by Anne Garrels
With luck, Mr. Blix will render his report to the UN on Sunday, and Brenda will head back toward Amman. It seems like a lot of reporters are taking off right about then, having made the judgment that there will be a diplomatic delay to the inevitable. NPR wants her to reapply now. The line of NPR correspondents who were all set to go in after her has suddenly gotten very, very short. Maybe, just maybe she gets home for a bit in a week.
Lest you were worried that Brenda has let her embroidery duties slip amidst everything else, be reassured that such is not the case. Her offbeat habits have not gone unnoticed. Indeed, at a press conference at the Ministry of Information, director’s chairs were set out, each one stenciled with the organization’s name. There, prominently situated between CBS and NBC, some wag had placed a label upon which was printed “Batty babe from NPR: courtesy of the Pew Memorial Trust.”
Cheers,
V
FEBRUARY 8, 2003
Today is a national holiday commemorating the 1963 rise to power of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, whose original ideological objectives were socialism and pan-Arab union. It has since turned into one-party rule where anyone who disagrees with Saddam is ruthlessly purged. Today’s celebration coincides with the arrival of UN weapons inspectors on their latest and perhaps final round of talks to try to win full compliance and full explanations from the Iraqis.
The Information Ministry has allowed us to watch the festivities in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, a special favor since Tikrit is usually off-limits. Reporters in the past have tried any number of ruses to get there, including declaring they needed to go the bathroom while on the road to Mosul further north. Tikrit was once a backwater, but it’s immediately clear that this is no longer an ordinary Iraqi town. The tarmac becomes smooth as you approach. On the outskirts there’s a huge arched gateway with a massive mural with Saddam Hussein on horseback galloping toward Jerusalem, missiles and warplanes above him. Images of Saddam are everywhere in Iraq, but the number in Tikrit boggles the mind.
While Baghdad may be the capital of Iraq, Tikrit is the heart of Saddam country. It’s the Baath party stronghold, and Saddam has surrounded himself with clansmen from Tikrit in his government. The name “al-Tikriti” automatically suggests power and privilege to an Iraqi, and the people here have a lot to lose if Saddam falls. In addition to his massive palace, there are reportedly mansions belonging to his closest associates, but we are not permitted to travel freely in the city. We have been brought here to witness a celebration in Saddam’s honor, but it looks like the bloom is off the rose.
There’s a veneer of adoration as the thousands of men and women, soldiers and volunteers, who’ve been bussed in, march across the enormous parade ground—an imposing space that is out of all proportion with the rest of the town. But not even Saddam’s loyalists have been able to fill the stands. The empty bleachers say more than the chanting crowds who have turned up repeating again and again, “We give our blood and soul for Saddam.”
Saddam still has hysterical supporters, akin to those who clung to Stalin, but once again I’m reminded of the waning days of the Soviet Union, when crowds came out for the command performances but only because they had to. Even with a war looming, the volunteer army is a pretty lackluster group. There are men in green fatigues carrying old, worn guns. They don’t even have boots on, just normal shoes. The women wear long skirts skimming high heels or more comfortable sneakers. Some carry weapons, but while a few insist, “We have regular training and are all crack shots,” others confess they’ve never touched a weapon before and have been dragged in for the parade from school along with classmates.
A teacher, who was in the stands, was delighted to practice her English. Asked if she might contact me at the hotel in Baghdad, I said, “Of course.” Minutes later she ran up to me, embarrassed—she gave me back my business card, saying it had been a terrible mistake to think she could see me. Clearly, someone had gotten to her. She didn’t dare even hold on to my name and address.
FEBRUARY 10, 2003
It’s that time again. I pay up the vast bill for services not rendered at the Information Ministry, seal up the phone, get the exit-permission letters, and deposit bags and bags of Iraqi dinars on the cashier’s desk at the hotel. Faez and Mohammed, from room service, come up to the room to say good-bye, wondering if I will ever come back, given that war seems imminent. Amer stops me in the parking lot, asking if I will return. I promise I will.
As I leave I am struck by how frustrated and impatient Iraqis have become with the status quo. People want a normal life. They blame both Saddam and the United States for the mess they find themselves in. Some have started to imagine a time when Saddam is no longer in control. As he takes me to the airport, my driver, Majed, dispenses with any caution and says flat-out that the Iraqi military can’t do anything; that it’s poorly equipped, badly paid, and utterly demoralized. As soon as the bombing starts he’s going to put a sheet on his roof for the pilots to see saying WELCOME USA.
BRENDA BULLETIN: FEBRUARY 13, 2003
Well, well … sort of …
The Norfolk town meeting the other night ran long, as they usually do. When I finally got home, there she was, my Baghdad Bauble, curled and spooned up next to the old Lab, fast asleep. It had been a long slog home, twelve hours from Baghdad to the border by car—once again escaping the now-$250 AIDS test for women under fifty—eight hours in Amman to find an unexpected seat on the next flight out, thirteen hours to New York, and finally the three-hour drive home. She slept through most of it. Her ability to sleep at any time and in any place, but preferably in something that is moving, she claims as her greatest talent. Last year she made a harrowing journey from northern Afghanistan up over the Hindu Kush and down into the Panshir Valley just above Kabul. The pass was at something like 17,000 feet and the main road up had been destroyed by feuding warlords. Brenda and two fellow journalists rented a Russian jeep and started up the mountain on an unimproved track with no guardrails (naturally), which was so narrow and tight that the vehicle could not make the turn at the end of each of the 100 or so switchbacks. The driver was forced to ascend every other switchback leg in reverse. When they finally got to the top some six hours later, Brenda’s ashen and quavering mates were appalled to discover that she had literally slept through the whole thing.
The last hours in Baghdad were taken up paying up and paying out with stacks of dinars, the largest denomination of which is 250. Her bill at the Al-Rashid came to $1,200, part of which she paid with dollars, the other part with 1,600,000 dinars stuffed into two enormous shopping bags. With some coaxing, but with a certain pride, she will show you the ugly bruise on her ribcage inflicted when the chair on which she and the dinars were resting collapsed. It is unclear if NPR has a policy covering wounds inflicted by local currency.
The joy of having her here won’t last. Her gear has not been stowed but sits in neat piles on the guest bed. Toward the end of next week she goes back to either Baghdad or Kuwait. I hear her now complaining to NPR about the slowness in providing flak jackets and chemical-warfare gear. This is all taking on a sudden grim reality.
V
BRENDA BULLETIN: MARCH 4, 2003
Once again …
For the past two days our girl has been in room 726 of the Grand Hyatt in Amman trying to wring a visa out of the Iraqi bureaucracy. By late today it looks as if she has succeeded and will leave for Baghdad in the next day or two. How long she will be there is anyone’s guess, but she is going in with a good deal more cash strapped around her waist than in the past. She talks cryptically of being there long enough to see what will happen happen.
The forty-pound Kevlar vest and her oversized Teutonic helmet will probably end up in the storage room of the Grand Hyatt. The Iraqis may not let any of this in, and to say that this gear, at 40 percent of her body weight, hampers movement is something of an understatement. The chemical-warfare equipment is lighter and will go in with her. But it does beg the question of just who
se ass all this stuff is meant to cover.
A number of you have written of late questioning the continued use of the Brenda alias. Some have suggested that although amusing at first, the device has become stale, bordering on shtick. Others have written to say that the use of the name Brenda somehow demeans and belittles what she has done and where she has done it. I, too, was wondering about this. When she was here, we talked about it. The long and short of it is that Annie likes Brenda. It gives her a needed distance, a character to play to, and allows humor to seep into situations which, if reported straight, might well bring tears. So Brenda will be with us as long as she wants and needs her, and no longer.
You might be interested to know that Annie was first called Brenda by someone within NPR when she found herself near Grozny in Chechnya, being bombed by the Russian air force in the early ’90s. Later a good friend sent her an enlargement of a panel from a Brenda Starr comic book in which a mushroom cloud rises behind Brenda’s anguished face. The balloon reads, “Oh, God, there goes my career!” Somehow the name stuck. I hope you understand.
Cheers,
V
MARCH 5, 2003
Back on the road but I can now claim to be an Intermediate Emergency Medical Technician! God help the poor souls who are my first real patients. I spent numerous nights while home attending classes and “sticking” friends so that I now know how to set up and insert an IV as long as I am not in a moving ambulance, there is nothing to distract me, and the patient’s veins are popping so I can’t possibly miss them. I’m not all too sure such a patient exists.
After weeks, nay months, on the road I arrived home as an intellectual Neanderthal. I had not seen a real newspaper, editorial, or book review, nor had I read any books except my store of background that had something to do with Iraq. I hadn’t seen a movie except for repeats of The Last of the Mohicans which is a favorite of Saddam’s regime and frequently shown on Iraqi television. I was a royal bore. Thanks to Vint, who clipped items he thought would be of interest, I have, at least, caught up a bit on what the “real world” has to offer. However, most of the time when I was home I was fixated on getting back to Iraq.
Since arriving in Amman, all I have done for four days is call Baghdad about the visa. I can’t focus on anything else. Qadm keeps telling me, “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” To keep my sanity I have started swimming in the hotel pool. I began with ten laps and today topped 120. The rhythm helps to mitigate the strain, but as soon as I dry off I am obsessed again. I live on room service because I won’t venture into the lobby, where I will undoubtedly meet up with all the other journalists who have been waiting, unsuccessfully, for a visa. I’m depressed enough and don’t need to hear their sad stories too. I can’t tell if Qadm is just playing with me, or if he really intends to fulfill his promise. ABC is also waiting, and apparently “The List” of the newly anointed is to appear at the Iraqi embassy on Saturday.
MARCH 6, 2003
The one group which has not had trouble getting visas are the “human shields,” peace activists who have offered to stay in Iraq during a possible conflict, but relations are now fraying. Iraq has ordered five human shields to leave the country after a dispute about where they should be positioned to prevent possible U.S. airstrikes.
There are a couple of hundred peace activists in Iraq. They want to choose where they sit out a possible war but the Iraqi authorities have insisted they move to locations the government has selected. These are not the sites many of the peace activists had in mind, and now dozens have chosen to leave, fearing for their safety, and in some cases their integrity. They are staying in downtown Amman at the run-down Saraya Hotel, which has the air of a college dormitory.
They are a real mixed bag, ranging from complete nutters to thoughtful souls. There is no real organization, a range of political views, and now confusion. Many are loath to speak out because while they are obviously uncomfortable with Saddam’s regime they don’t want to undercut the antiwar movement.
While many dodge me and my questions—they think the press has disparaged them and their efforts—forty-six-year-old Bruce Fortner is willing to speak about the conflict and conflicting emotions. Back in Santa Fe, he had sent out petitions and joined antiwar protests, but he says that just wasn’t enough. So in February this lanky carpenter closed up shop and went to Baghdad to support civilians there. He used money raised in Santa Fe to buy medicines for Iraqi children. He wasn’t sure how long he would stay. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be there during a war, and if he did stay he wanted to work in hospitals or orphanages. But after two weeks of wrangling with the activists, the Iraqi authorities announced that the human shields had to take up positions at oil refineries, water and electricity installations, and government communications sites. Fortner found that the decision to leave Iraq was suddenly made very easy. “For me it was pretty cut-and-dried,” he says. He had no intention of protecting infrastructure, though he understands those who argue that these places are essential for daily life.
Sue Darling, somewhere in her mid-fifties, is a former British diplomat. She, too, had wanted to be with Iraqi civilians in communities or schools to personalize the face of war by showing that it will be ordinary people who are under attack, but Iraq’s choice of sites had also forced her to leave Baghdad. She is nervous about talking to me. She doesn’t want to undermine those who have stayed on. She chooses her words carefully. “For myself”—she emphasizes “for myself”—“I felt the direction the action was taking was not what I had personally come for. For me it was more a direct humanitarian movement of being with the civilian population, and it has gone in a different direction.”
Darling made the long trip to Baghdad in a convoy of double-decker buses that traveled overland from London. She’d hoped she would be joined by thousands of protesters instead of just the few hundred who’ve rotated through Baghdad. The mass migration didn’t happen, and she is clearly disappointed. And many of those who’ve journeyed to Baghdad have grown increasingly uneasy as the Iraqi regime has essentially hijacked the peace movement. It decides where activists stay. It pays for their food and lodging, arranges transportation, and provides “minders” who limit their access to the ordinary people they want to protect. And ordinary Iraqis often express ambivalence about the prospect of a war, and that ambivalence is hard for the peace activists to acknowledge and deal with.
When I ask Darling how she reconciles her views about Saddam’s brutal regime and her opposition to the war, she cuts off the interview, pushing back her long, graying hair. She’s pretty frazzled. She knows time is running out before the war starts, and she doesn’t like her options. She says she is thinking about going back.
In the hotel lobby, fliers are stacked on a table. Produced by an ad hoc steering committee, they warn human shields of the dangers. They advise volunteers of the chances of civic uprising, hostage-taking, or the possibility of being tried for treason back home. And the concluding paragraph notes that after the war starts it may be much harder to get out of Iraq than it was to get in.
When I go to transmit my report to Washington, I discover that a key piece of equipment doesn’t work. I can’t believe it. It worked just fine when I last used it, in February. I change the batteries and play with the cables. Finally I just shake it. Nothing happens. Frantically, I call Washington. We agree that NPR’s correspondent Peter Kenyon will fly in tomorrow from Jerusalem with a replacement. Thank god I found out now and not after I arrived in Baghdad.
MARCH 8, 2003
I’ve got all the equipment problems sorted out, but when I turn up at the Iraqi embassy it appears I am not on “The Visa List,” despite Qadm’s promises. I have been peremptorily dismissed, but just as I prepare to head back to the hotel pool to drown my sorrow in more laps, a “fixer” from ABC appears. He has helped me in the past. He takes my passport, disappears into an office for an uncomfortably long time, comes back and asks if I am willing to pay $1,000 for a $38 visa. Money changes hands an
d he tells me to come to his office later that afternoon. I would have happily paid up last week, but last week money wasn’t doing the trick.
With vague assurances of a visa, it’s time to purchase supplies. I head off to a supermarket and load up on batteries to keep the equipment running, baby wipes for when the water goes, packaged soup should food be a problem, plus cans of tuna fish, jars of peanut butter, Kit Kat and Mars bars, coffee, Coffee-Mate, and cases of bottled water. It’s a bit like Supermarket Sweep—that game show where you have five minutes to load up your cart. I definitely win the prize for the most money spent in a short period of time, but nothing looks particularly appealing, and I hope I don’t have to rely on the odd assortment that I have selected.
I pick up my passport with the visa firmly stamped inside, pack up, check out, and load up the car, which will take me to Baghdad. I join a convoy with ABC, CBS, and a German crew.
MARCH 9, 2003
We hit the border crossing just after midnight and pile into the waiting room on the Iraqi side, where a life-size portrait of Saddam occupies one wall. Over the past months I have spent many an hour looking at this, guessing at what the artist thought with each brush stroke. I wonder if it will still be here when it comes time for me to leave Baghdad. Forms are filled out, cars and equipment are checked and logged, and more money passes between hands. We speed across the desert and the driver wakes me up as we reach Baghdad just after dawn.
At the Al-Rashid Hotel I once again stride across the mosaic of George Bush the elder, which is now discreetly covered with a carpet. (Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix reportedly protested when forced to tread on the former president.) Who will get to steal it, if and when the time comes? The staff greets me like a long-lost relative. Faez, now working the reception desk, asks me, “Are you really staying?” More money is passed as I negotiate for a “room with a view.” I am assigned one on an upper floor overlooking the swimming pool with good access for the satellite phone. I hope the bribes mean they will keep their mouths shut when the security guys come round.