And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East (9 page)

After settling in at the Flowers Land, I called Kazem, a low-ranking official at the press center, explaining my visa predicament. I reasoned that it was best to let the Iraqis know I was a journalist who broke the rules rather than have them catch me and accuse me of being a spy. Kazem, a bespectacled man in a three-piece suit, came to the hotel a few days later. Changing my visa wouldn’t be easy, he said, but he would take it up with the head of the press center, Uday al-Ta’e.

I was surprised to learn that Flowers Land had a business center with an Internet connection. The Iraqis had blocked free e-mail servers such as Yahoo! and Hotmail, but Mohammed, a twenty-one-year-old hacker who presided over the center, made it his business to find free e-mail sites that had escaped the authorities’ notice. He came up with several that apparently weren’t on the government’s radar and signed me up for one based in Moldova, a tiny country tucked between Romania and Ukraine.

I picked a man named Zarfar as my driver, mainly because he was forty, older than the other candidates. I felt that young drivers tended to be too opportunistic. Zarfar was just greedy. He also had a functioning but decidedly dumpy car, a 1986 Volkswagen Passat, that wouldn’t attract attention.

I took Zarfar to lunch in hopes of putting a purchase on his trust and ended up with a bad case of food poisoning. I went to a pharmacy to buy some vitamin C. I assumed the pharmacist was a Christian, as many are in the Arab world, and I tried to break the ice with some casual talk about Rome. He told me he had an uncle
in Milan who was a priest and that his own son was an aspiring soccer player who dreamed of playing professionally in Italy.

After ten minutes of small talk, I asked him how his business was doing, a routine question in the West but quite forward in Saddam’s Iraq, where expressing opinions to foreigners was tantamount to treason. “Better than ever,” he said. But what about the war? “Maybe there will be a war, maybe there won’t be. Hopefully there won’t be a war.” His sixteen-year-old son came in, and I told him I’d get the address for the European soccer federation so he could inquire about trying out for a pro team. I promised to mail the letter after I left Iraq. I went back to the hotel and got the federation’s address off the Internet. Then I returned to the pharmacy and waited for the other customers to leave. I gave the pharmacist the address and he invited me to the back room for tea.

“Do you think there will be a war?” he asked, offering me a Gauloises Blondes cigarette. I said I expected the conflict to begin soon. He said he feared Sunni extremists would use the ensuing chaos to harass Christians. I said I was concerned about foreigners once the war started, especially Americans such as me, and he said I could take shelter in his store in the event of trouble. That was how I found my first safe house.

As for Zarfar, he thought the war would make Iraq the richest country in the Middle East because of its oil and large number of educated people. He planned to buy a new car, and he had his eye on an apartment where he could take his eighteen-year-old mistress, a university student whose parents had hired him to drive her to and from campus—and got more than they bargained for.

But first, Zarfar said, he needed a decent pair of shoes. So we drove to a market downtown, where I shed my safari-style shirt and khaki trousers for a wardrobe that would make me look less
like a foreigner. Most men in Baghdad dressed like Eastern Europeans, in low-quality dress shirts, slacks, and blazers in a variety of colors. I bought the local uniform, along with a bottle of black Just for Men hair dye.

After our shopping expedition, I asked Zarfar to hire me a policeman. Because of my visa problem, I thought it would be helpful to travel with someone who had police credentials to help us through the inevitable roadblocks. Zarfar managed to line one up, nonchalantly mentioning that the guy had a drinking problem. With an avaricious driver and a drunkard cop, I felt I was collecting the cast of characters for an updated version of Evelyn Waugh’s
Scoop
.

At the press center and at the Al-Rashid Hotel, the reporters were cagey and withholding information from each other. Because they knew I spoke Arabic, some of them tried to wheedle tidbits out of me without offering anything in return. A few even seemed to take pleasure in my shaky visa situation. Journalists typically jockey for position before a big story, but I had never seen anything as competitive as this.

I had a low moment on March 11, when I secured a reporting visa only to have it taken away by the official who managed the day-to-day operations of the press center. I was then ordered to leave Iraq within three days. In a panic, I contacted Mohammed Ajlouni, ABC’s longtime fixer in Jordan, who took care of everything from getting hotel reservations to finding drivers to scheduling interviews and then soothing bruised feelings if an interview turned ugly. He told me that Iraqi officials at their embassy in Amman were concerned about the exodus of journalists from Iraq and might be willing to issue reporting visas to make sure the war got covered. I left my gear in my hotel room, including what
remained of my $20,000 emergency stash, and headed back to Jordan in yet another GMC Suburban. It was the biggest gamble of my Iraq venture: if I didn’t get a visa, I wouldn’t be able to get back into the country.

Ajlouni and I went to the embassy, and he was invited in while I cooled my heels in the reception area. A couple of hours later he returned with a reporting visa. On March 16, I wrote in my journal, “I’m back in Baghdad and finally in business. I drove to Jordan and back in the last 36 hours.” Of course, I still didn’t have a firm commitment from ABC News, and all hell was about to break loose. But at least I didn’t have any kids, I thought.

When I went to the Al-Rashid, most of the journalists were pulling out or packing to go. Like the other networks, ABC was shutting down its operation. The network’s chief producer in town told me the editors in New York had struck a deal with a British newspaper reporter to cover Baghdad during the war. I was furious. ABC eventually agreed to pay me a retainer and said I would split the reporting duties with the British journalist. ABC promised to pay me whether I stayed or left if I felt unsafe, a very professional way in which to take money out of the decision. Before the ABC guys pulled out, they gave me an extra satellite phone, a chemical/biological suit, a gas mask, and, most important, $10,000 in cash. I had already spent $10,000 on cars, drivers, rooms, generators, and fuel, so my ankle pouch was now fully replenished.

By March 17, the mood in Baghdad had abruptly changed. “It’s as if the Iraqis are finally starting to realize that this new war is finally coming,” I wrote in my journal. “There is now heavy traffic, almost all of it heading out of town. I’ve seen shop owners
boarding up their businesses.”

From seven hundred journalists at the beginning of March, the number had dwindled to about one hundred and fifty—print reporters, TV correspondents, photographers, cameramen, and support personnel. At the press center I encountered Kazem, who only a week before I had asked for help with my visa. “Why are you staying when everyone else is leaving?” he asked. I took a chance and replied in Arabic. Some journalists, I said, are as
samid
as the Iraqi people.
Samid
means “steadfast” and “brave” and is the adjective most often used by Iraqis to describe themselves. Kazem laughed and threw his arm around my shoulder.

Now that I had press credentials, I was assigned a minder, Abu Sattar, whose stocky build, square face, and thick mustache made him eerily reminiscent of Saddam Hussein. He took everything Saddam said as gospel, but fortunately he was lazy and careless, and I had no trouble losing him and going off on my own. I also met Ali, a nineteen-year-old who would become my trusted driver and friend. I told Zarfar I no longer needed him as a driver but would continue to pay him and his policeman pal. I rented them a two-bedroom apartment in the Dulaimi Hotel so they would be nearby in case of an emergency.

When I called ABC’s foreign desk on March 18, I was told that President Bush was delivering a speech that night from the White House. I also learned that the British newspaper reporter had left Iraq, which meant I was ABC’s only reporter in Baghdad. I viewed my elevated status with mixed feelings because of an e-mail I had received from my mother. “The time has come to leave, please. To hell with the networks, just get going and get out!!! I love you. Mom.”

I listened to Bush’s speech through my earpiece on a balcony above the press center. He gave Saddam and his two sons
forty-eight hours to leave Iraq or face “military conflict.” The president also called on journalists to leave Iraq, which sent chills down my back. I was scared as hell, a good deal less
samid
than before, but still determined to stay.

Militiamen from Saddam’s Ba’ath Party, the only officially sanctioned political group in Iraq, suddenly took to the streets, brandishing Kalashnikovs. They set up checkpoints and guard posts on street corners. As I would learn later, the better-trained Republican Guards were positioned on the outskirts of the city, preparing to close a noose on American soldiers once they entered Baghdad. Channeling my fear into logistics, I hurriedly set up two more safe houses and equipped them with food, water, and generators. I now had four bolt-holes in case I needed to disappear. Ali was dismissive of the Ba’ath militiamen: “They won’t fight,” a surprisingly blunt statement from someone who had lived his entire life under the iron fist of Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi press officials ordered foreign journalists to move to one of the three state-run hotels: the Palestine, the Al-Rashid, or the Al Mansour. I chose the Palestine because it was across the Tigris River from the press center and other government buildings. I booked three rooms on three sides of the building so I could have different views of the city. The Palestine was rickety—it would sway when bombs exploded—and that wasn’t its only drawback. It also housed upward of twenty-five Islamic extremists. One told me he’d come to Iraq to become a martyr. The radicals were mostly Arabs but with some Asians. Efi Pentaki, a Greek journalist who had the room next to mine on the fourteenth floor, said she recognized several of the men from a training camp for suicide bombers that she had visited a couple of weeks earlier. Iraq had indeed imported a strange cast of characters, from human
shields to Islamic fanatics, anything to slow down the American invasion.

On March 19, before the ground assault began, Washington launched a type of preemptive strike, firing forty cruise missiles and dropping four two-thousand-pound “bunker buster” bombs on the Dora Farms complex in southern Baghdad, where Saddam was thought to be meeting with his sons Uday and Qusay. (It was later revealed the men were not there at the time of the attack.)

Not knowing the purpose of the attack, and expecting “shock and awe,” I thought the first night was something of a dud. Saddam responded with a speech declaring that the “day of the great jihad” had arrived and accusing the United States and Britain of having “evil imperialist and Zionist intentions.” It was typical Saddam bluster, but it increased my feelings of isolation and vulnerability. I was now in an enemy capital, under attack by my own government. If I got into trouble, help would not be coming.

The Information Ministry, which oversaw the press center, was bustling with activity the next day, and I was surprised at how normal everything seemed. My old minder had left Baghdad on “family business,” and I was turned over to Abu Annas, a man of about sixty-five who was polite, dignified, and brave. His one weakness was his near-obsessive concern for the brown corduroy suit he wore nearly every day. Whenever faced with the choice between duty and possibly soiling his suit, he would invariably err on the side of corduroy.

Abu Annas took me to what would become daily briefings by the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who would end up as one of the most memorable characters of the invasion period. He had been a Ba’ath Party enforcer during
Saddam’s rise to power, and he retained his brass-knuckles bravado. But mostly he became known for his over-the-top language and utter dedication to spreading mistruth. He referred to American soldiers as “desert animals” and swore they were many miles away even after they had breached Baghdad’s city limits.

Like the other networks, ABC had switched to continuous live coverage, and I worked virtually nonstop. At first ABC described me as a freelance reporter, but after a few days I was being introduced on-air as “ABC’s Richard Engel” or “our correspondent.” It felt good to get my epaulets.

After a second night of bombings, which included several direct hits on the presidential compound across the Tigris, Ali arrived with the daily newspapers (which amazingly kept publishing through the twenty-one-day invasion), freshly baked diamond-shaped loaves of bread, salty farmer’s cheese, and a carton of mango juice. Breakfast was pure bliss.

Later that day, the Iraqi government expelled CNN from Baghdad, and correspondents Rym Brahimi and Nic Robertson and their crews left in a fury. I doubt anything they said was more offensive to the Iraqis than my reports, but Uday al-Ta’e, the press center director, only watched CNN, Fox, and the BBC. With CNN gone, only two American television correspondents remained in the capital—me and Peter Arnett, who was working as a freelancer for NBC.

Shock and awe arrived on the overnight of March 21st to 22nd. As I wrote in my journal: “It was ten times the intensity of the first two nights. . . . I could feel the heat and wind of the blasts [from the other side of the Tigris]. . . . The bombs were falling one after another. It was like lightning hitting the ground, the fury of Thor and Zeus crackling with explosions.”

After spending the night and into the next morning broadcasting, I took a few hours off to collect my thoughts and take Ali to lunch. The restaurant was crammed with customers, and the headwaiter had to search to find us a table in the back. The bombing started up again, with explosions all around us, in broad daylight, but no one in the restaurant even flinched. Iraqis seemed numb after a quarter century under Saddam’s whip-hand rule. It was heartbreaking to see what a harsh dictatorship can do to the human soul.