by Ali Bader
‘You probably hold the common view that a writer is superior to a journalist,’ I said, without mentioning anything about myself. At least I didn’t tell him that it was my own point of view as well. He didn’t try to defend this claim but treated it as an indisputable fact, something to be taken for granted. He told me only that the main reason he’d gone into journalism was because he wanted to make a living from a job in some way connected with writing. He wanted to earn from his writing, regardless of genre. He also said that journalism gave him the ‘editorial skills’ that were so necessary for writing a major novel. It was the first time, I felt, that he’d spoken realistically, in a graphic, down-to-earth way. He talked with a great deal of sarcastic humour, which was reinforced by his despair. The conversation brought me closer to him, a person for whom I had earlier felt nothing but utter contempt.
The following day, we all had a business meeting at the Canvass restaurant on Jabal al-Weibdeh. This was a classy place that journalists avoided like the plague because of its exorbitant prices. Nancy called it ‘the Guillotine’ and its waiters the ‘executioners’. We sat in the garden outside, drinking wine and eating grilled fish, while we discussed all aspects of the situation. At this point I should mention that our information on Kamal Medhat was very sparse. None of us knew much about the man. At the beginning, our discussion of him was sterile and hesitant, as if wading through a swamp. Nancy would talk and fall silent because of the yellow pollen falling from the blossoming trees, which clung to her eyebrows and lashes. She’d wipe her lashes with a paper tissue and look expectantly at us. Faris Hassan wiped his own face as though he’d just stepped out of a pool. With an unexpected jerk of his tall, lanky body Faris then said, ‘Let’s go straight to Baghdad.’
We moved on to the Negresco. We drank in the midst of the din, while reporters came and went and waiters ran to and fro carrying glasses, bottles and plates. There were cameras, papers, facts, numerous faces and beards, long hair and dim lights. There was also a strong smell of fermentation as well as shouting, conversations, loud noises and many languages. This was a place I really loved. Nancy sat by my side, her leg touching mine. I talked to her with my shoulder against hers stealing brief glances into her eyes. She felt my warm breath and my touch. She knew that I was choosing my words carefully with the express purpose of exciting her. She laughed loudly and wiped her brow.
We spoke, of course, about the murdered Iraqi musician. We also talked intermittently, in the midst of the clamour and the shouting, about the trip to Baghdad and the information that was available. Faris sat facing us. He took care of the orders and spoke to the waiters, a cigarette in his mouth and a glass between his fingers, loudly addressing some man or other, or a woman sitting nearby. He allowed me to get close to Nancy and talk of old times. Mostly we recalled things that had happened between us when we’d been together in Beirut. Then the restaurant began to grow quiet. Light-headed from drinking, the journalists in the bar started to head to their homes and hotels.
At Nancy’s insistence we returned to the topic of Kamal Medhat.
The following day, Faris left for Baghdad in the hope of arranging a place for me at the agency site, in a building near the Associated Press inside the Green Zone. I stayed on in Amman, from where I set out to find information. I had to prepare a short biography of Kamal Medhat, as well as detailed maps of the capitals he’d lived in: Baghdad, Tehran and Damascus. I also had to find maps of those cities from the time of his residence and to assess the changes that had taken place.
I returned to my hotel at noon. The moment I stepped into the lobby, I saw Nancy sitting in the corner with her driver. She saw me come in and rushed over, saying that Faris was in Baghdad and that everything was ready for me. He’d be there to meet me at the airport. She gave me my plane ticket and a card with some important information. She also gave me a badge attached to some blue cord, to hang around my neck. This was my press card with the agency logo, stamp and licence. Nancy looked utterly exhausted, as though the volatility of the situation in the Middle East had left its mark on her face and hands. Although she was only thirty, the curls of her soft hair seemed ashen. She looked as though she were at a funeral. She was pale, worn-out and tense, and she was chainsmoking. Her appearance aroused strange and contradictory feelings in my heart. I reminded her that we were supposed to meet in the evening to spend some time together before I left, but she apologized, saying she had some urgent business to take care of in Damascus.
By dawn I’d flown to Baghdad.
IV
The imperial city and the emerald bars
‘Your destination?’ The man at the entrance of Queen Alia airport in Amman asked me. He had a bushy moustache that hid his lips, and a blue beret pulled down over his forehead.
‘Baghdad,’ I said, putting my suitcase on the floor.
He shuddered a little, looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ I said and showed him the card hanging from the blue cord on my chest.
He searched me carefully with his hands, tapping on my back and shoulders as well as between my legs. He ordered me to take off my shoes. So I removed my shoes, my khaki jacket, my glasses, my mobile phone and my belt. I placed all the items in addition to some coins in a grey plastic tray, which he passed through the machine. I was then allowed to go through the metal detector. There was a woman carrying an expensive leather bag walking next to a man dressed in a white suit and silk tie. He had a gold ring on his finger. There was also a foreigner with a cigar in his mouth and another person who was holding a string of prayer-beads and talking to a hefty policeman slouched in a leather seat.
I placed my small black leather bag, my Sony DCR-TRV461E camera and tripod on a small trolley, which I pushed in front of me. I headed quickly to a wooden counter inside the terminal. When I looked up, I noticed that the clock on the wall opposite showed two in the morning. The airport workers were sitting in their blue uniforms on wooden benches, yawning. Some were stretched out on the benches while others were fast asleep. When I reached the counter, I lifted my luggage onto the scales. A female airport employee gave me my boarding pass and pointed me to passport control. As I headed towards the white counter, I heard the last call for the British Airways flight to Cyprus. The call made one of the travellers jump up and hurry towards the counter.
I handed my passport to the airport employee, who flipped through it back and forth. A frown appeared on his dark face and there was a strange look in his eyes. He took a long time examining the passport and then asked me my destination. ‘Baghdad,’ I said, without adding a single word. I felt that he was taking his time and began to fidget. So he raised his head, glanced at me, rapidly stamped the passport and handed it back. Hugely relieved, I stashed it in the pocket of my jacket, picked up my little bag, put it over my shoulder and walked away. The terminal was filled with Marines heading for Baghdad.
I sat on a wooden bench watching them. Gathered in one spot, their loud voices were as piercing as an exchange of shots in a tennis rally. They wore camouflage uniforms and their heads were shaved. They were solid guys and carried their khaki rucksacks and kitbags on their backs. Some were stretched out on the floor, while others were sitting on benches. It was clear that they were booked on the same flight, bound for Baghdad.
At the wooden barrier, a few government employees were also preparing to board the plane with us. They were dressed in elegant suits and long ties, and carried Samsonite briefcases. The number of passengers increased as they were joined by bearded clerics wearing black turbans and holding long strings of prayer-beads between their fingers. Their veiled wives stood close by. On the benches sat families also preparing to go to Baghdad. They spoke fluent English without a trace of an accent. It was clear they were Iraqi families who’d settled in Europe and the United States and were now returning to Baghdad. Some of them were employed by the new government. The girls wore jeans and pretty T-shirts, and the boys had moder
n outfits and strange haircuts. They moved confidently and light-heartedly among the passengers, as though heading for a party. Their destination, after all, was the Green Zone, the location of the government and foreign embassies, and not the Red Zone, which was one of the most dangerous locations in the world.
Apart from the Marines, there were Asian workers: Filipinos, Malaysians and Pakistanis. They were employed at US military bases as cleaners, cooks, porters, dishwashers, ironers, salesmen and servants of all kinds. Other Asians were dressed in black suits and long narrow ties. It was clear they worked as personal bodyguards for businessmen, contractors or venture capitalists.
We all moved slowly through the hall towards the wooden barrier with the wide golden stripe. When we entered the departure lounge, the crowd grew larger and more diverse. Monks dressed in black cassocks sat on a distant bench. One of them had snowy white hair and wore a small, black cap. His head was turned towards a woman sitting near him as he listened to the voice of her playful child. There were Kurds in their baggy trousers and distinctive clothes. Near the barrier stood a tall woman leaning against the wall, looking very sexy in her tight trousers and light pink shirt that revealed the roundness of her breasts. She placed a camera tripod and a blue holdall full of various equipment beside her on the floor. She had the look of a reporter. Although I couldn’t tell where I’d seen her before, it had been in more than one place.
In the farthest corner, a group of passengers was moving around, murmuring and gesticulating in a tense, nervous manner. Suddenly a group of American Blackwater guards passed through the small gate, carrying their luggage. This was the American private security company that specialized in providing security services to foreign embassies and US companies in Iraq. The way they looked stood out; you couldn’t mistake them for anyone else. It wasn’t only their uniforms that distinguished them – their bulging trousers and black shirts that revealed their chests – but also their burly, powerfully built figures. Their bare, muscular arms, their tanned skin, their broad, thrusting chests and their shaved heads gave them the look of actors taking part in a Hollywood action movie.
I suddenly noticed an old acquaintance of mine who worked for a local television channel. He was talking to the woman reporter in tight trousers whom I’d seen earlier and who was chewing gum in an overly sexy manner. He was bombarding her with rapid-fire statements, but when he saw me he waved and smiled. So I went over. As soon as I reached him, he introduced the woman, saying her name in a low voice, ‘Nermine Haidar.’ I didn’t know where I’d heard the name before, but he told me that she directed documentary films. ‘I might have seen a film of yours at some time,’ I told her. It was unclear to me whether he knew her from before or had just made her acquaintance. But she seemed rather put off by him. Nevertheless, he dragged her by the hand to the duty-free shop and came back half an hour later, laden with bags of drinks, perfumes, belts, prayer-beads, jewellery, scarves and religious books. He told me he’d bought the items to make his work as a journalist in Baghdad easier.
We waited for around two hours. There was nobody that we could ask about the reason for the delay. The journalist, whose name I’ve forgotten, called several people in Baghdad, asking basic questions about his hotel or requesting help for his work there. When he spoke on his mobile, his voice was drowned by the voices of the other passengers. Then he hurried off to the cafeteria and returned with a tray full of cups of coffee. He gave me one and offered Nermine another. At the gate, we drank and chatted.
On the plane it was even more crowded because the seats were unallocated. Families and clerics were seated first. We put our little briefcases and bags in the overhead compartments. I took a seat next to the window. The nameless journalist pushed his way to the seat next to mine. In the aisle seat sat Nermine Haidar in her tight trousers and full blouse. She lifted her arms and with a rubber band tied back her hair, which was cascading down her shoulders. Then she took some papers out of her handbag and put them on her lap. Across the aisle from us sat three Marines who were returning from leave. It was clear from their looks and their language that they were of Mexican descent. Two soldiers from Fiji occupied the seats in the row in front of us. A plump woman soldier sat beside them. She was blonde and her hair was bunched with a khaki hairband. She’d left her khaki camouflage jacket open, revealing a khaki vest. In the seats near us sat young men from Iraqi families and three women soldiers. One of the women soldiers was very tall and blonde, with blue eyes and a small tattoo on her arm. A black officer stood beside her, talking. It was clear that his seat was elsewhere, but he was spending as much time as possible talking to her before the plane took off. Every time the air-hostesses hurried past to carry out the required procedures before takeoff, he would squeeze himself harder against the seat of the woman soldier.
When I’d finished drinking my cold beer, I dumped the can in a black bag beside me. The anonymous journalist turned and asked me if I wanted another one. I made a sign of agreement, so he reached into a large bag and brought out another can, which he opened and handed to me. The outside of the can was cold and covered with droplets of water.
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked me as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief.
‘Do you know Faris Hassan?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘He’s coming to collect me from the airport,’ I said to avoid any further questioning. I didn’t ask him where he was going. He took the handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his mouth and started drinking beer from the can in his hand. In the other hand he held a packet of Lays chilli-flavour crisps, which he was devouring eagerly. I drank my cold beer. Every now and again, he shook the packet of spicy crisps towards me. It was illustrated with a red chilli. I stuck my hand in the packet, took a few crisps, put them in my mouth and downed a sip of cold beer to soothe the burning sting.
I never answered the anonymous journalist’s question nor disclosed to him the nature of my mission. I evaded his curiosity by pretending to be asleep until the pilot ordered us to fasten our seat belts for landing.
The descent was terrifying. The plane came down in a tight spiral, trying to keep immediately over the airport, because the militias would target slowly descending civilian airplanes with portable, shoulder-mounted, Russian-made Strela missiles. After the aircraft had landed and come to a complete halt, we all stood up. There was heavy spring rain. The Marines and Asians were the first to disembark and head for the terminal building. They were all complaining about the rain, except for the blonde woman soldier with the tattoo. A young man helped carry her heavy bag. He lifted it up for her to put on her shoulder. She thanked him without looking at his face and asked the others to make way for her. She then sprinted off.
As the crowd moved in front of me, I turned and took the newspapers that had been left in the seat pockets. I put them in my bag and stuck the empty beer can in a seat pocket in their place. I took my passport and mobile phone out of my small leather bag, which I then slung over my shoulder before leaving the aircraft.
All three of us stood in the queue: the anonymous journalist, Nermine the documentary director and me. The soldiers, Marines and Asian workers all went to the other side, except for the woman soldier with the tattoo. She’d been held up by the large bag she was carrying on her back. She finally caught up with them and left the place, accompanied by the black officer. Outside, the weather was terrible and we saw a flat green area, the portico of the building, and the wreckage of an aircraft still left behind from the days of the war. We all ran as quickly as possible towards the bus to take shelter from the rain.
Nermine was talking non-stop to a family with two young women. One of them was dark and wore very tight knee-length trousers. The other one was prettier, but rather plump, and wore a check skirt and blue blouse. She’d tied her hair with a ribbon as blue as the colour of her eyes. The mother was around fifty, very slim and elegant and with long hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore round glasses and carried
a book in English. She told us that her husband was also a journalist working for a recently established paper in Baghdad. They’d been living in Stockholm for twenty years but had gone back to live in Baghdad after the fall of the Saddam regime. She talked about the hardships of life and compared the Baghdad of twenty years ago with the present day. I wasn’t really interested in what she was saying, and didn’t listen. Every now and again I’d check out the crowds of passengers of different ethnicities in the terminal. Then I’d gaze out of the window at the space outside. The clouds had partly cleared and the sun’s rays fell warmly on the American soldier who stood holding his gun and looking in our direction. In the other direction, it was still raining non-stop. Our turn came at the passport control booth. The officer smiled at me and stamped the passport quickly without uttering a word.
We moved a few steps inside the hall and then stopped in front of the luggage conveyor, which was going slowly round. All eyes were fixed on it. Three tall, slim employees from the Fiji Islands appeared, accompanied by sniffer dogs trained to detect explosives. They moved around the bags with their dogs that sniffed one suitcase after the other. A soldier dressed in khaki then came out of the gate opposite. He walked towards us, buttoning his shirt up, examined our papers and passports, and then allowed us to move to another hall. The windows were very tall and revealed a large garden of fruit and willow trees, surrounded on all sides by a chain-link fence that was hard to get through. The only exit was through a gate guarded by a Marine checkpoint, beyond which stood a car from a convoy.
Faris was waiting for me in the hall as I emerged, pushing my luggage trolley. To my right walked Nermine and the anonymous journalist, also pushing their trolleys. As soon as Faris saw me, he waved and I waved back. When he came closer, he shook my hand. Then he shook hands coldly with the journalist, but shook Nermine’s hands with great warmth. He stood with me for a while to allow Nermine and the journalist to leave with their trolleys. When they turned to me, I waved goodbye.