As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. A week after the fall of Baghdad, Peter sent a message telling me to book a flight to Jordan through the Post’s office in Berlin. I would stay overnight at the Four Seasons Hotel and then drive to Baghdad. “Call Ranya in Jordan,” he told me. “She will arrange everything.”
I called Ranya, who was a stringer for the Post and the New York Times in Jordan. Glamorous, brassy, and descended from a well-educated and affluent Jordanian family, Ranya is the only Arab woman I know who dares to wear tight jeans and high heels to interview Islamists. We’ve become friends over the years, but on that day in 2003, I was a nervous twenty-five-year-old novice reporter heading into a war zone for the first time. “You’ll have a couple of hours’ honeymoon in a five-star hotel,” she told me, laughing, “before they send you on a drive to hell.”
I told my parents over dinner that evening, leaving out the part about hell.
“Of all places, you need to go there?” my father asked. “It is very dangerous. How will we know where you are?”
My mother burst into tears. “Where will you sleep? Who will take care of your safety?” she asked, then shook her head. “If only I’d let you become an actress.”
I explained that I was going for one specific story and that I would be staying at a house with other Washington Post journalists. I also promised that I would stay away from places where we knew there was fighting going on. Back then, few could have predicted how quickly the war would spread from traditional battlefields to city streets.
Finally, my father asked what I needed for the trip. I’d learned my lesson about making sure to wear long shirts and clothes that didn’t show the shape of my body. My father had always helped me by going to Pakistani and Afghan import-export shops in Frankfurt and finding the largest, ugliest tunics. His choices guaranteed that I wouldn’t look feminine at all. I asked if he would help by getting me more clothes.
I called Peter, who was already in Baghdad. He told me not to carry lots of cash and to try to blend in as much as possible on the road from Jordan.
“There have been robberies between Amman and Baghdad,” he explained.
I didn’t tell my parents that, either. The next day, I boarded a flight to Jordan.
3
A Country with a Divided Soul
Iraq, 2003–4
When I landed later that night, I called Ranya. She had arranged for a car to pick me up and take me to the hotel. We would leave early the next morning. “You have to be ready by three a.m. It’s safer for you to drive then,” Ranya said. If she was nervous, her voice didn’t betray it. She sounded as if she were reading a manual about how to turn on a TV. She also said there had been a change of plans: instead of traveling to Baghdad alone, I would now be sharing a car with a correspondent from the New York Times. This rattled me. How was I supposed to blend in if there was an American, who might have blue eyes and blond hair, in the car with me? And not just any American, but a guy from the Times? “Come on, darling, it’s not that difficult,” Ranya told me. “You’re sharing a car, not a bed.” After hanging up with her, I called Peter Finn in Baghdad. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just make him sit in back, and you sit in front.”
At the hotel, I phoned my parents to let them know I’d arrived safely. “Everything is super,” I told them, trying to sound casual. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, then showered and dressed. When I tipped the waiter who brought my croissant and coffee, he couldn’t stop grinning. I later realized I’d messed up the exchange rate and given him more than twice the cost of the breakfast.
It turned out that the other reporter was also young and nervous. When I met him in the lobby, I informed him that I’d sit in the front seat. Ranya had also urged me to do this, saying it would lower our chances of being robbed. “Yes, sure,” he said. “Ranya knows best.”
We climbed into a black SUV. It was nothing special—the kind of rugged car that Iraqis often used to travel back and forth across the Jordanian border. The driver, Munther, was a Jordanian of Palestinian descent and a real sweetheart. He’d brought along small, freshly baked pizzas, drinks, and cookies for the road, but neither the Times reporter nor I felt like eating much.
The trip from Amman to the border took about four hours. Then, if nothing went wrong, it would be another six hours to Baghdad. Munther and I chatted in Arabic. In the backseat, my fellow reporter listened to music on his headphones. At one point, Munther offered to plug the music into the car stereo, and heavy metal blared. “If we listen to this the rest of the way, I’m going to need aspirin,” Munther told me in Arabic. “Tell him that if people hear it, they might know there’s a foreigner here.”
I handed the music back to the Times reporter. “It’s a security thing,” I said. But he was smiling. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You don’t like my music.” I told him that ’80s pop was more my speed.
At the border, we saw Jordanian soldiers but no Iraqis. I was the only woman there, but I couldn’t tell if the men were staring at me because I was female or because I was wearing one of the ugly long shirts my father had bought. Once across, we drove through the desert on a smooth, empty road. Iraq’s infrastructure was much more advanced than I’d expected. Judging by the roads and buildings, this wasn’t a Third World country. It looked civilized, even prosperous. There was pride in the way people walked, in the way they looked at each other, but I also saw anger and disappointment in their faces.
After a while, Munther stopped the car. “Okay, look, guys, we are going to pass by a region where there are lots of robberies,” he told us. “If you’ve got money, give it to me and I will hide it for you.”
I told Munther that I had three hundred dollars with me, but it was already in a safe place. I had taken my Moroccan grandmother’s long-ago advice and hidden it in my bra. “Child, the world is full of sons of sin,” she told me then. “If they stick their hands in my dress pockets, they will get some coins, but not the large notes.” I’d kept twenty dollars in my wallet, so that if thieves stopped us, they wouldn’t be suspicious.
But the Times reporter had more money—a lot more. He hadn’t expected Munther to ask for it and wasn’t sure whether to hand it over. “The bureau will freak out,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked. “Ten thousand dollars?”
It was much more than that and in cash, he told me, strapped to his body in one of those money belts.
When Munther saw the big stack of American dollars, he blanched. “This is very dangerous for all of us,” he said. “They might think we’re agents or spies for some foreign country.” He hid the money in a special compartment under the floor of the car.