Wafaa Bilal got famous by shutting himself in a room with an automated paintball gun pointed right at him. The gun was hooked up to the Internet, and viewers could shoot Bilal with yellow paint—an opportunity more than 60,000 Web users took advantage of.
NB: So you wouldn’t do something like this again?
NB: Did you initially think the book would include your own experiences in Iraq?
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WB: No, I did not. I thought about it as a book focused on my experience within Domestic Tension. But later, when I met Kari Lydersen and we started working together—Kari was reporting for the Washington Post on the project, and I was very impressed with her ability to capture the story and render it for other people, so I approached her about the book and she said yes—very soon after that we kept talking about my life, and how things in the project triggered childhood memories and memories from Iraq, and how past experiences in Iraq served me in Domestic Tension or helped me survive it. She suggested we do a parallel structure. I was hesitant because I thought maybe the life experience would overwhelm Domestic Tension. Even the publisher had hesitation. But I started seeing it was going to work.
NB: You aren’t able to do that because— ?
For many people the project became about domestic [violence]. A kid from the south side of Chicago said to me, “Thank you for doing this—this is what I feel every time I am at home or in my neighborhood.”
I know some people who shot [at me] felt guilty and became part of the people who defended me. There was a group called the Virtual Human Shield, and their mission was to defend me by pointing the gun to the left side. That was the hope: to establish the dialogue.
