The Circuit Read Free Page B

contact. But I’d already learned first hand that the airport had fairly good security. Moreover, my flight had been lousy and I was keen to get on with it.
    I walked up a row of vehicles sixty yards long and back down another. On my third pass I found Ahmed’s sedan with Ahmed inside, stretched out in the passenger’s seat and out for the count. I stood by the door and rang his phone. I could hear his catchy Arabic ring tone through the window but he slept right through it. I had no choice but to hammer on the windshield with my fist. Ahmed nearly launched through the roof. When he saw me he opened the door with such haste that a cold cup of coffee he’d rested on his lap shot out into the parking bay.
    ‘Are you Bob?’ he asked.
    ‘Aiwa’ (yes), I answered in Arabic.
    Ahmed drove me straight to my hotel, the American Colony in east Jerusalem. Just a few minutes’ walk from the Old City, the hotel is a favourite with the international press corps. Built as a palace in the late nineteenth century, it was taken over by a group of Americans who remained neutral towards the city’s various factions. To this day, the American Colony remains something of a little Switzerland where Arabs and Jews can mix over drinks or a meal in the beautiful gardens or inside in the bar and restaurant.
    I booked in at reception and was shown to my room. When the porter opened the door, my eyes widened with delight. The room was a palace within a palace; the ceilings were at least fourteen feet high and decorated in hand-carved, nineteenth-century Ottoman motifs. The furniture was hand carved as well in traditional Arab designs and the bed could have accommodated a platoon. No wonder journalists flocked to the place.
    I enjoyed my opulent surroundings to the fullest knowing that the next day I’d be facing some Spartan conditions in Ramallah. I dropped my bags, ran the water in the enormous bathtub and bounced onto the bed.
    The rest of my day involved meeting with the CNN bureau chief in Jerusalem, getting my Israeli press pass and calling Will on the phone to arrange an RV for the handover.
    That evening, I sat down to a monster dinner of surf and turf in the hotel restaurant. The place was full of journalists who looked like they spent most of their time in a pampered environment like the American Colony. Hostile environments were another matter. I’d never seen members of the media up close before and had always assumed that war correspondents would look the part; characters like Sandy Gall who were mature but fit enough to travel over the mountains of Afghanistan. Most of the journalists I saw were smoking and drinking and looked very unhealthy, including the young ones. I imagine that if any of them had to run three hundred yards to get away from an incident they’d probably drop down dead. I certainly couldn’t see them engaging in E&E (escape and evade) for a protracted period over a given distance. But the people-watching didn’t put me off the assignment. I was still excited by the prospect of returning to a war zone for the first time since retiring from the Regiment.
    The next morning I was up at seven (a long lie-in by my standards) to shower, dress and arrange for transport to Ramallah. The Jerusalem bureau had given me the number of a taxi driver who worked frequently with CNN. I was told he could find his way around the West Bank blindfolded.
    The driver said it would only take twenty minutes to get from the hotel to Ramallah and he’d collect me at nine. It seemed strange that someone working regularly for a news organization operating in and around a hostile environment should be on such a relaxed schedule. Ramallah is only ten miles due north of Jerusalem but Will had warned me that IDF checkpoints can add hours to the journey. The driver was waiting outside the hotel at 9 a.m. sharp. Since Ramallah was under military lockdown, we bypassed the main route leading north into the city where the fixed Kalandia