Book review: How a mother put hatred to one side and met the man who beheaded her son

There are many heartrending moments in this wonderfully written book

Fri, 23 Feb, 2024 - 15:00

Jack Power

The circumstances in which this intriguing, needling book was made obligatory and written are very different to the circumstances in which it will be read. Events, dear boy, events, have again dramatically shifted perceptions and relationships for at least a generation or two.

American Mother tells the story of what happens when two dearly held sets of beliefs — political or religious — collide and leave a heartbreaking legacy for all ensnared in history’s most violent culture war.

This story of grace and possible — just possible but far from certain — redemption tells Diane Foley’s response to her idealist journalist son James Foley’s kidnapping — twice, once in Libya — repeated torture, and eventual decapitation by London-born Isis terrorist Alexanda Kotey somewhere in Syria.

New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Arden vowed never to utter the name of the Australian self-styled white supremacist who murdered 50 people in two Christchurch mosques in March 2019.

In stark contrast, Diane Foley and Column McCann make Kotey one of the three lead figures in this unblinking disinterring of humanity and grace to try to assuage a grief so choking it stays with the reader long after the final chapter is read.

American Mother, by Colum McCann with Diane Foley

James Foley and Kotey are the lead characters, but Diane Foley is the energy, the catalyst, the pivot of this story. Her relentless determination to try to save her son, her courage in her face-to-face confrontations with Kotey in court or prison seem exceptional: the Irish Mammy writ large.

When Foley was kidnapped, official America refused to be involved in any way or to make any efforts, diplomatic or military, to secure his release. Financial assistance was out of the question. Established policy was not to satisfy kidnappers, so they might be discouraged.

Not only that, but Washington securocrats warned any effort to raise funds to pay a ransom would lead to prosecution. Throughout this months-long tragedy, American officials — all too often the office junior — were unimaginative, hidebound, and disturbingly ignorant of the on-the-ground realities in Syria, which elevates Diane Foley’s persistence to something far beyond the ordinary.

That a hugely expensive Rambo raid was eventually launched to try to rescue Foley and other hostages failed because it was planned around out-of-date intelligence, rubs salt into that wound. The huge cost of that botched raid, as Diane Foley pointed out with frustration and growing scorn, would have secured the release of many hostages, but that is not the American way.

She makes the same charge around the multi-million cost of taking Kotey and fellow extremist El Shafee Elsheikh to trial, but that is the American way.

That French, Spanish, and Italian hostages were rescued after arms-length, often well-disguised interventions from their governments during the same period must have made Washington’s purity and hypocrisy very hard to endure, especially as the administration showed no compunction about getting its hands very dirty in so many other settings. The US even kidnapped those it perceived as enemies and incarcerated them indefinitely at Guantanamo naval base.

However, her determination to change the shocking realities facing Americans kidnapped outside the US, and her unprecedented success in doing so, honour the memory of her son and all Americans murdered by non-American kidnappers.

Early in his White House term, US president Joe Biden signed off on a revised policy and brought the international kidnapping of Americans under the aegis of America’s National Emergencies Act.

In theory, no American family will be alone again when this dread moment arrives. Unfortunately, his unrelenting support of the genocide in Gaza and all the IDF kidnappings there, dilutes that step towards behaving humanely.

Grace is a powerful, unrelenting force in this narrative: it sustained Diane Foley and members of her family — and her son, she hopes — through their very darkest days.

In her case, that grace is manifested through her deep faith in proactive, everyday Catholicism and the optimism that faith allows her — or, as she might say, makes obligatory.

That she was far more moved by a phone call from Pope Francis after James’ murder than she was by a strained call of questionable sincerity from president Barack Obama, made during a break in a round of golf, underlines that.

When she eventually had a White House meeting with Obama, she was given little more than a very brief, token audience augmented by the inevitable photo opportunity — for whom? — which underlines the very different dynamics of politics and religion.

This cold shoulder from a figure so revered for his perceived humanity must have cut deeply for a family with at least three children serving in America’s military in one capacity or another. The Foleys discovered to their cost that “Yes, We Can” is not always true, that it can occasionally be an optional extra.

It is impossible to read American Mother without remembering McCann’s magnificent seventh 2020 novel, Apeirogon. Through two bereaved fathers it tries to come to some understanding of what is and what is not possible in resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

That never-ending tragedy has, as the world can see only too clearly every day, reached new depths even since America Mother was finished. None of the facts around Foley’s murder may have changed in any way but America’s role in sustaining Israeli carnage may colour attitudes to his and his family’s story. Such is human nature.

It is hard not to think that the families of the 82 journalists (as of January 14) who have died in Gaza since the atrocities of October 7 will not have a very different view to American Mother to the one they might have had before October 7.

There are many heartrending moments in this wonderfully written book, not all of them focused on the Foley family.

One comes when Kotey shows Diane Foley a photograph of his three young daughters who were living in a tent in a refugee camp controlled by one militia or another in Northern Syria, facing all the horrors that implies, such as a rumoured rape camp nearby.

Foley describes them as beautiful girls and is so moved by their plight that she offers to help and support them. It goes without saying that such grace, such empathy is probably beyond most of us.

Today, Kotey is in one of America’s highest security prisons in Colorado where he lives, in solitary confinement, with only an hour’s relief a day when he is allowed exercise alone in a cage without a view.

His only hope is that after maybe 15 years he might be transferred to Britain to be close to his family.

Whether he survives that sentence emotionally or psychologically is obviously an open question.

What he did was appalling but as this moving book and today’s butchery in Gaza show, there are no winners when bloody conflict takes the place of negotiation or compromise.

This is an excellent book for our time as it shows all too clearly what happens when violence usurps reason.

The Foleys and the profound grace they exude show, thankfully, that there is always a roadmap to a better future.

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