by Paul Henry
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.
“I KNEW AFRICA QUITE WELL BY THEN. THE BRITISH INTRODUCED RUBBER STAMPS AND CARBON PAPER, SO THE BUREAUCRACY IS EXTRAORDINARY. ADD THE CORRUPTION AND THE CHIEFS TO THAT AND YOU HAVE A VERY COMPLICATED MIXTURE. I UNDERSTOOD WHAT THE PEOPLE THERE LIKED AND DIDN’T LIKE WHEN IT CAME TO FOREIGNERS COMING IN.”
* * *
DOUGLAS KEAR WAS A Hamilton man who had been one of a group of tourists kidnapped while on a gorilla safari in Africa. This was international news in 1998. Efforts had been made by his family and at diplomatic levels to find out what w
as happening, with no success. I knew Africa quite well by then. The British introduced rubber stamps and carbon paper, so the bureaucracy is extraordinary. Add the corruption and the chiefs to that and you have a very complicated mixture. I understood what the people there liked and didn’t like when it came to foreigners coming in.
It was obvious that the people trying to locate Douglas Kear were getting nowhere. No one could even prove whether he was dead or alive. All they knew was that he had been alive when the kidnappers released a couple of the hostages. They were believed to be in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, somewhere close to the border with Uganda and Rwanda. That is a very specific, quite small area, largely consisting of impenetrable forest, in a very large country.
The idea of finding him, or simply trying to find him in that sort of environment was very exciting. Derek was excited because this was not just an international story but one with a strong New Zealand angle, unlike most of the things I was doing.
I went to see Kear’s family before I left. I didn’t want to give anyone false hope and didn’t shy away from the fact he was quite possibly already dead. That said, I thought I might at least find out what had happened to him or get close to the people who took him, which no one had managed to do.
One of the Radio Pacific copywriters stopped me and made enquiries about my sanity in light of my plans. A lot of the things I did were obviously dangerous once I was doing them, but not so obviously dangerous during the planning. This was a case where what I was doing was unquestionably dangerous — attempting to track down people who were at best hardened killers.
I first flew into Uganda, landing at Entebbe airport, but my ultimate destination was a town called Kisoro, which was the starting point for most of the gorilla tours.
While in Kampala, I went to the offices of the local newspaper, New Vision, to see if I could drum up some publicity for my search. I thought that might speed things up by smoking out someone close to the kidnappers. They gave me a great front-page story about the search for Douglas Kear which threw up some good leads. I also told the journalist I spoke to I needed someone in Kisoro who knew his way around and could cut some corners and liaise with the various parties to find out information for me. He recommended a cousin who I took on as an assistant.
I flew out of Entebbe airport in a small plane. As we took off I could see some of Idi Amin’s planes off to one side, slowly rusting away. And, within moments, I was flying over Lake Victoria and looking at the hippos in the water.
Kisoro was smaller than I had imagined. There was some communications infrastructure but I would have been lost without my satellite phone. There were places to stay that could almost be called hotels. Mine was a collection of huts in a compound with a kitchen and a bar area. The shower was a big piece of plastic on top of a mud roof that would fill up with rain water and heat during the day, and the plumbing was very sparse. My bed was made of thatched sticks but it had a mattress because I was in the best room. I loved it all. I got a discounted rate on the best room because I was staying for so long, and possibly because I was the only guest they had.
I met the cousin, Didas, who didn’t know much about the story but did know a lot about the various factions there and people I needed to speak to. I reasoned that the more people knew about me, the likelier I would be to get in touch with the kidnappers.
‘I want everyone in this village to know exactly who I am when they see me,’ I told Didas. ‘I want them to know exactly why I am here, exactly where I am staying. I need them to know I’m not in support of any faction or another. I’m not with the police. I’m not with the tour company. I’m not here to make a judgement or bring someone to justice. I just want to find out what happened to this man.’
Because I behaved so differently from everyone else who had come looking for Douglas Kear, there was no distrust surrounding me. Progress was slow, however. Near the town was a knoll where I used to go sometimes when I felt like a bit of peace and quiet. It was in Uganda but you could touch the Congo from there and you could almost touch Rwanda. You could look down on the mist in the forest and know that was where the gorillas were. It was the strangest feeling, the same as I had when I stood in Mother House in Calcutta and thought: ‘Even if nothing comes of this expedition, being able to experience this has made the trip worthwhile.’
I soon felt at home in Kisoro. With time on my hands I got to know the people at the hotel well. I organised a working bee. We planted flowers and whitewashed the walls. I showed them how to prune and train their roses. I also got sick to death of eating goat, which was what you were fed on if you were prosperous. There were about ten ways of cooking a goat and they were all exactly the same.
‘We need fish,’ I said. ‘I fancy a bit of fish. I go to the markets all the time and they’ve got fish at the markets.’
‘Oh no, we can’t get you fish,’ the hotel cook said. So I went to the market myself and bought a huge fish, took it back, slapped it down in the filthy area where the chef used to cook and said, ‘This is my dinner.’
They laughed. I ignored them.
‘Cook it up for dinner. We’ll all have it, it’s a huge fish.’
By dinner time I was sitting in the dining hall and the room was full of people, with more looking through the windows, all there to watch crazy Paul eat a fish. It looked fantastic when it came out. I made the manager sit down with me and we both had a plate. I took the first bite. There is no way I can adequately convey to you how awful it tasted. It was like eating shit that had been cooked in vomit. I’m sure that fish had subsisted on nothing but excrement its entire life. And I have a sneaking suspicion the locals all knew that.
One day I noticed a change in the town’s mood. Normally the air was heavy with menace, but this day there was an almost festive feeling in the town, with no festival planned that I was aware of.
‘Something’s different,’ I said to the manager.
‘The locusts are coming,’ he said.
‘When?’
‘Probably tomorrow, maybe the next day.’
‘Is there anything I need to be aware of?’
‘Just make sure your door is closed. It will be much excitement. They are a delicacy, nothing tastes like fresh locusts. Then, after the locusts go — fried locusts.’
I thought locusts meant plants being devoured and the clothes being stripped from people’s backs. The next day there were no locusts but there was increased excitement. People were collecting up every container they could find, every plastic bag and plastic bottle.
That night they rewired their huts and put all their light bulbs outside. They stood and waited, and when the first locusts arrived, they grabbed them out of the air as they flew past and stuck them in their mouths. A few hours later, there was a wall of locusts and people were frantically grabbing them and stuffing them in their containers. By the next morning the whole place was just swarming with locusts. By that afternoon, there were dead locusts everywhere. That night, there was a huge feast of barbecued locusts. And within two days it was all over. They came, they were conquered and they left.
Behind all this, violence was always in the background. This was a time when there was a lot of distrust in the air and a lot of killing going on. Some people called it intertribal conflict. Other people called it a war. I concluded that the difference was merely the size of your tribe.
Every night there were murders. The impenetrable forest was populated by pygmies who came into the village during the day and were very hostile to everyone. One used to play his guitar for you and then expect to be paid. If you didn’t hand over any money, he hit you with his guitar. I thought of hitting him back but he was probably much stronger than me.
One day I went to see the impenetrable forest. I did not expect to be able to get in, it being impenetrable, but I got in a little way. I didn’t want to go very far because as well as the pygmies it was inhabited by a lot of anacondas. But it was as extraordinary as any natural phenomenon I have ev
er encountered; it was so fertile that when I crouched down I could see things growing. Climbers moved before my eyes.
One especially bad night some 50 people were murdered in the village. I could hear the screams from my hotel. Next day, I walked to a market across the border in the Congo. One of the murder victims had been slit from his throat to his genitals and pegged open on the path as a warning to others not to support his group: ‘Don’t help these people or this will happen to you.’ Women and children going to market to sell or trade their six potatoes had to walk past this grotesque sight.
There were not many other foreigners around. The violence had slowed the tourist trade right down, with few people keen enough to risk kidnapping to look at some gorillas. One aim of the kidnappers was to destabilise the Ugandan economy by disrupting the tourist industry and in that they succeeded spectacularly. The whole time I was there only one group of tourists appeared. They stayed only two days.
In a short period of time I gained a lot of intelligence and I was pretty sure that the Interahamwe, the Hutu paramilitary organisation, had taken Douglas Kear. Because of my contacts, other people came through wanting to cash in on my intelligence. A pair of Africans from Kampala attempted to befriend me. They wanted messages taken to the Interahamwe. This was all to do with Ugandan, Congolese and, to a degree, Rwandan politics, and I wanted no part of it.
‘If you help us, we can help you,’ they said, but I couldn’t really be sure who they were. I didn’t understand their motivations and had no way of finding out.
One day I got a message telling me to call the British high commissioner in Kampala.
‘Mr Henry, this is the best possible intelligence we have,’ said the high commissioner when I finally got through. ‘You are being hunted down and you will be killed. You need to know that the only responsible, reasonable thing you can do is get out of there now. And I mean right now. You should not be there tonight. There is one other thing you need to know: if you choose to stay, no one is going to come in to get you out if you go missing. You are entirely on your own.’