A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (18 page)

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Authors: Asne Seierstad,Ingrid Christophersen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Editors; Journalists; Publishers, #History, #Military, #Iraq War (2003-2011), #Language Arts & Disciplines, #Journalism, #Social Science, #Customs & Traditions, #Sociology

BOOK: A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal
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- Your driver is here, he says.
 
I bundle the uniformed driver down the stairs in a jiffy, hoping no one has noticed him, before returning to Lydia.
 
- We are having problems with the Iraqis, is all she says. - They are not happy with our discipline. Suddenly many don’t want to be at the electricity works, but at orphanages and hospitals, and the Iraqis won’t accept that. They aren’t actual targets and they feel stitched up.
 
- Ah, but I really want to be at an electricity plant, so they’ll have no problems with me.
 
I return to their headquarters every evening to await some news. One evening I get into conversation with an older woman who has just left Iraq.
 
- It’s no joke any more, she says. - They’ll bomb, no matter what. Don’t go, she insists, and asks what I do for a living. I tell her the same made-up story.
 
- My dear, she says. - Surely you can do something better in life than chain yourself to a bomb target?
 
The next morning at last Shane takes our passports to the embassy. He has mustered a group together and we are off as soon as the visas are issued. The same afternoon I turn up at his office and realise that something is not right.
 
- Everyone got a visa, except for you, he says accusingly. - They said you are a journalist. Are you?
 
- No, not at all. It must be a mistake, I say, and disappear out of the door and down the road to my waiting driver. The game is up. The Iraqi Embassy can’t be fooled. I am in their archives.
 
 
I pass my days in front of the TV. The Security Council negotiations are like a thriller that keep me glued to the screen. I switch from BBC to CNN or Sky News. In Baghdad they demolish al-Samoud missiles but the Americans say ‘too little, too late’.
 
I try everything to get back - via humanitarian visa, cultural visa, business visa. Soon there is no employee left in the Iraqi Embassy that I have not tried to bribe. Well, not me personally, but Muhammed, the driver who drove Jorunn, Bǻrd and me to Baghdad one January morning long ago. He says he needs five thousand dollars to sort it all out, OK, I say, but to no avail. The Iraqi Embassy is quite simply not issuing visas these nervous March days.
 
One evening I meet Tim in the hotel bar. His speciality is the Balkans, and we have both written books about Serbia. After September 11 he realised he would have to find new hunting grounds, and some weeks later we met by chance on a plane to Dushanbe. Once in Afghanistan we collected stories together, about the donkey smuggler, the child commandant, the veiled TV star. Like then he is working for
The Economist
and the
New York Review of Books
.
 
- I wrote a whole article about Afghan donkeys when I got home, he laughs. - That’s the article I’ve received most praise for ever!
 
He is off to Baghdad, having waited ten months for a visa. We agree to meet in the swimming pool before his departure next morning. What a life!
 
Tim’s travelling companion is none other than Bob. Actually, that is not his real name. We know each other from Afghanistan; I remember him as a persistent reporter, always on the lookout for ‘serious fighting’ or a scoop. I have not seen him since leaving Kabul. He asks me how the book I was writing got on, where he features in the chapter about Khost. I tell him that I changed his name.
 
- Bob! Bob! You called me Bob?
 
- What’s wrong with that?
 
- When I’ve turned into a chap called Bob, I know exactly how you’ve described me. Bob, bob. You could have given me another name.
 
- What? Maximilian? Alexander? Bob suits you.
 
We all oversleep for the swimming pool meeting and the next time I hear from Tim and Bob I am standing outside the Iraqi Embassy waiting for my bribes to bear fruit. They phone as they cross the border, before the mobile phone signal disappears.
 
- Dinner at Nabil’s tomorrow, they tempt me
 
- Shut up! I’ll be there before you know.
 
Nearly every day I phone Kadim at the press centre. On the rare occasions when he answers, he says: Patient. You must be patient.
 
- Then I’ll phone again tomorrow, I persist each time.
 
- No, not tomorrow. Phone in a week.
 
When I phone a few days later he again asks me to contact him in a week. I realise he is never going to get me a visa.
 
A French photographer gets a tourist visa. Iraqi Airways is the tour operator. There must be a group of a minimum of five and you have to pay for a week-long trip. During the mornings there is compulsory sightseeing, the afternoons are leisure time. The programme takes in Ur, Babylon, Mosul, and Baghdad.
 
It is unbelievable. But several journalist colleagues go as tourists. A few of us decide to try the same tactic.
 
Most people just laugh.
 
- A week? And when that’s over? Can you book a two-week excursion too?
 
Others think we are mad.
 
- What happens when they find your cameras? Holiday in Hell. Get serious. The Iraqi regime is not to play with.
 
Eventually there are enough of us to make up a group. Iraqi Airways makes us fill in some forms, curiously simple by Iraqi standards: name, address, occupation. One of us writes architect, another nurse, a third teacher, a fourth firefighter, ballet dancer, model, factory owner - the choice is yours. Strangely enough, we are not required to sign papers saying we enter Iraq at our own risk. I venture to ask who issues the visas.
 
- The Ministry for Culture, the man behind the counter answers.
 
- So it is not handled by the Foreign Ministry?
 
- No, that’s not necessary. After all, you’re only going on holiday.
 
The situation is absurd. The world’s press is kicking its heels, but the tourist visa is issued in a couple of hours. While we sit in the offices of Iraqi Airways, the fax with our permissions clatters in from Baghdad. The next hurdle is the embassy in Amman. Wonders of wonders, the applications are passed. It appears this tourist office operates independently of the war, as if they have not taken in the fact that the attack will most probably start during the tour’s first days. While we’re shuffling around Ur, for instance. When one of the Americans asks what will happen to us if the war starts, I stamp on his foot and hiss with my eyes: Let’s not start making problems.
 
The mild one behind the counter just says: - If it gets that bad, why not just leave.
 
The bus departs the following evening. The kind man even makes a list of our hotels so the driver can pick everyone up individually. He gives us some brochures on sights to visit. At the bottom of the brochures are the words ‘Have a Nice Trip!’ ‘Trap’ might be better.
 
As I leave Iraqi Airways Muhammed phones.
 
- Your visa is here!
 
A real journalist’s visa, with the right to work, write, transmit and photograph. The group is large enough to go without me.
 
- Five thousand dollars, Muhammed says when I meet him.
 
- Five thousand!
 
- Wasn’t that the sum we agreed on?
 
- Yes, but that was two weeks ago. Now I’ve spent half of that on hotel bills.
 
- You don’t want to pay?
 
- That was the sum we agreed on when you said you could get a visa the same day. Two weeks ago! Now you’re only getting half.
 
Muhammed looks at me sadly, as if I have cheated him.
 
- If you don’t pay, I’ll have to, he says, eyes fixed on the ground. - These men are dangerous.
 
I pay it all, of course. My travelling funds suddenly shrink. Back at the hotel I wave my visa at all those still waiting.
 
An email winks at me when I turn the computer on. ‘Dear Friend’, it says. I shudder as I read:
don’t come asne, this is a death trap and we are all
prepared down to the last man.
you won’t be prepared for it.
i would stay put and safe.
but if you want to come DO IT FAST.
i can’t advise you - it is your life. be careful
love
janine
 
 
 
ps - i am in room 1301 or 330 of palestine hotel
now
 
 
It is pitch black when the jeep pulls up in front of the hotel. A bell boy carries my suitcase. Muhammed puts it in the boot. We leave the well-lit streets and turn towards Baghdad. In time.
 
During
 
- My uncle lives in Baghdad. If it gets dangerous he’ll come and fetch you. He lives in one of the safest areas of town, just phone him if you’re frightened.
 
Muhammed is staring fixedly at the road ahead. Dawn is approaching. The desert is rushing past us, its colours changing from greyish black to shimmering brown, from blue to violet, until it crackles into golden as the sun sends its first rays over the sand. The hard-won visa burns in my pocket.
 
- He has a large family.
 
- Good.
 
- He has stored food and water for months.
 
I lose the thread of Muhammed’s conversation. Exhausted after sleepless nights, I try to sort out my thoughts but they are all tangled up. If I had been able to draw them I might have got them into some sort of perspective: straight thoughts, crooked thoughts, crumpled thoughts, stuttering thoughts, stabbing thoughts, hurtful thoughts, raw thoughts, fearful thoughts. But if I had scribbled them down one by one they would have ended up one black lump. They lie on top of each other, with no air in between. It is impossible to pry them apart and think of them individually, in spite of the simple question: Is it right to go back to Baghdad now?
 
Until I got the visa, I didn’t think about the danger of returning. I had never really considered whether I actually had the guts; I just wanted it so badly.
 
My visa had been delivered by the embassy’s afternoon shift. That same night Muhammed was driving an empty car to Baghdad to fetch some of the Reuters team. He would leave Amman at three in the morning to be at the border by daybreak. Then he would get to Baghdad by noon and be back at the border before dark.
 
- I’ll pick you up at three, Muhammed said when I got the visa.
 
- I don’t know, I said.
 
- You don’t know?
 
- No. Maybe I don’t want to go to Baghdad.
 
- But you’ve just paid five thousand dollars for a visa!
 
- But I’m not sure I’ve got the guts.
 
- You should have thought of that before.
 
I took a walk around the hotel to find someone to talk to. Someone who could make up my mind. Of all people, I bumped into Bob.
 
- I thought you’d gone! I exclaimed.
 
- Yes, but they pulled me out. Security reasons. Damn. They are thinking of pulling out Melinda too. Do you care for a drink in my room?
 
- I have to pack.
 
- Where are you going?
 
- I got a visa.
 
- When are you going?
 
- I don’t know if I am.
 
- Come and have a drink when you’ve made up your mind.
 
A few hours later I was sitting in his suite. The table was covered with glasses of gin, ice cubes and a small bottle of tonic. The television was showing pictures from the Azores, where Bush, Blair and Aznar were holding their last meeting. It was clear that war was unavoidable.
 
Three frustrated people sat watching: Bob, who once again was missing out on ‘some serious fighting’, the Magnum agency photographer, Alex, and me. One of the world’s most famous war photographers, Alex was depressed because he had no visa. Every hour that passed his grief increased as he thought about the photos he would never take. Myself, I was not only frustrated but falling apart with doubt. I knew that if I went to Iraq now, I would not be able to get out until the war was over.

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