What Was I Thinking: A Memoir (16 page)

‘Oh, it’s like that is it? We were told that we had to see Mr Sadoon.’

‘Yeah, I think he’s the guy.’

The BBC producer called a colleague over. They went into another room and I heard him say, ‘We’re here to see Mr Sadoon. BBC.’ Sure enough, that was the last time I saw them. And the Iraqis weren’t making an exception for them. They paid, but the sums being asked meant nothing to them. They were there to get in and cost was no object. A thousand here and there, as a percentage of the total cost of their trip, was nothing. Fuckers.

Back home, Derek Lowe never quite got it when I tried to explain the problem. ‘Why didn’t you report him?’ he always said. Or, ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’ I could have tried that: ‘Hello, police? I’d like to report the Iraqi embassy.’

I knew I was getting nowhere. I could have gone home. I had some reasonable stories. But having got that far I couldn’t leave without one last effort to get across the border. I went to see a Finnish journalist I had got friendly with.

‘You are not going to get a visa to go into Iraq,’ I said. ‘And neither am I. It’s not going to happen.’

‘Oh, I’m going to give it a few more days,’ he said.

‘There’s no reason to imagine that a few more days will make any difference.’

It wasn’t like they were gradually whittling through people. We were just seeing new faces added to the group every day. I had been there about two weeks. He had been there longer.

‘I don’t want to spend the next few days waiting for this bunch of arseholes to sell me a visa that I haven’t got the money to pay for. Why don’t we rent a four-wheel drive and go for it? There’s a war on — almost. How efficient is the immigration department in Iraq going to be?’ To my eventual regret, although he was wearing a suit and seemed quite stuffy, he immediately embraced this very stupid idea.

‘Where will we get a four-wheel drive?’ he said.

‘Have you been outside? They’re everywhere.’

Within half an hour I had contracted a driver with a substantial four-wheel drive. His English was bad but his price was good. I didn’t tell him whether or not we had documentation, so he probably assumed we did. As we made our way to the border I reported home and told the listeners about having no documents, so that became part of the story.

Night fell quickly as it does in that part of the world, taking the temperature right down with it.

‘Iraq,’ said the driver suddenly, and pointed. Apparently we were there.

‘Can you just pull over and stop for a moment?’ I said. We stopped where we could see Iraq in the distance.

I still wasn’t sure what our chances were so I decided to confess all to the driver.

‘We have no documentation,’ I told him. ‘We have been told we can fill in our documentation at the Iraqi border.’ I had convinced myself that might be possible, especially because Mr Sadoon would not be there.

‘I do not think that is possible,’ said the driver.

‘Well, that’s what I was told at the Iraqi embassy,’ I lied.

Our driver had been to Iraq many, many times and taken many loads, but he had never taken foreigners without visas. He was not keen.

‘I think this is the end of the line,’ said my colleague.

‘It can’t be the end of the line,’ I insisted. ‘One way or another we’ve got to get into Iraq, even if it is only into the bloody Customs booth.’

And then I came up with a way to make my original plan even worse.

‘Let’s just drive in. There’s no fences as such. It’s night time. We’ve got a four-wheel drive. We don’t have to be on the road.’

We decided to edge our way a little closer on the road and then turn the lights off, go off road and cross the border that way. We considered the possibilities of being stopped without documents after that and talked ourselves into believing that the closer you got to Baghdad, the more lawless it would be.

So we got virtually to the border, then did a cunning duck around and, despite it being pitch black and the middle of the desert, quickly drove into an Iraqi military base.

‘We’re going to have to rely on you to translate,’ I told the driver. ‘Just plead ignorance, say we’re fools from another country.
We both look stupid enough to make that convincing.’

But before there was any time to put that into practice we were all dragged out of the car and had the shit beaten out of us by men with guns.

‘Sorry, sorry, it’s been a terrible mistake,’ I kept saying. I was about to fall back on ‘It was all his idea. I never wanted to do it’, when the beating stopped.

My Finnish friend panicked and started talking about the Geneva fucking Convention. Even though I was hurting badly I was still able to register that he was being an absolute twat. He and I were taken and held at the Iraqi checkpoint. God knows what happened to that poor driver. He was beaten up as well, but he wasn’t taken to the checkpoint.

We were hauled into a room with the compulsory giant portraits of Saddam Hussein staring down on us. The guard running the checkpoint was bemused more than anything.

‘Documents,’ he snapped and we handed over what we had.

‘No visa?’

‘We’d like a visa. Yes, please,’ I said. Well, it was worth a try.

‘You don’t come here through the desert to get a visa,’ he said, and I was relieved to hear that he spoke English very well. ‘You must get a visa in Jordan.’

‘They told us …’ I began, and as I heard the words come out I knew it wasn’t going to wash. I changed tack and told the truth. ‘I’m sorry, we just thought we’d give it a go. Do you know Mr Sadoon?’

‘Sadoon?’

‘Yeah. People are bribing him at your embassy in Jordan. He’s making a fortune selling visas and I can’t afford to buy one. I’m from New Zealand. I want to tell your story. This guy is from Finland, he wants to tell your story. We just can’t afford to pay the bribes to Mr Sadoon. Where’s your family?’

‘In Baghdad.’

‘When did you last see them?’

‘It’s been some time.’

‘How much do you get paid?’

‘I haven’t been paid for six months.’

‘Have any of your colleagues been paid in the last six months?’

‘Some have not been paid for much longer than me.’

‘So you haven’t seen your family, a war could start at any time, you haven’t been paid for six months, Mr Sadoon wants a thousand US dollars a week for me to bring a satellite phone into this country and he wants at least the same amount for him and his cronies to give me a visa. And you want to send me back to get a visa.’

And with that we were locked up. The room I was put in was like a toilet without the bowl. There was a locked door, a light bulb hanging on a wire and a panorama of shit. Previous occupants had pissed and shat almost everywhere. There was shit all over the wall with the door in it and two of the other walls. Left untouched was a wall covered by an oil painting of Saddam Hussein.

I had been allowed to keep my satellite phone. I crouched down in the middle of this underground shithole and tried to get a signal but failed. After a while I was taken back to see the guard who had questioned me. By now it was late at night and absolutely freezing.

The room was decorated with opulent and appalling taste. There were drapes like theatre curtains, made from shimmery satin fabric with golden tie-backs and faux gold fittings, and, once again, doilies on every piece of furniture. It was not what I expected at an Iraqi border post in the middle of the desert.

‘What do we do with you?’ said my interrogator.

‘Is my colleague around at all?’ I replied. ‘We have been here for some time. Have you been determining whether or not we will get a visa?’ I reasoned he probably wanted to get rid of us and had been making arrangements to do so. I considered what
life would be like as a human shield and concluded it probably would not be that bad. I knew there would be good stories in it, and I already had quite a good yarn to tell.

‘We will keep you here for longer, I think,’ he said.

‘Really? It’s very unpleasant down there and it’s very cold. Feel my hands.’

For some reason I liked this guard. I felt sorry for him. Everything in his life was crap. That apart, we had a lot of common ground. I showed him photos of my daughters.

‘This is my life,’ I said. ‘I travel around countries like this, and they live in Homebush, a lot further away from Baghdad.’ Then I saw photos of his family. It was humanity in a war, and I was eavesdropping on it.

Then it was back down to the cell and an hour later back up again to the room with the bad drapes and my new friend. The television was on.

‘Mr Henry, come and sit with me,’ he said, without turning his gaze from the screen. I did as I was told.

‘I want you to watch something,’ he said.

It was Iraqi television and, I learnt later, what I was watching was being played every hour on the hour. It was CNN film of Madeleine Albright and other US officials talking to US college students, who were asking them very tough questions about policy in the Middle East.

But Iraqi television had edited this — very badly. They cut out the answers, so all you saw were the aggressive questions and looks of alarm on Albright’s face in response, so that she actually appeared evil.

After it had played for the third time I had had enough.

‘I know what happens in this,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it before. You’ve seen this before. Why are you wasting your time watching it?’

‘This is not a waste of time,’ he said. ‘This is war talk. Even the young people in your country think you are persecuting us.’
He said ‘your country’ because we were all Americans if we were white.

‘Can we speak frankly?’ I said. ‘Do you recognise that this is heavily edited? She can actually speak, that woman on the screen.’

‘Look at the way they’re talking to her.’

‘Don’t you see?’ I said. ‘That’s what this fight is all about. It’s called democracy. What would happen to those students if they tried that on with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad? What would happen to them? Would it be put on TV for everyone to watch?’

This was followed by a long silence.

‘It changes nothing,’ he said eventually.

‘It changes everything because that’s what we want to bring to this country. Do you think those students would put up with not being paid for six months and having their families imperilled in another city, or do you think they’d ask even harder questions to executives which would then be broadcast on television around the world? This is the difference between our two countries. I can go back to my country and I can say “Iraq is great and you’re a pile of arseholes” and they won’t shoot me.’

Our relationship changed at that point.

‘I’ll get you a cup of tea,’ he said.

‘Thanks. Do you smoke?’ I said.

‘We have no cigarettes.’

‘Neither do I and I am a fearsome smoker. Is there anywhere I can access cigarettes?’

He left the room and came back with some guards. They put me in the back of a jeep and we drove to a duty-free store. It was a huge Palladian building with not much inside except for three fridges and several glass counters containing a few watches and cigarette cases. But in one corner there was a mountain of cigarettes.

It was US 50c for a carton of 200 Iraqi cigarettes. I splurged on two cartons.

Back in the jeep I asked if there was anywhere we could get something to eat. They took me to an Iraqi burger bar that was somewhere between a really bad McDonald’s and the worst truck stop you can think of. It actually had truckies in it.

I took one look and knew that anything I ate here would give me a savage dose of the shits before finally killing me, but I didn’t care. I ordered and ate a brilliant burger, dripping with fat. I bought the guys who were escorting me food, too, and they devoured it like they hadn’t eaten proper food in a long time.

I was allowed to make a satellite phone call back to Radio Pacific. I’m sure they thought I was ringing my family, as most people would have. It was so cold I could hardly talk, but I
managed
to get through and tell Geoff Sinclair what was going on.

As a result, Rachael opened our front door at Homebush the next morning to see one of our neighbours standing there.

‘We hear your husband is imprisoned in Iraq and we’ve baked you a cake.’

So that’s how the family found out I was a prisoner. I became a national and international news item, though only a small one because I wasn’t the only person who had been captured in Iraq.

Back at the bunker it was obvious both that my captors weren’t going to kill me and also that they didn’t know what to do with me. I had laid eyes on the Finnish journalist a couple of times, so knew he was all right, too.

I began talking to the guy in charge again, chatting about things like the price of cigarettes and how much a loaf of bread cost in Baghdad and Masterton. I gave him a cigarette and we sat there smoking from my cartons.

‘I’m going to leave these cigarettes when I go,’ I said. I offered everyone else cigarettes. ‘I’m going to leave these cigarettes here but I’m reluctant to give them to anyone but you. Why don’t you distribute them as you see fit. But I do need to leave here now. I think I’m becoming a problem to you. It’s really uncomfortable,
I’m very cold. So we should get me some transport.’

There was a significant, but not awkward silence.

‘That can be arranged,’ he said finally.

‘I’ll need to take my colleague with me. He’s hopeless, isn’t he?’

He agreed wholeheartedly and a couple of hours later we were in a vehicle taking us to the Jordanian border. Relief soon turned to concern when it became apparent that we were in the unusual position of entering a country that there was no record of us leaving. This provided much puzzlement. It was obvious where we had come from.

‘How long have you been in Iraq?’

‘Two days.’

‘How did you get there?’

In the end there was only the truth to tell. And it became a matter of pure bureaucracy: You haven’t left, so you can’t come back. You can’t enter Jordan if you haven’t left Jordan. After a couple of hours, common sense prevailed and we were allowed, if not to enter, at least to be in Jordan. And a couple of bus rides later, I was back at the hotel from which I had never checked out.