Baghdad Without a Map

by Неизвестный

  “I'm good,” he persisted. “Me, too.”

  More blank stares.

  “New York, hello, how are you?”

  Aides scrambled behind the congressmen, making sure the TV cameras were well positioned and booking reporters for briefings later that day, back at the Khartoum Hilton.

  “Gary's been real involved in this hunger thing since the start,” confided one of Ackerman's aides. When I told her I'd spent four days in Muglad and a week before that in Khartoum, she hustled me over for some quick-fire fact-finding by her boss.

  “Did you meet any slaves?” he asked. “Do they appreciate the American aid? Tell me about shopping in Khartoum. Is it junk?”

  Before I could answer, he cut in—“Sorry, got to run”—and rushed off with the others for yet another photo op: tossing bags of U.S. sorghum from a relief plane onto the tarmac. “It's tough being out in the bush, eating dirt,” Ack-erman said, grimacing theatrically as he lifted a bag. Such missions could, in fact, be tough. A few months later, Mickey Leland died when his small plane crashed on a similar trip in Ethiopia.

  The delegation was whisked to the nearby refugee camp to pose for the cameras again, kissing swollen-bellied babies and nodding meaningfully as mothers poured out their woes in untranslated Dinka. Then, having gathered all the facts it needed, the delegation rushed back to the airstrip for takeoff, with Bart and me in tow. The delegation's visit to Muglad had lasted forty minutes.

  “Tragic, isn't it?” one of the aides said, settling in and unfurling a three-day-old USA Today. Within minutes, the grass-and-mud skyline of Muglad fell away and a warm haze of American chitchat embraced me. We talked about the food at the Hilton. About the first flight out of Khartoum. About preseason baseball. By the time we hit the clouds, Faki and the dancing Dinka and the mad soccer game had receded. Exhausted, I drifted off and wondered, half asleep, if it was all some strange dream I'd been having.

  13—ARABIAN FLIGHTS—Sky-High over Islam

  Trip Planning

  1. Don't assume the typical “It can't happen to me” attitude. The fact that you're traveling in a foreign country makes you a prime target for terrorism.

  2. Don't wear cowboy boots, Hawaiian shirts, school or university sweatshirts, flashy buckles and the like. Try to “blend in” as much as possible.

  3. Keep your hair style simple, not flashy. Terrorists may assume that men with very short hair are in the military. Wild hair styles—Mohawk cuts and so on—identify you as decadent to many terror groups.

  4. To ensure your family's financial security in the event you become a terrorist victim, make sure that your will is up-to-date.

  —The Terrorism Survival Guide: 101 Travel Tips on How Not to Become a Victim

  Back in Khartoum, I began plotting my escape from Sudan. This was no easy feat. April was the start of the haboob season, when fierce desert winds Hoover up all the dust from the desert and deposit it on the capital, blotting out the sun and reducing visibility to nil. As there was no radar at Khartoum's airport, haboobs made takeoffs and landings risky. One runway for small planes was littered with the charred remains of crafts that hadn't made it.

  Many Western airlines had abandoned Khartoum, forcing travelers to scramble for scarce seats aboard Sudan Air. Sudan Air's code in international flight guides is SD. As every Middle East traveler knows, this stands for “Sudden Death.” A Sudan Air pilot once mistook the White Nile for the Khartoum runway and landed on the water instead. Shortly before my visit, a plane had been forced to return empty from London because British officials declared it too decrepit to carry passengers.

  “No sensible person flies Sudan Air unless he absolutely must,” warned a British engineer in Khartoum. “Of course, when you absolutely must, you can be sure the plane won't take off anyway.”

  It wasn't my first encounter with the fear and loathing of Middle East travel. Just getting to and from the Cairo airport could be treacherous; the black airport taxis sped with such kamikaze intent that Egyptians called them “flying coffins.” Most trips also began with a choice between the world's ten most likely to be hijacked airlines. Added to this was the fact that the passenger log invariably listed 250 men in turbans and robes, named Ahmed, Mohammed or Ali, and one white American male with a surname best known for adorning boxes of a leading brand of matsoh. It wasn't hard to figure my chances if some terrorist decided to establish his negotiating position by dumping a body on the tarmac.

  Fortunately, airlines have a stake in keeping you alive. Anyone who flies the Israeli carrier, El Al, is subjected to interrogation by a corps of fingernail-pullers in training, a kind of farm team for Mossad. If one bead of sweat appears during the questioning—which it inevitably does, standing in Cairo's un-air-conditioned terminal in mid-July—your dirty underwear, condoms and spare surgical truss will be turned out of your bag for the amusement of the two hundred people behind you. One night in Cairo, an overzealous El Al-nik picked through each item in my luggage, barking, repeatedly, “What's in this?” until he'd searched everything except a brown-bag snack. “What's in this?” he demanded, seizing a tangerine.

  First World airports are antiseptic places, so uniform in layout and barometric pressure that the jet-lagged traveler may wonder if he has somehow landed at the same terminal from which he took off. This soothing convention rarely applies in the Middle East. It is at the airport—waiting hours for the faint stamp of Arabic calligraphy in your passport, changing hard currency into soft, being strip-searched for weapons and alcohol—that the character of the society outside begins to reveal itself.

  Cairo, a class-ridden city, had adjoining airports labeled “one” and “two” but known to taxi drivers as “old” and “new.” Like all new structures in Cairo, terminal two is prematurely aged: baggage belts creak, public address systems shriek with feedback, dust hangs in the air. Still, by Egyptian standards, it is a comfortable and orderly place. Air conditioners sometimes hum and planes have been known to depart on schedule. It is here that Western tourists and Persian Gulf sheiks board Swissair, Lufthansa and Saudia to take off over desert sands that begin a few feet from the end of the runway.

  Terminal number one caters to a different clientele: Air Somalia, Sudan Air, Interflug—to nartie only a few—and terrorist risks such as El Al. The idea seems to be that if someone wants to plant a bomb, better they blow away terminal one than terminal two. At terminal one, there is no such thing as allocated seating, though overbooking is assured. Egyptair, an innovator in this regard, has a special class of ticket called “confirmed waiting list,” which allows the airline to book twelve hundred people for the two hundred seats actually available. Long-suffering flyers of Egypt-air have dubbed the carrier “Insha'allah Air.” Insha'allah means “if God wills it.” According to a 1990 survey, Egyptair is second only to Aeroflot in the number of fatal accidents over the past twenty years.

  Once you've cleared check-in and security, there is the interminable wait for flights that rarely leave on time. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, flights between Middle East capitals almost always depart between midnight and six in the morning. So there you sit, in Khartoum or Baghdad or Tripoli, nursing a cup of three-hour-old coffee and listening anxiously for your flight to be called. As any security expert knows, the best way to foil would-be terrorists is to make frequent and arbitrary changes in procedure, such as changing the departure gate at least four times before takeoff. Although your fellow passengers—and competitors for oversold seats—appear to be sound asleep, they actually possess a sixth sense that allows them to wake at a dead sprint for the departure gate. They also have the advantage of being native Arabic speakers. As you try to dope out yet another static-clouded announcement (waked, that's one, tamenya, that's eight, sifr, that's zero—that's my flight!), they're already off, leaving you at the wrong gate beside a blind old man and a veiled woman trying to change her baby's diaper.

  In flight, the mayhem resumes. Most Middle East stewardesses make quick work of th
e safety demonstration, or dispense with it altogether. Given the condition of the “safety features,” this is understandable. As the plane rattles down the runway, luggage compartments fly open, tables pop out and stuffed toy camels bounce down the aisle. The only thing that never jars loose is the oxygen mask, ripped out years ago for emergency use as a diaper or ripped out years ago when the cabin last depressurized somewhere over the desert.

  Just before takeoff, the NO SMOKING sign flicks on, which is the signal for passengers on both sides of you to instantly light up. Ninety percent of Arab males smoke, always on airplanes and particularly during takeoff. Nicotine helps ease tension if you've never flown before, and particularly if you have. Alcohol, of course, is banned on many Arab airlines.

  Luckily for sweaty-palmed fliers, the generally cloudless skies across the Middle East make for little turbulence—outside the aircraft. Inside, as soon as the red SEAT-BELT sign goes on, passengers begin lurching around the plane to light each other's cigarettes. Reading is difficult, sleep impossible, and the less said about the toilets the better.

  The food at least isn't much worse than the plasticized fare provided by airlines elsewhere in the world. And meals help to pass the time on flights that are inordinately long, given the distances. As the crow flies, most Middle East capitals are an hour or two apart. But crows don't have to dodge radar, MiG fighters and surface-to-air missiles. Egyptian planes can't fly through Libyan airspace; Iraqi planes can't fly over Syrian airspace; and everyone avoids the dagger-shaped landmass adjoining the Mediterranean, also known as the “Zionist entity.”

  Arab airlines offer unusual in-flight activities. As my plane to Saudi Arabia taxied down the runway, the steward recited the Prophet Mohammed's travel prayer over the loudspeaker. There was also a “Mecca indicator” on the ceiling of the plane: a bobbing, compasslike needle that allowed passengers to know, even in the clouds, which way they should bow their heads in prayer. For reading matter, I had a choice of the International Herald Tribune and an English-language Saudi paper. The Trib had been so carefully scissored by Saudi censors that reading it was like unfurling a tangled ribbon. An article on Saudi Arabia was missing, as was an advertisement for Courvoisier. Another alcohol ad remained, though black ink concealed the liquor bottle, the two glasses and the scantily clad woman about to take a sip of the forbidden substance. At least the Saudis weren't sexist in their censorship: I later read a copy of The Wall Street Journal in which an ad using Da Vinci's nude drawing of man was also blacked-out.

  The English-language Saudi paper was still in one piece, though there were curious omissions. I spent several minutes trying to figure out the following passage from a page-long Question and Answer on the Koran.

  Q. Does Islam say anything about a wife who refuses to comply with her husband's wishes with regard to sexual fulfillment? (Name and address withheld)

  A. Islam views this very seriously, because it constitutes an encouragement to seek fulfillment elsewhere which may lead to committing adultery. As for the second part of your question it is strongly recommended to remove pubic hair and armpit hair from time to time. There is no restriction on the frequency, but we are recommended to do it once in forty days.

  With time, I learned like other correspondents to accept the perils of Middle East travel with grim good humor. During the long hours of waiting in terminal one in Cairo, I'd flip through my airline guide in search of carriers elsewhere in the world that sounded even more dubious than the one I was on. Bop Air. Muck Air. Suckling Airways. I never did fly the Lebanese carrier, which sensibly calls itself Middle East Airlines to avoid reminding passengers that its Beirut hub is every hijacker's airport of choice. I also managed to avoid the national carrier of Bangladesh, which once launched an advertising campaign featuring the comforting slogan “We're better than you think.”

  Sudan Air had no slogans, nor did it have a reliable schedule; passengers were simply told to arrive for flights at eight o'clock on the day of their supposed departure. On the day of mine, no Sudan Air planes were leaving Khartoum because of a weeks-old pilots' strike and a shortage of jet fuel. Luckily, I was one of the thousand or so people who managed to secure a “confirmed waiting list” ticket on Egypt-air instead. The flight was scheduled to depart on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month during which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and spend the hours between in a state of half-starved irritability. This made the atmosphere at the airport a little edgy. So edgy, in fact, that I arrived to find several thousand people standing in the 120-degree heat outside the terminal, waving confirmed waiting list tickets and struggling to get in. Soldiers stood pinned against the wall of the already overcrowded building, keeping the mob at bay with the butts of their submachine guns.

  Fighting my way to the front, I waved a twenty-dollar bill at the nearest soldier and managed to slip inside. The cramped terminal was filled with travelers sleeping beside suitcases held together with string. They looked as though they'd been camped there for days. I went to the desk marked “Flight Information” and asked whether the plane to Cairo was leaving on schedule.

  “It leaves soon,” said one man.

  “There is no flight to Cairo,” said a second.

  “Bokra, insba'allab,” said a third. Tomorrow, God willing.

  The airport cafeteria was closed for Ramadan. So I settled on the floor beside a Sudanese student who translated each announcement for me, just in case a plane to Cairo was called. Five hours later, I was still waiting.

  Finally, at sunset, as the haboob winds began to swirl, a message came over the loudspeaker announcing 'the flight to Cairo. Eight hundred people surged toward the gate, and the first two hundred of us scrambled aboard. As soon as the plane took off, the cabin erupted in cheers. Allah be praised! We're out of Sudan! Stewards came down the aisle with trays of food for passengers now mad with hunger. As the stewards reached the first row of seats, the plane lurched, then leveled out, then dipped toward the ground. The food vanished. There was a crackly announcement in Arabic. The passengers on either side of me buckled their seat belts and searched for nonexistent safety cards. A man across the aisle began to pray.

  “What's going on?” I screamed at one of the stewards.

  “It is nothing,” he said, suddenly pale. “The Sudanese forgot to give us gas.”

  There was one other Westerner on board, a Dane who happened to be an amateur pilot. He was as pale as the steward. “The pilot is throttling back,” he said as the plane seemed to slow. Then the roar of the plane dimmed slightly, becoming more of a hum. “One of the engines has died,” the Dane said. We dropped several thousand feet and began tossing this way and that in what felt like a fledgling haboob.

  “They say every cloud has a silver lining,” the Dane said. “I think it is a stupid saying.”

  Ten minutes later, the pilot managed a wobbly landing at a desert strip just across the Egypt-Sudan border. Once again the cabin erupted with cheers. Allah be praised! We're out of Sudan! A fuel truck rumbled out from the hangar. This was the cue for everyone on board to light a cigarette, including the captain, who had emerged from the cockpit with a stunned expression on his face. Then suddenly we were evacuated from the plane and herded into a concrete pillbox at the edge of the runway.

  “What is it?” I asked one of the crew.

  “Exactly I do not know,” he said. “Something technical.”

  An hour later, I asked again.

  “It is nothing,” he said. “Only something wrong with the wheels.”

  Two hours later, I inquired once more.

  “It is something with the nose of the plane. Not serious.

  I went back inside the pillbox, where the other passengers sat slumped on the concrete floor, meditating on bellies that had been empty since sunrise, sixteen hours before. I meditated on the mosquitoes feeding on my arms and legs and wondered if they were malarial. At two in the morning we were ushered back on board the plane.

  “What was it?” I asked.

>   The crewman shrugged. “Exactly they do not know.”

  Reassured, I climbed back in my seat and chain-smoked with everyone else until we reached Cairo. The trip from Khartoum, a distance equivalent to that separating New York and Chicago, took seventeen hours from the time I'd arrived at the airport. Even for Egyptair this was a little over par, though certainly nothing extraordinary.

  “Look on the bright side,” the Dane said, as we stood in the passport line at terminal one in Cairo. “We didn't have to fly on Sudan Air.”

  14—TO BEIRUT—Jusqu'au Boutiste

  I had thought that danger was the safest thing in the world, if you went about it right.

  —ANNIE DILLARD, The Writing Life

  Marwan, the young man huddled beside me on the bow, counted loudly as we approached the Lebanese shore.

  “One, two, three, four. . .”

  “What are you counting?” It was four in the morning and I was irritated at being awakened. Marwan pointed at a geyser shooting straight up from the sea about one hundred yards to starboard. The water looked rather picturesque, pluming skyward and fanning out as it cascaded down through the moonlight.

  “What's that?” I asked groggily.

  “A one-fifty-five-millimeter shell. Maybe a one-eighty.”

  There was a muffled roar from the coast and the air quivered slightly. Marwan started counting again. “One, two, three, four. . .”

  On the fifth beat, another geyser shot up from the sea. This time it was only fifty yards off our bow. A loud groan drifted up from the cabin, where the other passengers peered out through grimy portholes. The pilot spun the wheel. Guns thudded once more, and Marwan threw his arm across my back, pulling me flat against the deck. “Home, sweet home,” he sighed, crossing himself as he timed the shell's loft once again. “One, two, three, four. . .”

  A few days before, I'd received a phone call from a businessman in Oklahoma named Larry who claimed to be a “close personal friend” of the Lebanese Christian commander, General Michel Aoun. The general had been holed up in his East Beirut bunker for weeks, trading howitzer-fire with the Syrians and their Lebanese Muslim allies. Aoun's “war of liberation” against Syria had become one of the worst artillery duels in Lebanon's long civil war, killing or wounding fifteen hundred people.