- Rapid City, S.D. - Many
people
around Jeremy Hinzman's hometown assume that he's crazy.It is pretty rare
to find anybody in this prairie city who calls themself a Buddhist
pacifist,
much less a pacifist who joined the military.
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- It is also difficult for residents to grasp why the
26-year-old
would run away from the Iraq war and claim refugee status in Canada, where
U.S. citizens almost never get asylum.
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- Even more unusual was his vow of silence, his veganism,
his daily meditation, his abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and his habit
of walking instead of driving. He enjoyed having his fingernails and
toenails
painted pink.
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- But his closest friends from this conservative city,
where the Great Plains heave up into the Black Hills, say Mr. Hinzman is
misunderstood.
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- "He's done a lot of strange things," said his
former roommate Amanda Hubbard, 28. "He wants to get reactions from
people. But he's probably the most intelligent person I've ever met, and
I'd say he knows exactly what he's doing."
-
- Mr. Hinzman deserted the 82nd Airborne Division in
January,
2004, and fled to Toronto with his wife and two-year-old son after his
application for conscientious-objector status was rejected.
-
- His three-day refugee hearing wrapped up last week. He
said he thinks he will face "social persecution" if he is sent
back to the United States and believes he is within his legal right to
refuse to fight in the war in Iraq because he does not want to commit
atrocities.
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- Ms. Hubbard's favourite story about Mr. Hinzman comes
from the spring of 2001 when they lived together in a two-bedroom
apartment.
It was a standard-issue unit with white walls and white carpet but Ms.
Hubbard appreciated the place and Mr. Hinzman's presence because they
offered
her sanctuary from a nasty breakup.
-
- One day in April, a wild storm dumped a pile of snow
on Rapid City and knocked out power lines, shutting the city down. The
roommates made French fries for breakfast, painted each others fingernails
and toenails, and lounged in their building's hot tub.
-
- "That's not normal here," Ms. Hubbard said.
"And most guys in South Dakota would have took it [the paint] off
right away, but he didn't care. He was proud that we painted his toenails
and fingernails. It's just the way he was. He wasn't concerned about what
people thought about him. He did things for the experience."
-
- Denise Hardesty used to go hiking with Mr. Hinzman on
nearby Mount Rushmore, and she served as his witness when he married Nga
Nguyen in a small ceremony at a minister's house.
-
- The young man enjoyed pushing social boundaries, she
said, whether he was showing up for work in his grandmother's clothing
or attending peace marches against the Iraq war while serving at a military
base in Fort Bragg, N. C.
-
- "That's why he'd put himself in situations like
that, just to look at things another way," Ms. Hardesty said.
-
- His friends still marvel that he enlisted at all. Just
months before, he was hanging out at an unkempt white house known as the
Bucket of Blood, a place rented by some punk music enthusiasts. An
anarchist
symbol was strung up in Christmas lights on the wall, and the basement
was turned into a mosh pit.
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- "It was so surprising when he joined the army,"
said Shawna Roth, 34, who moved into his room after he left.
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- In Rapid City, his eccentricities were mostly tolerated,
Ms. Hubbard said. His employers at a bagel shop were not particularly happy
when he decided to take a vow of silence and spent six weeks communicating
with notepads or a chalk board, she said, but he wasn't fired.
-
- Ms. Hubbard's relationship with him got tense at times,
too. He would rent movies with subtitles when she wanted a romance, and
he often lectured her about her spending habits or the stupidity of eating
iceberg lettuce. But she always forgave his strangeness because she found
him kind and thoughtful and because he cooked superb vegan food.
-
- He encountered a different attitude in the military,
and it surprised him. He was driving around the base at Fort Bragg one
day when an officer noticed the anti-war bumper sticker on his blue 1996
Chevrolet Prism. The officer followed him to his home and ordered him to
remove it.
-
- "I'm not sure they did a good job of explaining
it to him before he got into the military," Ms. Hubbard said. "He
didn't realize he was in the army now, he wasn't entitled to his own
opinion
about things."
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- At his grandmother's house, where gnome statues peer
out of the garden and the woman who raised him politely declines to talk,
Ms. Hardesty said the basement remains full of Mr. Hinzman's books on
religion
and philosophy.
-
- She hopes Canada's refugee system will give the family
reason to ship those books north, instead of sending them to a military
prison.
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- "I hope this works out for him," Ms. Hardesty
said.
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