| Inside the Arab World By Peter Foley
Unlike the more than one thousand photographers
sent to Iraq to cover the war, I was sent by Bloomberg News to cover the
economic conditions surrounding the war. So while imbedded photographers
lived with the troops and documented battles and the lives and deaths of
soldiers, I lived with Arab people and worked with Arab journalists documenting
living and working conditions.
My trip started in the capital city of Amman, Jordan, where just about
all foreign journalists go to wait for Iraqi visas. It is here that I meet
my “fixer” Jamal Nasrallah – a local freelance photographer – who helped
me with
everything from translating the menu at McDonalds to getting me out of
a Jordanian jail.
Since Jordan gets its oil from Iraq – at about half of the market price
– my first story brought me to a town called Zaraq about 250 kilometers
from the Iraqi border. Each day many of the nearly 2,500 Iraqi tanker trucks
roll down from the border and dump their crude oil at the refinery, the
largest in Jordan.
Jamal warned me that without written permission from the oil ministry
to photograph we could get in trouble. Sure enough we got arrested. The
Jordanian Army took our cameras and passports and held us at gunpoint. Finally
after many hours, endless cups of Turkish coffee and tea, a few phone calls
to the American Embassy and a lot of talk in Arabic, we were told we could
take five pictures. We were escorted to the gate, I took a few frames and
we headed back to Amman.
That night over a large traditional Jordanian dinner – Jamal seemed to
know every restaurant owner in Amman – when it came time to serve coffee
and tea we had a big laugh reflecting on how much of the same we drank at
the oil refinery that day.
I came to appreciate this simple ritual in the Arabic world. By western
standards they have much less in terms of material trappings but their first
instinct is always to share what they have – and they seem to have an abundance
of coffee and tea. And politeness: though there was always underlying tension
from the fact that they thought that Americans liked the idea of this war
and they didn’t, they would never come out and ask me my opinion.
While there is not a lot of personal or political freedom – every day
you picked up the paper you read that the King decreed something – there
is a certain amount of economic freedom, and Jordan and Iraq are big trading
partners.
I met hundreds of Iraqi taxi drivers that shuttled people back and forth
from Amman to Baghdad. I visited soap factories and pharmaceutical companies
that shipped products to Iraq. I did a story on the black market trade of
Iraqi currency. (In 1991 before the first gulf war the exchange rate for
Iraqi Dinars was three to one for Jordanian Dinars; now it took 3,000 Iraqi
Dinars to buy the same). I also did a story on the camel trade: Unfortunately,
when we arrived in the town where the Bedouins bought and sold camels, I
was told there were only a few camels left – the rest had all been slaughtered
for their meat.
As time went on and it became harder to find “economic” stories, I covered
protests against the war and candlelight vigils where prayers were offered
for peace. And I became a tourist. One day when Jamal was showing me around
the ancient ruins of the Citadel I meet a vacationing airline attendant,
a nice girl named Maya. (The Citadel is one of Jordan’s leading tourist
sites, but with a 75 percent drop in tourist trade, we were the only people
there).
The next day Jamal was busy so I went off with Maya to the Jordan river,
Mount Ebo (where they say Moses is buried) and the Dead Sea, where Maya
decided to take a dip. Twenty-five or so Jordanian men witnessed Maya stripping
down to her bikini. At first they seemed angry but they quickly calmed down
and began to laugh and after exchanging a few words in Arabic and English
they congratulated me on owning such a nice woman.
The closest I came to being an embedded journalist was when I tried to
take a picture of General Tommy Franks who was visiting Amman just after
the Turks refused the Americans landing rights. As I lifted my camera it
felt like the Army football team ran over me screaming, “No pictures.” Under the pile of bodies, I meekly protested, “I’m an
American. What about freedom of the press?”
Finally, a week before the war started, Jamal got word from Baghdad that
my visa would be coming through. In the meantime a big story was starting
to break. The Jordanian government was building refugee camps in Ruweished.
A small town on the Jordanian/Iraqi border with a population of less than
1,000, Ruweished was not prepared for the influx of hundreds of foreign
journalists. It had only one hotel (nicknamed the Baghdad Cafe), which had
12 rooms that they turned into 25. CNN rented every room. A few locals rented
their houses out to the other big TV networks and the rest of us stayed
in trailers at a hundred U.S. dollars a night. The one benefit to this arrangement
was that every night the TV networks had big barbecues. The fixers cooked
the best lamb kabobs and journalists from all over the world turned up to
discuss the day’s events. As it turned out, thousands of Iraqis did not
flee (the only refugees were Sudanese immigrants living in Iraq) and the
story became that of Iraqis living in Jordan who were heading back into
Iraq to fight.
One Iraqi tanker driver I met at the border said, “God is great, Allah
will protect me, I will pick up a gun and fight for my country.” The Iraqis
are a proud people and I think he felt he should say something.
As the war started the issue of my visa became moot. Bloomberg had made
the decision that we would not be covering the war and it was time to come
home. I found it hard to say goodbye to Jamal (who gave me a traditional
scarf to protect me from sandstorms) and to a place where the people had
showed me great warmth and kindness.
A people not unlike ourselves, just trying to survive and make it through
the next day.
My trip helped me appreciate once again the freedoms and abundance we
have in America. I hope we now share the best of us with the Iraqi people.
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