its Western big brother, as if it were a small kid trying to imitate the sandbox bully in another corner of the playground.

Roy backs up her words with action. She takes on India's mammoth hydroelectric industry, which favors only the wealthy few at the expense of those who live along the country's many river valleys and depend on the land and water for their livelihood. In protesting the opening of the Narmada dam in south-central India, she is arrested, and in later criticizing the India Supreme Court's decision to allow dam construction to proceed, she lands in jail for a day. While no opponent of modernization, Roy objects to the politics of development. She has enough distance from the source of Western empire that she can see it approaching developing nations like a dark cloud, polluting the thinking of her own country. A self-described patriot, she rattles off many examples of her own government's misbehavior, of its coverups and disregard for due process – like a 2002 pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat after a mob attacked a train carrying Hindu nationalists. Dozens died, and in retaliation, party zealots raped women and drove families from their homes, aided and abetted by local police.

Barsamian is clearly enamored of Roy, almost under her spell, and I wish that he would have played devil's advocate with her more. If indeed our job is to wake up the world, then we would do better to find ways to speak sharply to those in the middle instead of kowtowing to the choir in the left. He does give her something to push against in the final section, where he outlines the argument supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq: to oust Saddam Hussein, lack of weapons of mass destruction notwithstanding. Roy answers that the “urgent morality of the present” espoused by Bush and his advisors conveniently obscures a government's past or planned sins. Why, she wonders, is the most powerful country in the world also the most frightened country in the world?   When we respond to those excluded from global profits by drawing our knives in one breath and selling them weapons in another, when we ignore rational nonviolent dissent, we sanctify terrorism as an accepted means of communication. “Because,” she says, “you cannot just put this plastic bag over the head of the world and say, ‘don't breathe.'”

The book reads smoothly, though at times I had to refer to the glossary in the back to make sense of an Indian political acronym or an event in Indian history. Roy's accusations against Western democracy do not surprise me; rather, I am interested in her personal take on her role as a writer who “will always be on the losing side.” Failure attracts her, she says, because then she can dig deep into the stories of a village literally flooded to make way for a Narmada valley dam or a Naga sadhu whose life mission, because of caste, has been to “stand naked on one leg for twenty years or tow a car with his penis.” She can use her love of beauty, of the senses, to find happiness in the saddest things. And the more she digs, not only for others, but for herself, the more she is captivated by what she sees, the harder it is for her to not write about what's wrong or broken. Unlike a politician, she has no agenda but truth, wherever it leads her.

[T]o her, the elite Western intellectuals who remain silent, who hem and haw and take the middle ground, participate in the most insidious oppression. Psychologically, these intellectuals, and all Americans especially, are not free. They are reared in an altered reality. . .

Though a celebrity, Roy eschews having a personal assistant and becoming an “institution.” She cherishes her individuality, even if it means inefficiency and larger piles of unanswered mail on her desk. To her, globalization has killed the individual. Of course, she's no Pollyanna – all of us are in some ways up to our knees in empire, loving power, gorging on products to bat away fear and isolation. But to her, the elite Western intellectuals who remain silent, who hem and haw and take the middle ground, participate in the most insidious oppression. Psychologically, these intellectuals, and all Americans especially, are not free. They are reared in an altered reality, “like broiler chickens or pigs in a pen,” herded by a corporate global bulletin board that passes for the media.

To the political left, Roy is a pragmatic coach: make your language more accessible, your actions more direct, she orders. Forget the “speak the truth to power” phrase – those in power already know the truth and are thumbing their nose at it as they acquire and invade and sell. Put pressure on the Halliburtons and the Bechtels. Fight Fox News, let go of self-righteousness and being intellectually correct and welcome anger and passion into dialogue, because “thinking makes great loving.” Organizing marches and forums are okay, but they don't strike the empire's heart the way divestment and targeted nonviolent resistance do.

“A new world is coming,” Roy told the World Social Forum last year, and “on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” Members of Pax Americana would do well to pick up The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile , and start listening too.

Jonathan Callard is a writer living in Oakland, Calif. He is an editorial assistant at The Witness and program coordinator for the Center for Anglican Learning and Leadership at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Jonathan edits the web log content for Every Voice Network's “From the Lists” section, and has his own blog.   He may be reached by email at jonathancallard@hotmail.com .