Whisper by Tal Bauer

Whisper by Tal Bauer

SUMMARY

The truth is complicated.

On September 11th, 2001, Kris Caldera was a junior member of the CIA's Alec Station, the unit dedicated to finding and stopping Osama Bin Laden.

They failed. 

Ten days later, he was on the ground in Afghanistan with a Special Forces team, driven to avenge the ghosts that haunted him and the nation he'd let down. On the battlefield, he meets Special Forces Sergeant David Haddad. David - Arab American, Muslim, and gay - becomes the man Kris loves, the man he lives for, and the man he kills for, through the long years of the raging wars.

David Haddad thought he'd be an outsider his whole life. Too American for the Middle East, too Arab for America, and too gay to be Muslim. It took Kris to bring the parts of himself together, to make him the man he'd always wanted to be. But the War on Terror wreaks havoc on David's soul, threatening to shatter the fragile peace he's finally found with Kris.

When a botched mission rips David from Kris's life, Kris's world falls into ruin and ash. A shell of the man who once loved with the strength to shake both the CIA and the world, he marks time on the edges of his life. The days bleed together, meaningless after losing the love of his life.

After being captured, tortured to the edge of his life, and left for dead by his comrades, David doesn't know how much of himself is left. He vanished one day in the tribal belt of Pakistan, and the man who walks out almost a decade later is someone new: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.

But strange rumblings are whispering through the CIA. Intelligence from multiple sources overseas points to something new. Something deadly, and moving to strike the United States. Intercepts say an army from Khorasan, the land of the dead where the Apocalypse of Islam will rise, is coming.

And, at the head of this army, a shadowy figure the US hasn't seen before: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.

David is coming home

MY REVIEW

Whisper my name, and I will always be there. 

The last 4-5 days I have been living and breathing inside Whisper. It is an overwhelming book. It is a strong book. It is a long book. I did a bit of research myself while I was reading it, because some events were strongly described and apparently they DID happen.

You need to invest a lot of your time when you start this book, but it is worth it. 
It is a book about religion, blind faith, prophecies, holly wars, spiritual healing and peace. But mostly it is a book about LOVE. And when a book talks about love so strongly, I am game.

If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.
Oh Beloved,
take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything
that takes me from you.
Rumi

If you have read Hush, you most probably remember and have liked (Captain America's LOL) Mike’s sassy friend Kris with the tragic lovestory with the tragic ending who was pushing Mike in order to pursue happiness.
I was not sure that I wanted to learn what happened between Kris and his husband. Surprisingly (yes I know), I don't like sad endings. I just wanted and hoped that Kris would find the perfect replacement for this part of his heart that was gone. And that he would be finally happy with the perfect man.
So, when Whisper starts with the actual story of Kris and the true and only love of his life David from the actual beginning in 2001, I was thinking “Oh my God, where did I get myself into? This book will burn me alive and consume me and take my breath away and make me cry. I don't want to cry. Can we just get to the nice stuff, when Kris falls in love again and forever and ever? And this happens in 2018 preferably?!? I don’t want to know what happened in 2001.”

Haddad grinned. “I’m just the team medic. It’s a good thing I already knew Arabic. You can’t teach this dog any new tricks.”
Something curled through Kris’s veins, a familiar warmth. “Oh, I’m not sure about that.” He winked, his flirty nature naturally rising— 

Damn it! Ok, fine! I will read it!

As a result I have spent the last few days up in the mountains of Afghanistan with Kris and David. I felt their fear, their hunger, their desperation and their determination. I saw them seeking for comfort and warmth sleeping together at night. I saw them falling in love.

Out of everyone in the room, David burned the brightest, laughed the loudest, transfixed Kris in ways he couldn’t describe. He almost couldn’t breathe, watching David. The thin air of Kabul seemed too weak, too light, to contain all that David was. 

Then I saw them in Pakistan, in Iraq, in USA trying to convince everyone that they are allowed to be married and happy together.
I felt their pain when they failed, I felt their pain when they stopped believing in happy endings.

This is a very very long book obviously. If you don't pay attention, you may be lost.

The book can vaguely be distinguished in three main parts in the war zones. Between these parts Kris and David will have moments of peace back in USA:
1. Kris and David chasing the Bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan 
2. Kris and David following the war in Iraq
3. Kris and David being back in Afghanistan

After that, the action will shift to USA for Kris and to Pakistan Northwestern Frontier for David. They will now have different roles and different perspectives under the same moon, but not under the same sky.

Also three are the main critical turning points for the relationship between Kris and David:
1. Kris meets David
2. Kris loses David 
3. David finds Kris

So this is the story of Kris in CIA: How a scrawny gay kid from Puerto Rico managed to be an American hero, how his actions or the lack of actions affected the future of a blood-bathing vicious war, how he rose above other people expectations, how he rose above his own expectations and changed the objectives and the views of a war, how he fell in love and matured and was broken and how he managed to put himself back again.
But it is also the story of David: how a Muslim boy from Libya forgot his roots, how he tried to hide his feelings and beliefs, how he tried to hide from his true self, how he survived being lost in the middle of two different civilizations, how the love of a man made him remember.

A lot of people are going to die for this, and if they die for lies, then what are they dying for? 

The story is spanned in more than 15 years. The two lovers will need to have separate ways and be apart for so long! If you have read the blurb carefully , you will notice that David did not die. He was reborn. It is not easy to re-create and re-live such an epic love. Of course there would be only one man for Kris. 

I believe that the author can create the strongest images with his perfect descriptions:
The wars are as ruthless and as unforgiving as I have imagined it.
The people involved in these wars are as broken and as confused as I have guessed they would be.
The bond of these two men bursts feelings. Affection, desire, lust, adoration, passion, sacrifice.

(I need to open a parenthesis here and tell you a bit about how I have experienced the last 18 years.
To be honest, I didn't really care much about politics or what was happening in the world in the beginning of this new millennium. I was young and carefree and a student in Newcastle, UK. I remember that when the buildings collapsed on 9/11, I was at the common computers room at the university and a friend was watching this live on the internet. I actually watched silently and live the second airplane crashing and the buildings falling and I did not know what I was seeing. I thought that it was the advertisement for a new blockbuster film and in the next few seconds Brush Willis would run from the debris, the dust and the smoke holding a puppy and two babies in his arms shouting “Take them and I am going back in. I need to save the cheerleaders.”
Of course when I realised my ignorance, I cried.
The same way, I cry when I watch the news nowadays and
...I see refugees drowning trying to cross the Mediterranean sea,
...I see children drowning before they reach Lesvos and Kos,
...I see children unable to breathe after the chemical attack in Syria,
...I see children being shot in schools and in concerts and in the cinemas in the USA and UK
...I see the bomb attacks in Paris and in Istanbul
...I see young people full of dreams being shot like animals in the summer camp in Norway
...I see cars crashing into helpless tourists
...I see despair, blood, bombs, deaths and suffering 

Where had everything gone wrong? 

You can say that I have become more sensitive recently and I know now what is going on around me. Maybe because I matured. Maybe because my father died and I became a mother. Now every time I see a person tortured or die, I think of his/her mother for some reason. And I also think of the mothers of the suicide bombers and terrorists. How do these women feel about the actions of their children?

“...everyone points the finger at each other, saying everyone else is the evil one. Where is the truth?”
“The truth is complicated.” 

There is a fragile equilibrium among most of the countries during the last years. We live without thinking much of what is going on around us. Most of us operate on automatic pilot. We live, we work, we love or not love in our own little small universe.

During the last 4-5 years, I have divided my time between United Arab Emirates and Greece. I have basically raised my two young children in Abu Dhabi. I feel safe for my family here. I actually feel that this is the safest place on earth for the time being – although we are based in the middle of the storm. It is so weird. There is war and bombings all around in the middle East and here there is peace and quiet and safety. I can walk at 3 in the morning holding my two children and I know that nobody will attack me in the street. I know that if my forget my bag somewhere, it will be still there when I return. I know that when my son plays hide and seek with his friend here outside, he will not disappear for ever. And the relationships between people are nice. My children go to an international school. My son's teacher is from Iraq, while his teacher last year was from Lebanon. My daughter's teacher is from Ireland, while her teacher last year was from Singapore. My son's girlfriend (they are 5 y.o. and yes they are cute!) is from Mexico and his best friend is from Jordan. My daughter's boyfriend's name is Mohammed and he was born and raised in Ireland (they are 7 y.o. and yes they are cute!) and her best friend is from Turkey.
I feel so happy and blessed that my children grow up in such a multinational environment. I have lived something similar only when I was studying in UK.
But still after we have a couple of glasses of wine with my husband and we start talking about the future, I sometimes ask him half-seriously and half-jokingly “In case we need to run, besides the children, our passports and some money, what else do we need to get with us?”.
What I am trying to say is that although I feel safe, I am still scared. 
And this is the end of this very long parenthesis. )


Back to the book...
Well, it is not easy to write my thoughts and feelings in just one page for a book that took 6 months for the author to research and write it and it is more than 900 pages long. I don't think I can do the book justice. 

The author has amazingly woven together true historical recent facts and events, conspiracy theories and fiction. But the central piece of all these is an incredible lovestory.

All the parts of David, all the pieces that made him the man Kris loved, were tumbling within him, slipping inside of his soul. Vows of love in Arabic and English, prayers to Allah, Kris’s name, the name of his lover, a man. David shuddered, his body quaking in Kris’s arms. Who was David when he bared everything?
“Habib albi,” Kris breathed. “Enta habibi.” Love of my heart. You are my love.
David pulled back. Their eyes met. “Ya rouhi,” David whispered. My soul.
Kris kissed him. Their bodies were still joined. David still filled him, body and soul. “You are my soul, too.” 

I hope that you give this book a chance.