John Barr

Friend

I guess I don’t quite know how to begin. The thing I keep coming back to is how much I learned from James.

I could probably make a list of all the singular qualities, disciplines, and passions that made James such an engaging person to have around, but I’m sure it would sound familiar to you all. There was very little he didn’t know something about, and a great deal he seemed to know everything about. The examples are myriad. And still, with so much to offer and so much raw data at the ready, I found there was a part of him I couldn’t reach, something about him was unknowable.

This vexed me, and we all used to chide him for being a CIA operative, forever disappearing into desert countries for months at a time doing his “research”. It was funny. And it was great, too, because if you asked him what the hell was going in the Middle East, he could tell you. Sometimes I’m amazed that despite his murky dealings abroad and my utter ignorance of all things James, we managed to develop such a close and dear friendship.

This brings me to the now of things, far flung in Afghanistan, as much a mystery to myself as James ever was. He loved that I got the chance to come here. Only James would envy me a yearlong deployment to a failed-state war zone. I read a quote recently that I’ll share. It’s from Beryl Markham’s memoir, West With The Night:

You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.

I think that’s true and think James understood that better than many of us. Perhaps that’s why he always had a move on, and kept a ready plan for the next departure, months, years in advance. He knew to leave the gaze turned outward and let the world come in. Of course, there was no sense to any of this a week ago, at least not to me. None of it mattered. It’s just a lesson I learned by circumstance, walking dumb through the recent days, wondering what in the hell it’s all for, the helicopter crashes, the rocket attacks. I really miss James.

To the Conlon family, you have my deepest regrets. Thank you for sharing your son and brother with me for the last 10 years. I’ll never forget him.

Amheida, Egypt 2002