Naked in Baghdad

by Anne Garrels

  While Amer went off to do errands, I took a taxi to and from the Information Ministry. This is always a good way to talk to people in private. On the way, the driver had nothing but unprovoked praise for Osama bin Laden, declaring that Americans are anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. On the way back, another driver said Iraqis know the United States is targeting the regime, not the people; he then confessed he was terrified that the Baath Party would try to pressgang his son into the military. This eighteen-year-old is now confined to the house for his own safety.

  CBS is finally leaving. This brings the number of Americans left to about sixteen. Given all the problems others have had at the border, they are desperate to unload their undeclared cash, of which they have a great deal. I am the happy recipient of a loan of $5,000, which I will certainly need to hang on here.

  Once again, just as I think I have everything as organized as possible, the Palestine Hotel tells me I have to move out. They declare that they are shutting down the hotel because of the imminent war. I can’t bear the thought of moving again, but my protestations go nowhere and I need to get set up somewhere in time for tonight’s broadcast for ATC. Several of us pull up stakes yet again and head back to the Al-Rashid.

  The staff is still here, but the Russian hookers who provided me with endless entertainment have disappeared. The Internet center is being closed down. Men begin to unplug the computers and pack them into cardboard boxes. The windows have been covered with rugs. As I stand in my room waiting for I know not what, I catch sight of the swimming pool glistening in the dusk. I quickly get into my suit, but when I reach the gate I find the doors are padlocked. I climb over a fence and dive in and just swim and swim and swim. It’s a beautiful evening. As I clamber back over the fence, a hotel guard is waiting for me. He motions for me to follow him. I think, “How ignominious. I will be forever known as the correspondent who was expelled for an illegal dip.” As we round a corner, he grabs me. All he wants to do is cop a feel. I burst out laughing, which succeeds where words had failed. He flees. I think of how much I would like a hug from Vint. It’s pretty lonely here right now.

  BRENDA BULLETIN: MARCH 19, 2003

  Dear All,

  Annie has made her decision. She has convinced NPR that she is safer in Baghdad than trying to make a break for the border—some twelve hours by car under the best of circumstances, which obviously no longer obtain. To their credit her immediate boss and his superiors have backed the idea that it should be Annie’s call. Today, I spoke with Loren Jenkins, the foreign editor. He told me of their decision. I agreed. We spoke of other wars in other places and how it always looks more frightening from the outside than from the inside. He said, “Annie makes good decisions and I’ll go with her gut.”

  A raft of rumors and reports from journalists who tried this route over the last forty-eight hours seems to confirm her judgment. Some were detained, some have been reportedly jailed, some strip-searched, some turned back, some relieved of their excess cash for “currency violations.” The requisite exit-paperwork that one used to be able to “buy” at the border is no longer available. Order at the border has gone AWOL. In an effort to strip down, the departing CBS crew lent Annie a huge wad of cash. Annie hadn’t seen that kind of TV money in quite a while.

  We talked at length this morning after her piece on Morning Edition aired. The city is partly deserted, many people have left but many remain, the shops are shuttered and boarded. The mood is still, bizarrely, not of a place about to be hit but of a place that is slowly going nuts. There is little evidence of street fortifications or the other things that an armed and defiant populace might do in preparation to resist. Instead of soldiers there are mainly groups of Baath Party bureaucrats in their unadorned insignia-less green fatigues—paunchy fellows who look very uncomfortable and don’t seem to know what to do. The place is odd.

  Annie and some of the other foreign journalists were moved today from the Palestine Hotel back to the Al-Rashid where she began. Above all she is very, very tired from lugging her gear and her survival rations from place to place, never unpacking. She said an odd bunch of men began moving into the Palestine shortly before she was moved out. Arabs, but who did not look like Iraqis. And then there were the “human shield” folks who have suddenly found themselves in way over their heads. She doesn’t know what will happen to them. The staff at the Palestine had been very good to her, but the place was getting spooky.

  Despite its proximity to a presidential palace, she thinks that she will be as safe in the Al-Rashid as anywhere. It is well built and sits in a large, open plot of land. Out her window there is a belt the width of “two soccer fields” that was filled somewhat ominously, as we spoke, by a flock of extremely large, dark birds. Just how many journalists are now mustered at the Al-Rashid is hard to tell.

  She speaks well of the other reporters she has met: good journalists in a very tight place trying to live up to a high credo. But more important is the small group within the whole. This is a dozen or so friends from other places at other times. They know each other well and trust each other. They know each other’s room numbers. They talk a lot together and are a doughty band that will look out for each other. Her driver has a room across from hers. His family has gone to his village. He will help her if needed.

  I don’t know how much more time we will have to talk or e-mail. The satellite phones may be blocked, and effectively we will be out of communication if they are. I hope to get through at least once more before the deadline. Her gut instinct tells her she was right to stay.

  V

  DURING

  MARCH 20, 2003

  I sleep fitfully for a few hours but by 4 a.m. my time, President Bush’s deadline, I’m sort of awake. It’s quiet. Nothing. Then at about 5:30, it starts. First there’s the wail of air-raid sirens. Red tracers streak through the sky followed by a series of thuds and whomps somewhere in the city. I do a two-way with Robert Siegel but I really can’t tell him very much and I have trouble hiding how sleepy I feel. Its foggy and hard to pinpoint what’s being hit. Then it’s quiet again except for the sound of birds and calls from the mosques.

  As I sit on the sat phone waiting to do an update, the hotel phone rings. It’s Jon Lee Anderson from The New Yorker on another floor. He tells me an Australian colleague has just been told by his defense ministry to get out of the Al-Rashid now because it’s a target. I try to digest this information, the hardest yet about the hotel, get back on the sat phone with Robert Siegel, and say as calmly as possible that I can’t talk right now because I need to move again.

  I haven’t unpacked from the last move, so I just lug my bags down into the lobby, where Amer is waiting for me. He can’t believe I’m moving again. I can’t believe I’m moving again. I’m so tired I can’t really think straight, but we head for the Palestine. After several of us had left the hotel yesterday, various television companies had joined ranks and told the Palestine that they would not move. They succeeded where I had not. Now I try to get my room back. New rules. I need permission from the Information Ministry if the hotel is to re-register me. I burst into tears.

  Amer and I go to the ministry, where Qadm will not respond to my pleading for a letter. He clearly has other things, like war, on his mind. There has been no official response yet to the first wave of bombing. The rumor is that Saddam is injured, possibly even dead. A group of haggard-looking journalists waits by the TV set for what we have been told will be an important announcement. Finally, three hours after the attack, Saddam or someone posing as Saddam appears on television. We are not granted a private meeting, so we cannot confirm that it is truly him. Whoever it is looks terrible; his face is puffy and he wears thick-rimmed glasses to read a short speech pledging victory.

  Amer’s observations as usual prove to be the most interesting and illustrative. The Republican Guard has moved into his neighborhood. They first appeared last night to scope out the area. They subsequently returned and broke into three empty houses, where they have now t
aken up residence. Iraqis had been warned not to leave their houses unoccupied. Amer’s neighbors are terrified that the presence of the Guard will turn their area into a battle zone. Amer has moved his wife and three kids out of the city.

  Finally Amer and I get the required letter from Qadm and secure rooms on the 6th floor of the Palestine. He will be staying nearby in the hotel from now on. As I move in, who should move in across from me but Qadm! He asks if I have any spare double-A batteries, clearly so he can listen to shortwave radio to find out what’s really going on.

  There’s a second airstrike at night. It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be and I’m too tired to be frightened. There is simply too much to do.

  BRENDA BULLETIN: MARCH 20, 2003

  Update.

  Annie called not long ago. So far so good. You may have heard her tell Robert Siegel that she had to get off the phone and leave the hotel. At 6 a.m. Baghdad time, information was received that there might well be something underneath the Al-Rashid Hotel that would be of interest to those in the Pentagon responsible for target acquisition. Annie’s sister in London called to say that the British press have identified this as an underground bunker of some kind. Annie and her band have now moved back across the Tigris to the Palestine Hotel. The good news is that she was able to take a hot bath even though the water was, for those New Englanders among you, the color of Grade-B maple syrup: i.e., not the molasses color of Grade C but far from the pastel tint of Grade A. She then took a nap. The bad news is that she is now covered with flea bites.

  There is a picture of our girl on the front page of the Life section of USA Today accompanying an article on the dwindling number of correspondents in Baghdad. Ironically, the photograph of our intrepid lass was taken last year in Afghanistan atop the Hindu Kush at something over 17,000 feet, where she shared accommodations with several goats and a donkey.

  I was asked if I wanted to be interviewed for the article as the reporter was interested in how the spouses of these brave journalists are holding up. I turned down the opportunity. What was I going to say? “Oh, I’m just taking care of the home front and changing the diapers on the labradors.”

  Thank you all for the staggering outpouring of support and love. It has meant so much to us both. I read as many as I can to her rather than jam up her e-mail, which she barely gets time to read. She will get them all when she returns. I will try to answer all of them, but if I miss something, please resend.

  Cheers,

  V

  MARCH 21, 2003

  Late last night I was on the satellite phone, barely clothed, in the dark, when I got a phone call from another reporter warning me that security goons were once again searching for our illegal equipment. We are still supposed to keep our sat phones at the Information Ministry. I have long since stopped working there, and given the bombing, and the fact the Information Ministry is a target, just about everyone has moved their phones to the Palestine.

  My sat phone is essentially made up of two parts: the antenna and the phone. The antenna, which has three panels that unfold, must be pointed in the appropriate direction, at the appropriate angle for either the Indian Ocean Region satellite or the Atlantic Ocean East satellite. It doesn’t work through most windows, so I have placed it out on the balcony, perched atop various suitcases. The antenna in turn is attached by a long cable to the guts of the phone, which sits on my desk. There are more cables from the phone: to my computer, so I can access e-mail; and to a nifty machine that permits me to file voice tracks and tape that sound pretty good (in fact, Vint thinks they sound too good, as if I were in Washington, not Baghdad).

  As I race to unplug the antenna I trip on the wire, dragging the antenna off its precarious perch. It hits the cement floor and one of the panels breaks off. I now know exactly what the expression “my heart sank” means. I gather up the bits, hide them, and wait. There’s no fateful knock at the door, but how do I tell NPR I can no longer file? There’s certainly no way to get a replacement.

  This morning, in the daylight, I drag everything out to survey the damage. It’s not as bad as what Mike Shuster did in Kuwait. When his sat phone was blown off the roof, the antenna sailed through the air, crashing eight flights down. I get out some tape from my first-aid kit and try to stick the panel back on. It’s wobbly, but when I turn the phone on, it works. Later, I get some duct tape from a French TV crew to firmly attach the panel. As I doctor my crippled phone, someone knocks at the door. I panic and stash it under the bed. It turns out it’s Amer. We agree on a special knock for the future.

  He’s found a secondhand kettle in one of the few shops that are still open. He also came across the proprietor of a liquor store who was removing the last of his stock for safekeeping elsewhere. Amer opened the back of his car and told him to just load up. He got a case of red wine (French no less), two bottles of gin, and a case of beer—“medicine,” as he calls it. It might be a long time before stores open again.

  At the Information Ministry, we’re treated to a remarkable performance by Interior Minister Muhammad Diab al-Almed. He appears in Baath Party uniform, waving a Kalashnikov, finger awfully close to the trigger. His vest is bulging with magazines of bullets; at his waist he boasts a rather large knife. There’s no sign that he thinks this is theater as he declares, “I have a son who is eighteen and he is also armed, and we will sacrifice ourselves for President Saddam and his family.”

  We are not permitted to go around the city on our own, and this has severely limited our ability to assess the effects of the bombing. Amer gives me a report of what he has seen and heard. A friend, who did not respond to the call-up for reserves, got a call from someone who did. The unit, working at the al-Taji base, was nearly wiped out by bombing over night. A fellow reporter notes that a Baghdad pop station has been broadcasting the theme song from Titanic.

  The Information Ministry suddenly offers us a bus tour. We are not told in advance where we are going. We just dutifully pile into the buses. First we are taken to a power station that has not been hit. The intention is for us to see the international “human shields” who have been posted there. This is not very enlightening, though we can see something of the city on the way. Then we are taken to see civilian casualties at a hospital. There aren’t many injured, and most appear to have broken legs. Initially they all say they were hit by American bombs, but their injuries and their stories just don’t back this up. Many describe being hurt after going outside their houses, either to watch the bombing or to flee. Their houses weren’t damaged. They saw no other houses that were damaged. The general conclusion, not the one the Iraqis wish us to reach, is that they were hit by Iraqi antiaircraft debris. That Iraqis are not generally afraid of the bombing confirms its overall accuracy. They see how precise it is. What they are afraid of is what comes next, and what comes next is complicated and dangerous. A lot of people have left the city, including Qadm’s family. He offers this up when I ask how his children are, and then he has second thoughts about his admission, saying, “Don’t you dare tell anyone.”

  I have moved yet again, though this time only from the 6th to the 11th floor. The room looks out over the Tigris and the Republican Palace with access to the Atlantic Ocean East satellite, which does not seem to be as congested as others. Getting through on a high-speed line to file quality tracks is getting more and more difficult. The ordinary satellite phone line distorts my voice, making me sound even more tired than I already am.

  The lobby of the Palestine is swarming with the remaining journalists and human shields, the group who’s come to Baghdad to show their solidarity with Iraqi civilians. Patrick Dillon, an Irish-American in his early fifties, is dressed entirely in black. His head is shaved, and there is a tattoo of crosshairs of a rifle on the back of his skull. He says he served as a soldier in Vietnam and has been obsessed with war and killing ever since. Outside, a group of Korean feminists have raised a banner protesting sexual abuse. Out my window I look at the An Fanar Hotel, where many activ
ists are staying. They have hung a banner from their windows declaring LIFE IS SACRED. No question about it, but what about all the people Saddam has wantonly killed?

  I am of many minds about the need and justification for this war. I have seen how brutal Saddam’s regime is, but I am not convinced that he continues to have weapons of mass destruction. The United States has not made a persuasive case, and American diplomatic efforts appear lame. I also worry about the U.S. government’s staying power to do what needs to be done when it is all over. Americans have shown that they have a very short attention span. My ambivalence, however, makes it easier for me to cover the situation, to just listen to what people here say.

  Tonight the bombing was worse than anything we have seen so far. Starting right at 9 p.m., it came in three waves, leaving parts of Baghdad in flames. A cruise missile literally whooshed by my window. Again and again the Americans went back for the hundreds of acres of Saddam’s Republican Palace, the showcase of his regime. Deafening blasts came one after another exploding into fireballs. Then there was a lull, then another wave. There were surprisingly few fire engines and almost no ambulances. As John Burns observes, “Any survivors appear to have been left to their fates.” Television crews raced to the windows and the roof to film the fireworks. With no explanation, security men swooped in to confiscate their video cameras.

  Despite shifting rooms, I am still having trouble getting through on my sat phone. After dialing for more than an hour I realize I am not going to make my deadline, so I finally go down to Larry Kaplow of Cox Newspapers, whose room faces in a different direction. He climbs on a chair and drags his phone out from behind a ventilator grill. Clever fellow. Unfortunately my phone is larger and won’t fit there. After scouring every possibility I have decided to tape it under the lip of the bedside table when I’m not using it. It is a real pain setting it up and knocking it down every time I need to broadcast.