Small Wars Permitting

by Christina Lamb

  It was my first night in Africa and I had one day to prove myself to my new employers. It was hard to sleep.

  The next morning Khartoum’s adobe walls and pink minarets were cloaked with dust from one of the haboob sandstorms that periodically blast the city. First stop was the Information Ministry to get permission to enter the apartment where Carlos the Jackal had lived. Permits seemed to be needed for everything in Sudan; that morning’s newspaper carried the story of an Englishman from the World Food Programme arrested for taking a photograph of the Nile. Precious hours were wasted drinking warm sugary Coke with ministry officials who were as obstructive as they were charming. As in many countries it would have been more aptly named the Disinformation Ministry.

  I gave up and escaped to the New Sudan Club where a few florid-complexioned men who seemed to have been there since colonial days were nursing warm gins on the terrace. I was in luck. One of them told me that Carlos had lived just a few streets away and gave me the name of Carlos’s neighbour Benedict Fultang, who was recovering from an operation in a nearby hospital.

  The Khartoum Clinic was an uninspiring place with no staff in sight and a waiting room dominated by a huge handwritten price list. Hernia operations were available for 30,000 dinars, a hysterectomy for 50,000, and, surely a bargain, just 25,000 for an appendectomy. Despite his imposing name, Benedict Fultang was a slight, sorry-looking figure from Cameroon in a dark room filled with flies and extended family.

  He confirmed that he lived in the same small apartment block as the Jackal and had often taken him and his wife drinking at the Diplomatic Club. Although he had known Carlos as Abdallah Barakhat, a businessman of Cuban-Lebanese descent, Mr Fultang had noticed the Magnum bulging from his hip.

  With a wad of dinars and an obliging member of the Fultang family as guide, it turned out to be easy to persuade the guards to let me into the dingy ground-floor flat on the corner of Africa Road. This was where the Venezuelan-born killer had ended up, reading his Cigar Lover magazine and the FT (there were piles of both in his study). I imagined him there reminiscing of his ‘glory days’ as a Marxist revolutionary, blowing up trains and shopping centres in France, massacring Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and kidnapping eleven oil ministers at an OPEC conference.

  The fridge was still full of food, including some half-eaten pasties and a box of luxury Syrian chocolates. One room had been turned into a liquor store lined with steel shelves bearing cases of Johnnie Walker, Tuborg beer and Rémy Martin cognac, as well as some cartons of Marlboro.

  In the wardrobe hung three of the army-surplus waistcoats that Carlos wore to hide his gun and some laundry bags from the Hilton, where he sent everything to be washed. By his bed were photographs of his two very different wives: the hard-faced German revolutionary Magdalene Kopp, and Lana Jarrah, a beautiful young Palestinian whom he and Benedict used to watch belly-dancing at the Armenian Club.

  It was his weakness for women that caused the Jackal’s downfall. At the Armenian Club, I learnt of another woman in Carlos’s life. I was taken to meet Zainab in her jewellery shop, Chez Zed. The sultry widow of a general, Zainab was clearly desperate to confide in someone and broke down in tears as she told me of the brawl in her shop a few months earlier when her grown-up son confronted Carlos over taking his mother as a mistress. As crowds gathered, Carlos’s gun had fallen out of his pocket and police had taken him away for questioning. She believed this was what had led to his discovery in the country, though it seemed unlikely the Sudanese regime had not known he was there.

  I had my story – and my first red dot on the chart.

  Had I but realised, there was an even bigger terrorist in town. Once again I was unknowingly in the same city as Osama bin Laden, who had by then shifted operations from Peshawar.

  Before I left Khartoum, I stopped by the many-arched Grand Sudan Hotel where I had heard that my hero, Hemingway, used to stay en route to hunting expeditions. At the reception desk, I asked if this was true. ‘Mr Hemingway?’ said the concierge. ‘We will ring up to him. What room is he in?’

  * Sadly it closed in 2004 after thirty years. On their website they posted ‘Twelve reasons for the death of small and independent bookstores’. It was a bitter list, blaming everyone from big chains like Barnes & Noble to publishers ‘marketing their products like soap or breakfast cereal’; writers; teachers and the public. But the main reason was the Internet – online book sales had cut their income by a third.

  To the City of Gold – via Baghdad

  Africa 1994–1996

  The locals know it as Jo’burg or Jozi. More poetic is its Zulu name, Egoli or City of Gold – 40 per cent of the world’s gold has come from around the city. As the plane descended towards Johannesburg airport, I could see the distinctive city centre skyline of office blocks and TV tower. The strange flat hills beyond were old mine dumps, the remains of mine workings from the days of Cecil Rhodes in the nineteenth century. Most of the houses we were flying over seemed to have swimming pools.

  That morning I sat in the News Café in Rosebank over a cappuccino and blueberry muffin and started leafing through The Star, the main national newspaper. One of the headlines was ‘Couple Collide with Rhino’. Between reading I couldn’t help noticing that the only blacks around were carrying trays or wielding mops, as well as one begging for ‘transport money’. So much for the new South Africa. Still, we were in the so-called ‘Northern Suburbs’ and it was only four months since Mandela had taken office as the country’s first black President.

  Anyway, I was looking for rental ads not news. A yellow bird was singing in the tree and, compared to Pakistan and Brazil, everything seemed incredibly efficient. By the end of my first day I had opened a bank account, tracked down when and where my belongings would arrive, and sorted out my press accreditation.

  All I needed was somewhere to live. As I drove around looking at places to rent, I was taken aback by all the electric fences and ‘24-hour Armed Response’ signs. Having lived in Rio, which at that time had worse crime statistics than Jo’burg, I was determined not to give in to what seemed like paranoia. So I found a house near Zoo Lake with a pool, a sauna and no razor-wire fences or bars on the windows. When visitors to my house shrieked, ‘How can you live like this?’ I laughed. But within a week of moving in, I came home one evening from Kippies jazz bar to find my terrace door open and a scuffling noise inside. I dialled 10111 and, minutes later, a posse of blond men bearing large guns had arrived: the Parkview police. They found a window forced open but to their evident disappointment the intruders had left. ‘Ma’am, this house is very unsafe,’ said one of them in thickly Afrikaans-accented English. ‘You must get a dog and an alarm system. These okes will know you are living alone and they will be back.’

  Before I had time to do anything about it, however, a call came from my foreign editor instructing me, ‘Get to Baghdad’. Saddam Hussein had sent his troops to the Kuwaiti border. Everyone thought he was planning another invasion like that which four years earlier had led to the Gulf War.

  I flew to Jordan where the Intercontinental Amman was packed with journalists from Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy and the US. Every day we would all make our way to the Iraqi embassy in search of visas. ‘I’d forgotten how much of this job is spent waiting,’ I wrote in my diary. ‘Waiting on the pavement outside the Iraqi embassy, waiting in the café across the road from the embassy, waiting in the small anteroom where the guards sit glued to high-pitched movies on Arabsat…’

  The person for whom we were all waiting was Adel Ibrahim, the Iraqi Consul, a neat little man with a trim moustache and shiny Italian shoes. One day, to the envy of the other journalists, most of whom were male, I was singled out and summoned inside. But once in Mr Ibrahim’s hallowed office, far from stamping the precious visa into my passport, he proceeded to invite me to dinner. Over glasses of liquorice-tasting arak at Amigo Nadeels, he told me how he was looking for love while I told him how much I needed a visa. ‘We will see,’
he said. The next morning the hotel reception called saying something had arrived for me. I rushed to the door, hoping for a message that my visa was ready. Instead there was an enormous bouquet of salmon-coloured flowers and a note from Mr Ibrahim saying, ‘I wish to keep you in Amman for ever.’ Fuck. My charm offensive was having the opposite effect to that intended.

  Finally I convinced him that the Sunday Times would pull me out immediately if I didn’t get a visa whereas, if I did, then I would come back to Amman and we would have dinner. I may even have said, many dinners.

  The visa was mine and that night I literally fled to Baghdad. The desert was a disappointment. Far from the swirling sands of Lawrence of Arabia, it was grey, gritty and flat. The taxi journey took thirteen hours, a couple of which were spent at Baghdad Customs where I passed through a series of dejected waiting rooms full of flies and broken plastic chairs, paying bribes to various officials, including $50 not to take an Iraqi Aids test. On one of the broken chairs a man in an Arab headdress sat silently, a small bird clasped tightly in his right hand.

  Baghdad was not the exotic city of domes and spice markets that I had pictured from those old Orient Express posters. Instead it was a drab place of Stalinist-style cement monuments and shadowy people with grey faces. The great Tigris river flowed brown but nobody fished or boated, scared away I guess by the occasional military patrol. From every corner Saddam’s despotic gaze stared out of gigantic multicoloured billboards. There was Saddam, the stern military commander; Saddam, the wild tribesman with flowing chequered headcloth; Saddam in bowler hat; and there was rosy-cheeked smiling Saddam walking through meadows with his arms round children. I imagined the Saddam artists trying to come up with ever new poses that would please their leader. My personal favourite was Saddam speaking on a pink telephone.

  In those days the journalists’ hotel was the Al-Rashid. To enter you had to walk across a floor mosaic of a grimacing George Bush under which was written ‘Bush is Criminal’. It had taken me so long to get there, what with the journey from South Africa then the wait for the visa, that by the time I stepped across Bush’s face, Saddam had already pulled back his troops from the Kuwaiti border. There was not going to be another war; at least not for now.

  Those who had managed to get in had left and practically the only journalists still in the Al-Rashid were Angus MacSwan from Reuters, Mark Nicholson, an old friend from the FT, and Peter Arnett from CNN. Peter had a whole floor of the hotel kitted out with microwave oven, video player and stores of American food he’d had sent in, which I sneered at but would later gratefully share. The only supply I had smuggled in was a bottle of gin which Mark and I drank in one session with plum juice, the only mixer we could find, ensuring my first day in Baghdad began with a hangover.

  Even with a clear head, reporting in Iraq turned out to be harder still than Sudan. People were scared to talk and I was assigned a minder who was a Benny Hill fanatic but determined to let me speak to no one but regime apparatchiks. My driver Abu Zaid did not even want me to sightsee, constantly reminding me of his ten children who could be left fatherless. ‘I want to sleep sound, not with the click-click-click in my ear,’ he said, mimicking a gun against his head.

  Most Iraqis had not yet found ways round the sanctions and food was in short supply. One night Mark and I went to a restaurant called El Musheef where we were enjoying our meze when suddenly an enormous brown rat appeared down the stairs and sauntered across the room. We told the waiters, who just laughed. The menu offered ‘Bird: fried or grilled’ and ‘Brain in a Pan’ so we went for the only other option – chicken tikka. They brought us a plate of chopped unrecognisable meat which we both thought tasted distinctly rat-like.

  I managed to get out of town to see Babylon where Saddam was rebuilding King Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. The new bricks were inscribed with the words: ‘In the era of Saddam Hussein, protector of Iraq, who rebuilt civilisation and rebuilt Babylon.’

  Back at the Al-Rashid where the phones hardly ever worked, my Afrikaner landlord in Johannesburg had somehow got a message through, complaining my rent was late. My belongings were waiting at Customs. I was supposed to be Africa correspondent. It was time to get back.

  Once more I travelled through the desert by night because it was cooler. Arriving in Jordan in the early hours, I was anxious to avoid spending more time in Amman where the adoring Mr Ibrahim would be waiting in his shiny shoes. Rather than check in to the Intercon, I went to the travel agency and asked the lady if there was any way she could get me to Lisbon in time for dinner then on to Johannesburg. She looked at me as if I were mad. When I explained, she turned out to have a romantic soul and drove me to the airport at speed to catch a departing flight. It was only 4 a.m. in Portugal so she promised to call Paulo who I was not even sure was in town (fortunately, he was).

  Back in Jo’burg, the Sunday Times was eager for stories about Mandela’s ‘ineptitude’. This was a problem as I thought Mandela by far the most impressive man I had ever met. The only solution was to get out of Johannesburg and travel round Africa. Having fallen in love with South Asia and Latin America, I had been sceptical of those people who bore on about Africa’s wide skies and dream of buying a farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills. But I quickly became one of them. Later when I returned to London to become diplomatic correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, I would go back again and again.

  Learning to dance on a Zambian train

  Financial Times, 21 February 1998

  WHEN WE DECIDED to go by train from Mpika, in northern Zambia, to Dar es Salaam, I did not expect my dancing prowess to be on trial.

  But I should have realised it would be no ordinary journey when I telephoned Tazara reservations and a giggling voice answered, ‘Here is Beauty.’

  When I explained I was calling from Portugal, Beauty was very excited. ‘Por-too-gell,’ she said in wonder, ‘what time is it?’ When we established it was the same as in Zambia, Beauty was astonished. Someone called Precious came on the line, equally amazed, then it went dead.

  After several conversations, which never got near reserving a compartment, I gave up and decided to try my luck on arrival. The Tazara train goes from Zambia to Tanzania twice a week and, according to my guidebook, is one of Africa’s most reliable.

  The line was built by the Chinese and the company’s motto is ‘On Time All the Time’. So on the Friday morning that I arrived with my boyfriend at Mpika station – a concrete monstrosity in the African bush – to buy our tickets and catch the afternoon train, we were confident of soon departing.

  Forty hours later, we were still waiting. Now forty hours is a long time, even for those used to the vagaries of England’s Connex South Central. It is a very long time in Mpika, where the concrete road from the station peters out after fifty metres into red clay dotted with shacks. Few tourists stop and we were soon the object of fascination.

  People popped up from nowhere to tell us about Chinese railway workers breeding dogs to eat for dinner. The one-eyed station master confided his dream of becoming a marketing executive. A group of evangelists with black briefcases tried to convert us, and a man asked Paulo how many cows he had paid for me.

  We hung out in Kalolo’s bakery, the only café, where we introduced the custom of halving scones and spreading them with butter, and bought the only painting off Kalolo’s wall. News spread and we were besieged by people trying to sell us land, baskets and brown pebbles. By the time the train came, at 4 a.m. on the second day, we had many new friends.

  We were, however, seriously short of sleep and dreaming of our first-class sleeper compartment, which we had paid to have to ourselves. So when I slid open the door and nine smiling Zambians stared out, my heart sank.

  ‘Come in!’ they called, apparently well into their second case of Mosi beer. Sharing a compartment for four with nine other people who are drunk and want to party when you want to sleep is not conducive to international relations. Grumpily clearing people off our bunks, we covered ourselves in
Tazara blankets and tried to sleep.

  At 6 a.m. the radio came on, blasting out music. One of our new bedfellows opened the blinds and announced it was time for breakfast. Barely conscious, we stumbled along the corridor to the dining car for rubbery omelettes, cold toast and grey tea.

  Everyone else seemed to be in their best clothes – men in shiny shoes, spotted bow ties and colourful shirts, women with complicated

  headdresses – putting us, the only white passengers, to shame in our dusty jeans and T-shirts.

  Back in the compartment, our fellow passengers introduced themselves and apologised for the previous night. I apologised for my bad mood. They handed us beers and we were all friends. They were travelling to Dar es Salaam to buy car parts. In Zambia, they cost five times more because of high import tariffs.

  ‘What about Customs?’ I asked Chola John, the leader of the group.

  ‘We have an arrangement with the Customs officer,’ he smiled.

  The day got hotter and the music louder. More beers were drunk. We stopped at villages of beehive huts and acacia trees.

  Suddenly Chola John’s wife Joan slid her ample frame off the seat. ‘Time to dance,’ she shouted.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ yelped Chama, a big-bottomed schoolteacher.

  Soon everyone but us was dancing.

  ‘Cristineee, you will show us how people dance in London,’ commanded Moses.

  Never the most elegant of people on the dance floor, I shuffled my feet. My audience was not impressed. ‘Cristineee, we will teach you to dance like an African mama.’ Soon the whole train had heard about the white woman trying to dance the African way. People came and offered advice, but it was no good – my hips refused to sway like theirs.