by Paul Henry
When we got to Jordan, I had my first run-in with Jordanian authorities while paying for my visa. I hate all bureaucrats anyway, but after the long journey I was tired and in a foul mood. East–West tensions were high at the time and the officers were hostile from the start, waving their guns around and threatening to deport me before I had even got into their country.
‘Why am I paying $50 to be abused like this?’ I said. ‘I could commit a crime and get treated like this for free.’
Eventually I met up with Simon and we went to the hotel, where everyone seemed to know him, which I thought was a good sign. We went to his suite, which was full of his possessions, and he generously gave me one of the two bedrooms to stay in. ‘I’ll be out all day tomorrow,’ he said. ‘And then I’ll be gone for good.’ I went to bed early and got up early again the next morning to look into what I needed to do to get into Iraq. Its embassy in Jordan was one of its last operating anywhere. I thought it might take a few days to get through, so I also wanted to sniff out some stories in Jordan while I was waiting.
I got back to the hotel in the middle of the afternoon. Clearly there had been something of a kerfuffle in the room during my absence. A slightly dishevelled Simon arrived not long after me and began throwing a few belongings into a bag.
‘I’m not going to take all my things,’ he said. ‘I’ve managed to get a flight this afternoon.’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘I can’t remember where, just out of here,’ he said, which struck me as a little odd. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll leave some money at the desk.’
‘Don’t worry about it too much,’ I told him. I was grateful because he had helped me. I was now in a good hotel and all in all it had worked out quite well. Plus he seemed to be under some stress.
‘If anyone comes looking for me, just say I’ve packed my bags and gone to England permanently.’
‘Who might come looking for you?’
He stopped throwing clothes around for a moment.
‘It’s very easy to make enemies in this place,’ he said. ‘Just take care. Here, this might help you.’
With that, he handed me a very elaborate edition of the Koran. The Koran is elaborate to start with, but this was a spectacular volume.
‘Oh God,’ I said, ‘you can’t leave that with me.’
‘It’s too heavy for me to take.’
I had talked to him in our time together about how much I would like to visit Algeria, then listed as one of the 10 most dangerous places to travel. Customs formalities there were reputed to consist of someone looking at you to see if you were mujahedin and, if not, shooting you. ‘It will be great for Algeria,’ said Simon. ‘If they’re planning to kill you and you’re kneeling on the ground with your hands on the Koran then they’re not allowed to.’ So I took it and he went, or, rather, fled, panicked and dishevelled, leaving behind all sorts of things.
That night there was a knock on the door — one of those knocks whose purport is ‘Open the door now or we will break it down’. I had gone to bed early, so I could get up in time to talk to Ewing Stevens at Pacific. I wrapped a towel around myself and opened the door to see several very official, very aggressive men. They were in uniform, but were not police.
‘You’re not Simon,’ they said.
‘No, no, no,’ I confirmed.
‘Where is he?’
‘Well, here’s the thing …’ I began. And I was thinking: where the fuck did I put that Koran? I was choosing my words carefully, trying to think of the best way to frame things. It wasn’t happening quickly enough for the men in uniform. By now they were in the room.
‘Where is he?’ the leader demanded. ‘Is he in here?’ It was soon obvious he wasn’t. ‘What’s your relationship to him? How do you know him?’
‘Look, I actually don’t know him.’
‘You flew here together from England.’
‘Well, technically yes …’
It didn’t sound good, when he put it like that. I started to tell the yarn and after a few sentences realised it wasn’t going well. So then I started to hesitate, which looked even worse. Every word that came out of my mouth went straight up my arse and screwed me.
‘I didn’t board the plane with him. I just happened to be sitting next to him and we started to talk and he said this would be a good place to stay.’
Then they found the Koran. I had no way of knowing whether that was good for me or bad for me.
‘So this is yours now, is it?’
‘Did he leave the Koran? Did he leave that here? It’s not mine. I wish it was, it’s a beautiful book, isn’t it? But it’s not mine, no.’ Then I had a brainwave. ‘Actually, he’s left a number of things. Do you want me to get them together for you? I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll pack together all of his things very quickly.’
When I got the things together, of course, it turned out that there weren’t very many and nothing of any interest to them.
‘We will take this,’ said my persecutor, holding up the Koran. ‘And when the man you don’t really know contacts you, you tell him never ever come to Jordan again.’
I said I would be certain to pass on their message in the unlikely event that I ever laid eyes on Simon in the future. Avoiding Simon had quite recently become one of my main aims in life.
When they left, I’m sure they didn’t fully believe my story but clearly their gripe was personal and with him, not me. I still don’t know what he had done, but it obviously had pissed off some reasonably important people. I was annoyed that I had lost the Koran, because it was so heavy it would have been almost impossible to get into trouble while carrying it.
Next morning, I needed to get my visa, so I headed to the Iraqi embassy. This was really the ambassador’s home, with an annex and lots of security. Apparently, you went in, slid a few dollars across a big counter with your passport and you got a visa.
Before I went to the embassy I researched the best way to get into Iraq, so that once I had my documentation I would waste as little time as possible. I had to go to the land border, where oil trucks were constantly going back and forth down a huge highway through the desert. Empty tankers going into Iraq, and full ones coming out again. It would take the best part of a day. That was if there wasn’t a traffic jam, which apparently there often was, with lines of trucks stalled for kilometres. This went on 24 hours a day.
I was told by other journalists that you could go by bus but that it was a bit rickety. You could also get a ride on one of the trucks — they weren’t supposed to take you but would for a few dollars. You could hire a vehicle and take a self-drive package. Or you could bludge a ride with the BBC or CNN. But you couldn’t do any of that until you had your visa.
I was also told that the only person who could issue a journalist a visa for Iraq was a Mr Sadoon, and for reasons that will soon become clear, his is a name I will never forget. I was further told he started work at ten so I should present myself at ten.
I turned up for my appointment and entered a room with a large number of people in it — many Arabs, and many also, clearly, western journalists. Among the latter I could feel an obvious competitive edge. All eyes were on me as I walked up to the counter.
‘Ah, Paul Henry here from New Zealand,’ I said to the man behind the desk. ‘I have an appointment with Mr Sadoon.’
A wave of laughter surged, broke and washed over me. All the journalists roared.
‘Mr Sadoon is not here, you’ll have to take a seat.’
‘You don’t seem to understand, I was told to be here at ten o’clock because Mr Sadoon would be here and I need to get into Iraq.’
Howls of laughter. I think someone even slapped his thigh. Clearly I was the butt of a popular joke and everyone had been through this at some point
‘You don’t have to take a seat if you don’t want to,’ said the man at the counter. ‘You can just leave if you prefer.’ So I took a seat in this comparatively squalid, albeit convivial environm
ent.
‘How do you think that went?’ I said to the room in general, generating a round of guffaws.
One journalist shuffled over and sat next to me.
‘How long do you reckon I’ve been waiting for my ten o’clock appointment with Mr Sadoon?’ he said.
‘Please tell me a day,’ I begged.
‘I’ve been here three weeks, and do you know what really pisses me off? It just comes down to money. You go up to that counter now and you slip that guy a thousand US dollars and you’ll be talking to Mr Sadoon within half an hour. That money won’t get you into Iraq but it’ll get you a meeting with Mr Sadoon and the opportunity to slip him the same amount or more. I don’t know how much. In the weeks that I’ve been coming here for my appointment with Mr Sadoon, I’ve seen the big boys come and get straight into Iraq. The BBC just flying in, CNN flying in. They’re playing a game.’
I learnt the authorities would want another $1000 for the right to take a satellite phone into the country. Not to rent one — merely to carry it with you. I had $1000 for everything.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked my informant.
‘I don’t know. My time is almost up. The war hasn’t started and I just don’t see how I’m going to get in.’
I wondered if logic would trump money for the first time anywhere in the world. I went back to the desk.
‘There are a few pretty annoyed people here from the world’s media,’ I said. ‘We want to go in and tell your story, not someone else’s. The only way we can tell your story is to get in there.’ He appeared to have heard that before.
I wondered if anyone had tried winking.
‘I’m not going to sit and wait with these other people, I want to see Mr Sadoon,’ I said, and winked. I winked like a man who had more than a thousand New Zealand dollars on him. ‘I want to see Mr Sadoon, just tell me when he’s going to be here. I can be here at any time night or day to see him.’
Weeks went by and I spent most of my time in this room. I gathered a few little stories. I observed some riots that were happening and I got some great war yarns and kept up with what was going on. But always I had to keep coming back to that room where we all waited for Mr Sadoon.
I did glimpse him once or twice as he arrived in his Lexus and moved through the compound. The cry would go up: ‘Is that him? Is that Mr Sadoon?’ Our spirits soared. We all stood up and watched through the bars as Mr Sadoon drove in. Every time it happened I was sure that I was going to meet Mr Sadoon and would soon be on my way to Baghdad. That day never arrived. He came into the room once or twice to give people an opportunity to slip him money. He obviously had a spare moment when he hadn’t been given $1000 for a few hours, so he displayed himself to the gathered masses.
Occasionally we were told to wait in another room and that made me very excited. I was sure that meant I was one room closer to Mr Sadoon, but the other room, which had lots of small pictures of Saddam Hussein and a huge number of doilies, merely sheltered more journalists who I hadn’t seen before.
A newly arrived BBC producer approached me one day: ‘We’re here to get our visas. Do you know where we go?’
‘I don’t think there’s anything you can learn from me,’ I said. ‘Do you need anyone else on your team? Are you short of anyone? I’ll work for nothing if you can get me into Iraq.’
‘Oh, it’s like that is it? We were told that we had to see Mr Sadoon.’
‘Yeah, I think he’s the guy.’
The BBC producer called a colleague over. They went into another room and I heard him say, ‘We’re here to see Mr Sadoon. BBC.’ Sure enough, that was the last time I saw them. And the Iraqis weren’t making an exception for them. They paid, but the sums being asked meant nothing to them. They were there to get in and cost was no object. A thousand here and there, as a percentage of the total cost of their trip, was nothing. Fuckers.
Back home, Derek Lowe never quite got it when I tried to explain the problem. ‘Why didn’t you report him?’ he always said. Or, ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’ I could have tried that: ‘Hello, police? I’d like to report the Iraqi embassy.’
I knew I was getting nowhere. I could have gone home. I had some reasonable stories. But having got that far I couldn’t leave without one last effort to get across the border. I went to see a Finnish journalist I had got friendly with.
‘You are not going to get a visa to go into Iraq,’ I said. ‘And neither am I. It’s not going to happen.’
‘Oh, I’m going to give it a few more days,’ he said.
‘There’s no reason to imagine that a few more days will make any difference.’
It wasn’t like they were gradually whittling through people. We were just seeing new faces added to the group every day. I had been there about two weeks. He had been there longer.
‘I don’t want to spend the next few days waiting for this bunch of arseholes to sell me a visa that I haven’t got the money to pay for. Why don’t we rent a four-wheel drive and go for it? There’s a war on — almost. How efficient is the immigration department in Iraq going to be?’ To my eventual regret, although he was wearing a suit and seemed quite stuffy, he immediately embraced this very stupid idea.
‘Where will we get a four-wheel drive?’ he said.
‘Have you been outside? They’re everywhere.’
Within half an hour I had contracted a driver with a substantial four-wheel drive. His English was bad but his price was good. I didn’t tell him whether or not we had documentation, so he probably assumed we did. As we made our way to the border I reported home and told the listeners about having no documents, so that became part of the story.
Night fell quickly as it does in that part of the world, taking the temperature right down with it.
‘Iraq,’ said the driver suddenly, and pointed. Apparently we were there.
‘Can you just pull over and stop for a moment?’ I said. We stopped where we could see Iraq in the distance.
I still wasn’t sure what our chances were so I decided to confess all to the driver.
‘We have no documentation,’ I told him. ‘We have been told we can fill in our documentation at the Iraqi border.’ I had convinced myself that might be possible, especially because Mr Sadoon would not be there.
‘I do not think that is possible,’ said the driver.
‘Well, that’s what I was told at the Iraqi embassy,’ I lied.
Our driver had been to Iraq many, many times and taken many loads, but he had never taken foreigners without visas. He was not keen.
‘I think this is the end of the line,’ said my colleague.
‘It can’t be the end of the line,’ I insisted. ‘One way or another we’ve got to get into Iraq, even if it is only into the bloody Customs booth.’
And then I came up with a way to make my original plan even worse.
‘Let’s just drive in. There’s no fences as such. It’s night time. We’ve got a four-wheel drive. We don’t have to be on the road.’
We decided to edge our way a little closer on the road and then turn the lights off, go off road and cross the border that way. We considered the possibilities of being stopped without documents after that and talked ourselves into believing that the closer you got to Baghdad, the more lawless it would be.
So we got virtually to the border, then did a cunning duck around and, despite it being pitch black and the middle of the desert, quickly drove into an Iraqi military base.
‘We’re going to have to rely on you to translate,’ I told the driver. ‘Just plead ignorance, say we’re fools from another country. We both look stupid enough to make that convincing.’
But before there was any time to put that into practice we were all dragged out of the car and had the shit beaten out of us by men with guns.
‘Sorry, sorry, it’s been a terrible mistake,’ I kept saying. I was about to fall back on ‘It was all his idea. I never wanted to do it’, when the beating stopped.
My Finnish
friend panicked and started talking about the Geneva fucking Convention. Even though I was hurting badly I was still able to register that he was being an absolute twat. He and I were taken and held at the Iraqi checkpoint. God knows what happened to that poor driver. He was beaten up as well, but he wasn’t taken to the checkpoint.
We were hauled into a room with the compulsory giant portraits of Saddam Hussein staring down on us. The guard running the checkpoint was bemused more than anything.
‘Documents,’ he snapped and we handed over what we had.
‘No visa?’
‘We’d like a visa. Yes, please,’ I said. Well, it was worth a try.
‘You don’t come here through the desert to get a visa,’ he said, and I was relieved to hear that he spoke English very well. ‘You must get a visa in Jordan.’
‘They told us …’ I began, and as I heard the words come out I knew it wasn’t going to wash. I changed tack and told the truth. ‘I’m sorry, we just thought we’d give it a go. Do you know Mr Sadoon?’
‘Sadoon?’
‘Yeah. People are bribing him at your embassy in Jordan. He’s making a fortune selling visas and I can’t afford to buy one. I’m from New Zealand. I want to tell your story. This guy is from Finland, he wants to tell your story. We just can’t afford to pay the bribes to Mr Sadoon. Where’s your family?’
‘In Baghdad.’
‘When did you last see them?’
‘It’s been some time.’
‘How much do you get paid?’
‘I haven’t been paid for six months.’
‘Have any of your colleagues been paid in the last six months?’
‘Some have not been paid for much longer than me.’
‘So you haven’t seen your family, a war could start at any time, you haven’t been paid for six months, Mr Sadoon wants a thousand US dollars a week for me to bring a satellite phone into this country and he wants at least the same amount for him and his cronies to give me a visa. And you want to send me back to get a visa.’
And with that we were locked up. The room I was put in was like a toilet without the bowl. There was a locked door, a light bulb hanging on a wire and a panorama of shit. Previous occupants had pissed and shat almost everywhere. There was shit all over the wall with the door in it and two of the other walls. Left untouched was a wall covered by an oil painting of Saddam Hussein.
