A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal Read Free Page A

out, the curtains closed and the door to the terrace shut. I smile and thank him. The man remains on the spot. I find some newly changed notes. He thanks me and leaves. A few minutes later there is another knock on the door. This time he is carrying a loo roll. I give him a few more notes. He smiles and nods and disappears down the corridor. Thus evolves our way of socialising. As soon as I return to my room I know what will happen. ‘Said’ will turn up with something or other - a towel, a piece of soap, an extra blanket. Nothing is replenished while I’m out, but on my return there is a knock on the door.
     
    What did I tell you as to the quality most needed for travel among the Arabs? Gertrude Bell writes . Patience, if you remember, that is what one needs.
     
    Darkness descends on Baghdad. The sun disappears behind the Presidential palace on the opposite side of the river, Saddam Hussein’s most splendid palace, built to celebrate what the Iraqi’s call ‘The Victory in the Gulf’. The floodlit building gleams and shines among palms and gardens. It will stand peacefully for another few months.
     
     
    - Why did you not come yesterday? What did you do yesterday? The man behind the desk thunders. - Who do you think you are?
     
    I try to explain that it was Friday and all public offices were closed.
     
    - We are never closed, our business hours are from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, and even outside those hours we still track you. If you want to stay you’ll have to toe the line. There’s a plane departing every day.
     
    The man introduces himself as Mohsen. Later I am told that he is number three at the press centre.
     
    Mohsen is so short that his legs dangle in the air behind the desk. Like many other middle-aged men in Baghdad his hair and eyebrows are tinted jet-black. In spite of his words, his face is friendly and he has beautiful brown eyes. He appears to be laughing behind the serious facade, as though he were giggling his way through the compulsory interrogation.
     
    I tell him how I spent the previous day and fill in endless forms, so painstakingly thorough that the stout bureaucrat softens somewhat and seems to forgive my stolen day of freedom. He summons Engineer Walid, a stick of a man, who opens my satellite telephone. It had been sealed at the border. - Anyone seen taking a phone out of this building will be arrested for espionage, Mohsen grumbles.
     
    - What are you really doing here?
     
    - I . . . eh . . .
     
    - Make a list of what you want to do, then I’ll consider whether you can stay or not, Mohsen says. - In any case, I’ll give you a maximum of ten days.
     
    With a gesture he tells me to stay seated on the sofa. It is so soft that I am knee-high to him. Mohsen despatches an assistant to find me an interpreter. No foreigner can function without someone to monitor what we do, where we travel, to whom we speak. The assistant returns with an older, thin-haired gentleman.
     
    - This is Takhlef, our most experienced. I am giving you the best as you are so young, Mohsen smiles.
     
    Takhlef tiptoes around under Mohsen’s gaze. He is small, skinny and dapper, dressed in a dark-blue suit, freshly ironed shirt and polished shoes. The suit is too big, as though he might recently have lost a lot of weight. The sparse hair is brushed back in a futile attempt to conceal the shiny crown. He stands beside Mohsen in a manner which shows that he works for Mohsen, not for me. - Just don’t try anything, his look tells me. - We are in charge.
     
    In order to work together we will both have to fawn, lie, conceal. Maybe that is why I dislike him from the beginning. Later I wonder whether I never really gave him a chance. Maybe he was actually quite a nice chap, squashed by the Baath Party’s vice like everyone else. But at the time I thought my luck had run out, being given him.
     
    - What interests you? is his first question, as though all I have to do is to choose. An interview with Saddam