Michael Garofalo (MG): Jasmyn! Jasmyn Morris.

 

Jasmyn Morris (JM): Hi Michael Garofalo! I remember you. 

 

MG: And listeners might remember us too.  We hosted this podcast for many, many years. 

 

JM: And we’re back with you because this fall we’re celebrating something very special.=

 

MG: It’s StoryCorps’ 20th anniversary. And to mark two decades of StoryCorps, we’re going to bring you a special season of the podcast hosted by Jasmyn and me. 

 

JM: We’ll be taking a look back at the early days, into the origin of the project, the launch of our recording booths, and revisiting some classic StoryCorps conversations… with updates.

 

MG: It’s sort of StoryCorps then and now. And we’ve both been lucky enough to have been here to witness a lot of it. So we’re going to warm up for this special series with a couple of short episodes this week and next.

 

JM: A lot has changed over the years… other than just who hosts this podcast. One of the places you can really see that is in our Military Voices Initiative, where we’ve been recording stories of service members and their families. 

 

MG: Yeah, back when we started the Military Voices Initiative in 2012, there were still a lot of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. And most of the people we talked to back then were veterans of those conflicts.

 

JM: And that includes Specialist Justin Cliburn. His story was the very first in our Military Voices series that we aired on NPR. He deployed to Iraq in 2005 with the Oklahoma Army National Guard. His job was to train the Iraqi police in Baghdad.

 

 Justin came to StoryCorps with his wife, Deanne, to remember a young Iraqi boy named Ali.

 

Justin Cliburn (JC): One day we saw this child walking through the compound. His name was Ali and he did not want to talk to us.

 

Deanne Cliburn (DC): As opposed to a lot of the other Iraqi kids that you encountered?

 

JC: Yes. He was very shy. 

And the second or third time that I met him, he brought his best friend Ahmed. And Ahmed was much more outgoing. And so, Ali really opened up. 

 

And, once I met these children, it made every day something I looked forward to. 

 

We would play rock, paper, scissors. We would kick around a soccer ball. We were about as close as people that don’t speak the same language can be. I had never been really good with children and this was the first time I felt like I loved someone who wasn’t my family member. 

 

But one day Ali showed up and I could tell something wasn’t right. He kept saying, ”Ahmed, Ahmed…Boom.” 

 

We learned that Ahmed and his mother went to the gas station and a suicide bomber detonated. Ahmed’s mother is dead — she died instantly. And Ahmed is in a hospital somewhere. And so other soldiers and I collected what cash we had and gave it to Ali and said, ”Go take this to Ahmed’s father.” 

 

But later, I saw Ali walking up very slow and, uh…he sat down on the curb next to my humvee. He dug a hole in the ground with his fingers. He picked up a rock and put it in the hole and then he put the dirt back over it. And he just pointed to the ground and said, ”Ahmed.” And I knew that Ahmed was dead. 

 

And so I sat on the curb with him — Me in desert camouflage, carrying an M-4 rifle and him just a North Baghdad kid. Just sat there and cried. 

 

I don’t know what came of him. That’s the nature of war I suppose. But whenever I see any footage from Baghdad, I’m always kind of looking around, wondering if he’s in the frame.

 

 JM: That was Justin Cliburn with his wife, Deanne Cliburn in 2012.

 

MG: So Jasmyn, do we know what Justin’s doing now?

 

JM: Yeah, he went on to get a law degree, and he now does legal work for school districts in Oklahoma.

And as many listeners know, we animate some of our stories. They run on public television, we post them online, social media… and so Justin let us know that after we posted his story, a viewer actually commented and said they live in Baghdad, and that they wanted to help him maybe find Ali. But you know, Ali’s name is a pretty common one. So they’ve had no success, but Justin still holds out hope. 

 

MG: Thanks, Jasmyn. As you said at the beginning, this story was the first ever  broadcast from our Military Voices series on NPR. And next week, we’ll share our most recent story from that collection. 

 

MG: Justin’s  story was produced by Yasmina Guerda, and edited by me. 

 

JM: Our Associate Producer is Max Jungreis.

 

MG: Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd. 

 

JM: Our Executive Producer is none other than Michael Garofalo. 

 

MG: Special thanks to Daniel Littlewood and Eleanor Vassili.

 

JM: Record your own StoryCorps conversation… at one of our storybooths, with our app, or remotely… find out how at StoryCorps.org.

 

MG: I’m Michael Garofalo. 

JM: And I’m Jasmyn Morris… We’ll be back next week. Thanks for listening.