Next morning I could hardly move. I was so weak I couldn’t lift my head, let alone the camera. Allan made his kilometre walk to the phone booth and was told there would be no interview today. There is a God! The others headed off to see the sights. I stayed in. The bathroom that is.
Day Two. I am so happy that Anwar Sadat is busy, but probably not as busy as my bowels.
Day Three. Anwar is still too busy, so are my bowels, and Ian and Allan are getting a bit worried.
Day Four. It’s on. The president will see us at 2 p.m.
We were instructed to be at the president’s office at twelve noon, allowing two hours for set-up time and security. I wasn’t feeling a hundred per cent, but being the true professional, I soldiered on, and hoped my colleagues would lay off the ribbing at my lunacy for having eaten chicken livers in Cairo.
•
We arrived on the dot of twelve. I had never seen such security. Recently we’d been to Israel and I’d thought those security guards were the best. The Israelis even checked the unexposed film using their own dark bag, the type we use to stop light getting to the film and ruining it when we load and unload camera magazines. Sadat’s men did that and more. They checked every piece of equipment. Practically pulled it apart. They looked down the lens from both ends, looked through the viewfinder of the camera with the lens on and off, then asked me to roll a few feet of film, to prove that the camera actually worked.
When they seemed satisfied, we were taken into a small, extremely boring room, not the type of room you’d think a president would want to be interviewed in. The minders pointed to a very unpretentious chair centimetres from the wall and told us that was exactly where the president would sit. Diplomatically I asked if it was possible to move the president away from the wall and a little nearer the window. ‘Absolutely not,’ I was told.
I tried to explain that the background was boring, and with the president being so close to the wall, it not only made the lighting difficult but the picture ‘flat’. There was no way to get the president standing out in sharp focus with the background soft and irrelevant. The minder wouldn’t budge. I was stunned at how adamant he was. ‘What’s the big deal?’ I thought. ‘Why would half a metre from the wall and centimetres closer to the window make any difference to him?’ But it did and I had to abide by it.
We set up the lights and microphones around the boring chair in front of the boring wall and were then sent from the boring room and told to wait.
Ten minutes later I asked if I could go back into the room to check if there was any change to the angle or intensity of the light coming through the windows. The minder agreed, reluctantly, and as it turned out, the light had changed. While I was adjusting the curtains, I heard a noise behind me. I turned, and a few metres from me stood the great Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt. He had quietly entered the room from a well-disguised door, and he was alone.
Sadat was handsome, balding and thin, with a small moustache. He looked aristocratic, though he was born in a poor village. He shook my hand and told me how much he loved Australia. With only the two of us in the room, I babbled on about how much I loved Egypt, and what we had been doing. I kept my thoughts of dentists and chicken livers and hash to myself, but I was rapidly running out of conversation and hoping desperately someone else would arrive before I said something I wished I hadn’t.
Suddenly in they came. Advisors, secret servicemen, private secretary, press secretaries, and my three colleagues. The room was full. Sadat dismissed all but two of his minders then asked if everything was okay with the room. Ian said he’d like to sit a little closer if possible. Sadat responded with, ‘Do anything you please.’ So I asked if I could move his chair a little further from the wall.
‘Certainly. Do whatever is needed,’ he said.
I started moving lights, chairs and curtains. His minders started to choke. There was no way they could stop me in front of their beloved president who had given the go-ahead. I politely helped Sadat move a little closer to the window. I could see one minder’s neck veins throbbing and the other clenching his jaw in silent frustration. They looked at each other, out the window, at Sadat, then at me. Did I care? Nope. I was out to get the best possible shot, and I’d won.
It had been made clear to us that the interview was not to exceed twenty minutes, but it lasted an hour and a half. Sadat was enjoying himself, and with the minders not game to put a stop to the president’s enjoyment, Ian just kept asking questions.
Speaking in a deep, strong and very loud voice, Anwar told of growing up poor in a small village, as one of thirteen children of a farmer, his school days, his kids, grandkids, the Palestinians, and of course Israel. He was sharp, intelligent, calm, serene, and oozing charisma. He was just back from Washington for the historic meeting with Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin, which resulted in a peace agreement with Israel. The first since peace was declared between King Solomon and the Egyptian pharaoh three thousand years ago. Begin and Sadat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the treaty, but Sadat—who famously said, ‘I am a man of peace’—was now a target for fanatics because most of the Arab world felt sold out.
Towards the end of the interview, Sadat asked us what we were doing the next day, and wondered if we’d like to accompany him to the village where he grew up. We couldn’t believe our luck. After telling us he was looking forward to tomorrow, the president left the room through his special door, leaving us with two very irritated minders.
It was then explained to me that I should not have moved the president and he should never be near a window. Not only had there been an assassination attempt on Sadat by someone firing a bullet through a window of his office, but there had been an attempt on his life by a mob posing as a film crew. The cunning ‘film crew’ had a gun sitting neatly inside the camera lens. Had something happened to Sadat while we were with him, I suspect any guard with a gun would have gladly used it on the pushy naive Aussie cameraman.
The village scenes were great. All the villagers came out to greet Sadat. Kids with huge smiles on their faces walked beside him on the footpath, women wanted to kiss him, old men wanted to shake his hand, and it all felt genuine, not stage-managed as with most politicians, and Sadat was only too keen to help out.
We found the hut he lived in as a kid. It was tiny and made of cow dung and mud. His cousin who still lived there was all smiles as he told us how proud his family and the whole village was of Anwar.
Then Sadat said, ‘It’s prayer time, would you like to come to the mosque?’
It was a very modest place of worship compared to the gigantic mosques we’d been into in Cairo. We took off our shoes and followed the president in. He spread out his mat, knelt down and started to pray. The shots were amazing. He then asked me if there was anything I would like him to do, and I told him everything we had was fantastic. He finished his prayers, rolled up his mat and headed outside.
Standing near the door of the mosque, Ian asked him whether he ever feared being struck down by an assassin.
‘Oh no,’ Sadat said. ‘This will mean God has said yes, this is your time, this is your hour.’
Eighteen months later, God said yes.
A fatwa approving the assassination had been given the green light from a Moslem cleric. As Sadat stood saluting the troops during an annual military parade, an assassination team ran from a military vehicle, firing weapons and hurling grenades. Sadat and twenty others were murdered. The same cleric was later convicted in the US for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
•
With a brilliant interview in the can, we decided to do Cairo by night. Fearless, after yet again way too much alcohol, and with what would fall into the category of complete stupidity, we found ourselves more than halfway up Cheops, the last of the Seven Wonders of the World, 146 metres tall, 40 storeys, and largest of the three beautifully lit pyramids. It was almost midnight and we felt as if we could see the whole world from up there.
Sudde
nly we couldn’t see the world, or even each other. Unbeknown to us, the pyramids are plunged into darkness at midnight. Also previously unbeknown to us was Ian’s fear of heights and darkness—in fact, this was the moment when Ian himself discovered he had a problem. He was frozen. Couldn’t move. For twenty minutes we tried in vain to coax him down, but he wouldn’t budge. He finally came to terms with the fact that a night halfway up Cheops would be even worse than the Motel Kanzy, and agreed to try to move. We inched him down each of those two-and-a-half tonne blocks. It took more than an hour, and a bucket load of sweat.
Next morning we were back to get shots of the pyramids. There were signs everywhere saying, ‘It is forbidden to climb the pyramids.’ A local guide told us that at least two tourists a year fall to their death trying to climb Cheops. They probably weren’t pissed enough.
The following afternoon we decided to go for a horse ride across the Sahara Desert. All of us could ride except Peter and he scoffed, ‘How hard can it be?’
I knew once I saw the horses.
They were beautiful white Arabian stallions, and huge. Mine was called Spirit, and I started thinking that maybe this was not such a great idea. But it was wonderful, a comfortable gentle canter for about 5 kilometres to an amazing Bedouin-style tent where we sat and drank cold beers as we marvelled at the pyramids in the distance, just like Alexander and Napoleon had done. A quick toast to Kerry Packer for making it all possible and we were back on our steeds.
Now the ponies I rode twenty years ago, Scotty and Taffy, took great delight in getting home as fast as possible. I think it’s a horse thing. But Spirit and his mates were twice the size, twice as strong and two hundred times faster than Scotty and Taffy, and once they caught a glimpse of the pyramids and home, that was it. I spent the next ten minutes, all 60 kilos of me, leaning back with the reins pulled as taut as possible and my stirrupped feet braced forward next to Spirit’s head. It would have stopped Taffy dead in his tracks, but it had absolutely no effect on my Arabian stallion, so I just hung on as best I could and thankfully stayed in the saddle.
Unlike Peter, rocketing past at a thousand miles an hour, hanging from his horse’s neck, feet nowhere near the stirrups, with an ‘I’m going to die’ look in his eyes. I started to wonder how hard it might be to find a sound recordist in Cairo, though that was just a fleeting thought. My real concern was my own survival.
Only metres from Cheops we were still galloping at full speed and I was about to be slammed head first into one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Thoughts of brain damage and plastic surgery swirled through my mind. Does it exist here? Will my family recognise me? (Though dental work shouldn’t be a problem.) Spirit, obviously having the same thoughts, jammed his hooves into the sand. I went rocketing forward but managed to hang on to his head. We were both panting like we hadn’t taken a breath for ten minutes, which was about right. Peter had also come to an abrupt halt, his face looking as disturbed as mine at the peak of my chicken liver condition.
And the other two? They loved it.
‘How good was that!’ Ian said. ‘Let’s do it again tomorrow.’ And he did. He went for the longer 20-kilometre ride.
That night there was a knock on my door and in came Ian. I noticed his walk was very strange.
‘Mate, can you look at my bum for me?’
Before I could say, ‘No, thank you,’ he dropped his pants, and aimed his bottom at me. I figured I was up to the challenge, until I saw blisters the size of Cheops. Raw flesh like in a butcher’s shop. It was days before he could even sit down, and a week before he stopped walking like Groucho Marx.
On our flight from Egypt there was no Moses, only a lot of dentists that we all hated. And I hated chicken livers even more. Yet we all agreed we loved Anwar Sadat—the most charismatic man I have ever met.
6
I Forgot to Flush
Another glass of very cold, very bubbly champagne appeared in front of me. We’d been bumped up to first class on our trip from Cairo to Berlin. It didn’t get much better than this. As thoughts of the Kanzy, chicken livers and bolting Arab stallions dissolved with the champagne, I could already see our Logie Award on the mantlepiece. The interview with Sadat was superb, he had given us so much, was so charming and humble, our audience would love him. I wondered if his Nobel Prize would be as big or classy as our Logie.
From my first class window I looked down on Egypt, thinking of the day of our arrival and immediately my sweat glands went into overdrive. I felt nauseous, and it wasn’t the champagne. I looked across at the others with smiles on their faces (probably all having Logie thoughts too) and wondered if it was at all possible to ‘deplane’ at 30,000 feet. I’d just realised the remainder of the hash was in my bag, in the cargo of this plane. I hadn’t touched the hash since Allan and I got stuck into it on that first morning in Cairo, and since the Sadat story we hadn’t given the hash a second thought. It sat in the back of my bag, totally forgotten. Until now. And now I was about to land in Germany.
Shit! What to do? There goes the best job in the world and any chance of seeing my brand new wife Suzie in the near future. I’d only been married six months, and four of those I’d been away.
I was in huge trouble. My sweating escalated. I kept thinking about the movie Midnight Express when Billy Hayes, sweating profusely, was in the Turkish airport bus trying desperately to ditch his hash as the cops approached. One of the most chillingly scary scenes I had ever seen.
For possession, Billy got four years and two months in a Turkish prison. ‘Maybe I can handle that,’ I thought. ‘At least I’ll be in a German jail, that’s got to be heaps better than a Turkish one.’
But possession wasn’t enough for Billy’s prosecutor, he wanted Billy charged with smuggling as well. And guess what I was doing as I flew at 30,000 feet across Europe?
For possession and smuggling, Billy got 30 years. Thirty years! That meant I’d be 60 when I was released, and I would have still only experienced two months of marriage. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t get the same sentence as Billy; we were both foolish but he was also ambitious. After all, he had two kilos of the stuff. I only had a block the size of half a matchbox. On the smuggling scale that was trivial, but Germans don’t tolerate fools.
I looked around the plane for the emergency exit, then changed my mind. I figured I might as well enjoy my last few hours of freedom by getting stuck into the free French bubbly.
We were on our way to do a story on the Berlin Wall, and the giant chasm that existed between the lifestyles of the East and West. I wondered if I would have a view of the wall from my cell, or maybe those smart West Germans used part of the wall for their jail. Knowing my luck I would do a Billy Hayes ‘midnight express’ (prison jargon for escape) and be the first person to escape into East Berlin.
As we landed in Berlin I thought of what I could say to the customs officers. I could tell them that the hash wasn’t mine, it was Allan’s, after all, he ate half the stuff. Or I could say, ‘Yeah, the bag’s mine, but I’ve got no idea how that stuff got into it’ (as used by Schapelle Corby 25 years later).
Inside the Berlin immigration hall I wasn’t feeling too well, but being a caring bloke I decided not to tell the others of my dilemma, even though it would have been nice to share a cell with someone who spoke English. Allan’s English was excellent, but given the possible 30-year sentence he wouldn’t be out until he was 65 and that was a bit unfair. So I said nothing, figuring that at the discovery of the contraband my colleagues could look genuinely surprised and hopefully wouldn’t be implicated.
I tried to look super-cool (hard to do when sweating like Billy Hayes), as I walked towards the stern faces of the customs officers in uniforms covered in metres of gold braid. But my attempt at coolness wasn’t working and I was terrified.
An officer walked casually over and pointed at our 22 cases. I was getting ready to hold out my hands for the cuffs, tell him the others had nothing to do with the hash in my bag, and request my on
e phone call. He gave me a slow smile and said, ‘So many bags.’
I didn’t know what to say. If I said, ‘Not so many,’ he might think I was being a smart-arse. If I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he might think I was being too honest and trying to hide something. So I just smiled moronically. He asked what all the bags were for. I stepped aside for one of the non-sweating members of the crew to explain what we were doing in Berlin. Placing one hand on the top case, the officer said, ‘So, all of this is camera equipment?’
‘Well, all except our personal stuff,’ said Allan. And I was thinking, ‘Allan, do you need to bring attention to our personal bags?’
‘And whose is this?’ said the officer, pointing to my bag containing you-know-what.
That’s it, I thought, forget the 65-year age thing, Allan’s coming to jail with me. But before I could say that he helped me eat it, the officer said, ‘Better get that zipper fixed.’
By now I was looking like I’d just stepped out of a pool. But before I needed an excuse for the puddle of water around my shoes, he signed the equipment list, smiled and waved us through. So much for German efficiency. I couldn’t believe my luck. I felt like telling him that he just blew a chance for a promotion.
I decided not to tell the others about the hash. Why upset them and give them the opportunity to have a go at me for being stupid. That hash could have wrecked my life completely, so I decided when I got to the hotel I would flush it straight down the toilet.
As usual when I first walk into a hotel room, I went to the window, opened the curtains and checked my view.
‘Mein Gott! What is that!? It’s amazing! I’ve never seen one of those,’ I got straight on the phone and called Allan.
All This in 60 Minutes Page 6
