Baghdad Journal
Day Nine
It was kind of a rough day and evening for the staff here at
the Al Dar Hotel. About half their guests moved out and then the
hotel's diesel generator had a tantrum.
Early in the morning, Peter, Willem, and Tim with Dutch television
headed back to Amman Jordan and on to Amsterdam. As well, a number
of the newspaper reporters here, mainly American correspondents
who made their way south from Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit, had spent
a week or so here, but they're beat. They've been on the road
nearly two months. They too left for Jordan. That left Marc Allard,
he's the freelance producer that WBUR hired to help make this
happen, and me, the Irish crew, German TV, and Paul from Asia
Times. (Actually, I'm not sure about the Irish, I saw Tony giving
leftover tinned food to the guards, and that's a sure sign someone's
packing up to go.)As you can tell, you get to know people covering
a story like this. You have to. You rely on them for contacts
and safety information and they rely on you.
Marc and I have one more night here, and then we're heading back.
I'll miss room 208. Did I tell you that I've been sleeping in
The Connection studio as well? Don't tell our senior producer
Tara. She might get ideas about re-configuring my accommodation
in Boston. Actually, aside from the mosquitoes coming in off the
Tigris now that it's the start of the hot season, (Dear Office
of Reconstruction, Send screening!) and aside from the oversize
cockroaches that come out of a hole in the wall of Marc's room,
and aside from the creative means necessary to perform one's daily
ablutions, I am sooo happy we've been here instead of living with
the mass media petting zoo down the street at the Palestine and
the Sheraton. That place is an armed camp. There are thousands
of hacks living there, and hundreds of U.S. soldiers with tanks
and miles of concertina wire encircling the compound. There are
also thousands of Iraqis there now, great crowds on the street,
exchanging money, selling cigarettes, or just sitting on the traffic
circle median, looking up at all the TV lights on the fourth floor
patio where CNN, BBC, CBS, ABC, NBC, ITV, Sky, Star and all the
other TV networks do their "live shots".
Each morning at the Al Dar we wake to a city that's unusually
quiet. There's still no electricity so we hear the roosters and
the dogs barking, and the sound of distant gunfire, and most of
the time we don't live with the hammering of all those generators
around the other hotels.
Speaking of generators, The Al Dar has one as well. They use
it for lights and when they get some food in, to cook eggs and
chicken. Bread they buy on the street. There are now cucumbers
and tomatoes and some very old looking olives.
The generator died last night. Marc and I had to work by candlelight.
See photo. But the people who run this hotel are delightful. They
help out whenever they can. There was a flurry of activity around
the machine, which is directly below my window. Pails of diesel
were slopped about. (the fumes were somewhat overpowering) and
the cranky starter was ground further and further toward the end
of its life. Eventually though, they got it going.
Kind of like Baghdad. Eventually they'll get it going. But it's
going to be a long, slow job. You feel a bit melancholy when you
see all the reporters packing up, just watching all the Iraqis
who can't. Our translator, Ahmed was going to come to Jordan with
us, to help on the trip and do a bit of shopping himself before
returning to Baghdad. We made the request. The Jordanians said
no chance. The people who live here are stuck here. 12 years of
sanctions kept them virtually prisoners in a country run by Saddam
Hussein. Today, under a rule of law imposed by the U.S. military,
they are still stuck. (And this is liberation?) It will be months,
perhaps years before there's enough of a civilian infrastructure
to even think about passports for ordinary Iraqis. Even then,
they wonder, 'will the world trust us Iraqis to travel? Will we
forever be marked as dangerous, and unwanted?' That will be in
their minds when they watch us pack up the truck for the first
leg of our trip back to Boston tomorrow.
FIELD REPORTS
