A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal (17 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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- Are you prepared?
 
It is Janine. She has made all sorts of preparations; rented rooms in three different hotels, so that she has a bed irrespective of where she is when the bombs start to fall. The rooms are equipped with water bottles, tinned food, blankets, batteries, a generator and a bottle of whisky.
 
She instructs me to keep a ready packed bag by my bed, in case I have to leave quickly. The gasmask must be ready, the bulletproof jacket, a torch and some good shoes.
 
- You must buy water, Åsne, she says. Why haven’t you bought water? And you should book beds in several hotels, like me.
 
Making preparations has always been my weak point. I have however learnt to provide the absolute essentials: two of every cable for the satellite phone and computer, two of all chargers, batteries and torches. The remainder can all be got hold of.
 
I hadn’t thought I would need gasmasks or safety equipment when I travelled to Baghdad at the beginning of January. Back then I had no plans to stay until the war started. Now that war is drawing near I am one of the few without safety gear. But unexpected help is close at hand. The Norwegian Embassy left twenty or so gasmasks, safety clothing, bulletproof vests and helmets when they closed down and went home. The kit was given to the Church Aid, the sole Norwegian aid agency still in Baghdad. I leave their offices with tens of kilos of kit which I throw into the cupboard. At last I can tell Janine that I am ‘well prepared’.
 
- But do you know how to use the mask? she asks.
 
- No
 
- Didn’t you learnt that on the survival course?
 
- Eh?
 
- You have been on a survival course?
 
I am probably the only journalist in Baghdad who has not attended a survival course. There they learnt how to don a gasmask and slip on safety clothing in a flash, how to measure the air’s gas content, how to fall down during a possible attack, how to evaluate dangerous situations. Most editors would not send their journalists into crisis zones without such a course, but no one has sent me; I sent myself. Janine thinks I am playing with life and death, as though staying in Baghdad during the war is not playing with life and death, survival course or not.
 
Peter,
The Times
’ photographer, who has been through every conceivable survival course, intends to teach Janine, Melinda of
Newsweek
and me to put on the gasmasks quicker. I include Tor from the Norwegian Church Aid who has been generous enough to supply both Aliya and Amir with masks from the Embassy. The Norwegian human shields are also given masks by the obliging aid worker.
 
Janine is loath to hold the session at her hotel, the al-Rashid, as people say there are cameras in all the rooms. If we were seen trotting around in gasmasks and survival suits we might be accused of plotting something. We go to al-Hamra, one of the other hotels in which Janine has rented a room.
 
We are taught how to drink wearing the mask, talk through the opening, change the filter, go to the loo. The suits are tight and uncomfortable.
 
If deadly gases are used, what are the chances of me being close to the mask and would I get it on in time? What about everyone else in Baghdad, the ones without masks? How long might it take for a Baath Party member with a gun to shoot me and confiscate my mask if a chemical attack occurred? I will probably never use it.
 
Days pass without my hoarding water bottles in my room. To book rooms in three hotels seems like a waste of money. I am happy in my little al-Fanar, at twenty dollars a night. There is an abundance of food in the markets and I see no necessity to hoard.
 
- I’ll do it later on, I say to Janine.
 
- When the bombs start falling you’ll have other things to do than to buy water. And then the bottles will cost a fortune.
 
 
After all it doesn’t matter that I am not prepared, because on the last day of February it is all over.
 
- I can do nothing more for you, says Kadim.
 
- But . . .
 
- You must leave.
 
- But . . .
 
- Come back another time.
 
- The war is about to start, I would never get back in time, I object.
 
- What war? There won’t be a war.
 
For the first time he does not help me. He wants rid of me. His desk is flooded with paper.
 
- You promised you would always help me, I try.
 
- But I cannot protect you any more. You have overstayed your welcome; the immigration authorities have issued your marching orders.
 
Kadim pauses for a moment. - OK, fill in a new application, go to Amman and apply for another visa, and I’ll help you. You’ll be back in a week or two.
 
I complete the form but I know it’s pointless. Kadim just wants me out of his way.
 
- Maybe Uday can help me, I ask Kadim.
 
- He can do nothing for you.
 
I have done my best to keep away from Uday, thinking out of sight out of mind. But I know he is in charge of who can stay and who has to leave. He recently called Janine and Melinda in to his office and asked if they were prepared, whether they had covered wars before, whether their survival gear was in order, whether they were frightened. I was not found worthy of a private audience with Uday. That same evening I enter the lion’s den.
 
- Who do you think you are? Uday roars, when I express my wish to stay.
 
Life is looking gloomy as I leave for the airport in the morning. The question is - how to get back?
 
At the airport my state of mind is so low that even the most zealous attempts to extract bribes fail. Iraqi border guards will always find that papers are missing and consequently demand enormous sums. From me they do not get a dinar.
 
Two white overalls advance towards me. - Aids test, they say.
 
Everyone coming to Iraq must be tested for Aids. The tests are a joke; the blood vials are left unmarked on the shelves. Just another way of inconveniencing foreigners. The test costs a few dollars but the penalty for not having taken it is hundreds of dollars.
 
- I don’t have Aids, I say gruffly.
 
- This is the rule.
 
- I . . . do . . . not . . . have . . . Aids.
 
I muster all the authority I can possibly come up with at seven o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t care less about the two overalls. Actually I would
like
them to keep me back. That way I will miss the plane to Amman. They mumble something in Arabic, look at me, while I grunt back at them. Then they wave me on. A tiny triumph in all the misery. So that’s how to escape bribes - by not giving a damn.
 
Someone asks me to come in to his office. This time it’s the satellite telephone. I know, however, that my papers are in order. He asks me to sit and I crash down like a petulant teenager. I know people leave these airport offices masses of dollars poorer for fear of not being blacklisted.
 
- You’ll have to pay, he says after a long period of silence.
 
- Eh?
 
- To take this telephone out with you.
 
- I have a right to take it out. Here are my papers.
 
- But you are missing—
 
- Are you insinuating that my papers are not in order? That the Ministry of Information has made a mistake? Let me phone and ask. May I borrow your phone?
 
The man sits there, gaping.
 
- Just a wee
bakhshish
, he begs.
Bakhshish
is the Arabic for a gift or tip. I give him five dollars and get up, ready to leave.
 
Half an hour later I am on the over-crowded morning flight to Amman.
 
 
I drive through Amman in a daze and check in at the best hotel in town - it is large and luxurious but depressing. I long for the grotty al-Fanar, shrill Mino and Said with his endless interior ideas. Once inside the room I even miss the tiny flies that accompanied Said’s palm tree.
 
All is light and shining in Amman’s Intercontinental. The beds have soft white duvets and pillows. A velvety dressing gown hangs in the cupboard, slippers are ready for use. Everything smells clean and pleasant, not a single cockroach in sight. There is a TV with numerous channels, room service, Jacuzzi, massage, fitness room, swimming pool, mini-bar. I am in the wrong place.
 
I ponder how to return to Baghdad. I can forget about the normal channels. The hotel is jammed with journalists waiting for a visa. Some of them have been waiting for months. Instant visas, however, accompanied by a pat on the back from the Iraqi embassy, are granted to the human shields. Once in Baghdad I am sure to escape the chains at the oil refinery.
 
After just an hour in Amman I show up at the shields’ enrolment office, on the fourth floor of a shady hotel near the bus station. My hair is dishevelled and my clothes are worn out. It is all important to look like a genuine shield.
 
I am met by a Jordanian who leads me to Shane. He sits wrapped in a woolly Afghan shawl. I feel like asking whether he had also acted as a human shield for the Taliban but resist the urge. Shane is coughing and pouring hot tea down his throat. His eyes are red-rimmed and his skin pale. Suddenly a wet sneeze erupts. Shane points to a chair and I try hard to look as miserable as him to impart the impression that I am one of them. That is not difficult after the frustrated, sleepless night.
 
I invent a story that I lay awake because of the Iraqi children who will soon be bombed by the Americans. As a precaution, and in case they see all the Iraqi stamps in my passport, I say I have been in Iraq as a volunteer with a team of Norwegian child psychologists. As I have already written about them I can adopt their story without difficulty.
 
Shane says I can go on the next bus.
 
- It will be departing in a few days; we just have to fill it up. We are expecting a few more shields. It might be the last bus to Baghdad before the war. But you’ll have to see the boss first, she must give you the OK. That shouldn’t be a problem, Shane says encouragingly, before another coughing fit overtakes him.
 
The boss is a gruff British woman. She informs me about all that might happen in Baghdad. The danger of chemical attacks, the danger of being taken hostage, the danger of being chained to military installations. She also tells me that most of the shields are now on their way out. That I know already.
 
- The party is over, Lydia says. - The mood has changed. None of the shields live in hotels any longer, but spend all their time, night and day, at the installations they are protecting.
 
I answer that I am prepared to take the risk. Lydia accepts me as a human shield, takes my passport, and asks me to sign a document saying that I am informed of the dangers of going to Baghdad and that I am acting on my own responsibility.
 
- What is your room number? she asks. The majority of the shields live in the hotel while waiting for departure. They share rooms at fifty pence a night.
 
- I’m staying with friends, I stutter. Genuine shields do not stay at the Intercontinental.
 
She asks me to return the next day, but the next day there is no news, nor the day after. An increasing number of shields return from Baghdad. I am nervous that some of the Norwegians might walk through the door and spot me. But something else nearly gives me away. Because I am depressed and my energy levels are low I indulge myself in the luxury of an hotel driver. I normally ask him to wait some way off during my daily trips to the shield office. One day the driver gets nervous because I have stayed so long in the shady hotel and he comes to look for me. One of the employees knocks on Lydia’s door while I am there.

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