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Shortly after dawn, Farouk, driver and translator today as he has been for several weeks, knocks on room 412 of Baghdad’s Agadir Hotel. Trained as an engineer and with the heart of a humanitarian, he is ever punctual and charming.
At the boisterous taxi terminal, travelers converge from every direction. The cabbies’ advance men sing out to attract customers, “Amman, Amman…Mosul, Mosul…Syria…Basra…Najaf.” This transport system’s efficiency predates the Ba’athists and will outlive the
Capitalists. Farouk bargains in Arabic one more time for his American friend. Familiar with scrapping a living in Baghdad, he’s not about to let a cab driver or baggage handler beat him out of a single dinar. Knowing this about him, it’s all the more impressive when his goodbye gesture is to refuse payment. What kind of vehicle to take across the border was the topic of some debate yesterday among my hotel mates. SUV’s are comfortable but
they’re also the transportation of choice for foreign businessmen and mercenaries, making them ready targets for highway Ali Babas and resistance fighters. During my time here I’ve carefully followed the advice to never ride in a new taxi. In line with that wisdom, I choose a sedan instead of a SUV. The workhorse sedan for this grueling trip is typically an early 90’s Chevy Caprice. Its rounded styling gives it the nickname, “dolphin.” So for the grand sum of $35—which later this morning includes
a breakfast of cheese, flatbread, cookies, fresh mandarin oranges and the ubiquitous chai—I’ll ride the dolphin to Amman. There’s already one other passenger aboard. When the back seat is full we’ll leave, or we can pay an additional ten dollars each and leave immediately. It’s too good a deal to pass up and in 5 minutes we’re on our way. The driver, Majid, is a small, wiry guy with short, salt-and-pepper hair. Isama, the front seat
passenger, is the rare fat person I’ve seen during my visit. I correctly guess he’s Jordanian and surmise later that by his numerous jokes he’s also a salesman. As soon as we’re underway, Majid turns on a tape of slow, sorrowful-sounding Muslim chants. In a minute, the Martyrs’ Bridge carries us over the Tigris River and the familiar pattern of mosques and street scenes rolls by: a 10-story communications center, bombed and looted black; the former Information Ministry in similar shape;
Saddam Hussein’s uncompleted “world’s largest” mosque; a furniture district’s couches and chairs crowding the sidewalk; an elderly kafia-clad biker driving an even older sidecar motorcycle; an army convoy bristling with guns held by young soldiers finishing their last days in Iraq; and a scrap-metal cart pulled by a high-stepping red horse. On the highway out of town that leads to the airport and then skirts Fallujah and Ramadi, an Abrams Tank lumbers alongside the road, snarling traffic. It
escorts an Army foot patrol searching for Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The median, once lush with mature date palms and underbrush, has been clear-cut to deny cover for resistance fighters. Roadside vendors finish setting up their stands. A single exit sign announces two destinations: the towns of White Gold Village, and Abu Ghraib. The latter is home to Saddam Hussein’s infamous prison, which now houses thousands of U.S. detainees. A man grazes a single cow in the median. Shepherds tend flocks in the fields as women hand-cut
hay, hauling it in enormous sacks as large as they are. It’s barely 8am and we’ve left Baghdad behind, on our way to Jordan. The dolphin’s speedometer registers 70 mph, but then it only goes as high as 80. Does this mean we won’t be able to drive the standard 100 mph in the sparsely-traveled desert reaches, or that we just won’t be able to tell? Dirt exit and entrance ramps add to the sense of remoteness. Tall, grim heaps of twisted guardrails have been ripped from their posts by Army
bulldozers to reduce hiding places for IEDs. Along this stretch of highway it’s considered unusually calm when a day goes by without a bomb blast. “Mistah Mike! Breakfast?” Majid asks. “Sure! Yes! Nam!” I reply hungrily. “Later,” he says, pointing farther down the road. His attempts at conversation can only be described as valiant, given my
almost complete lack of Arabic. After five tries I understand his simple question, “what kind of car do you have in Americee?” Undaunted by this difficult process, he pulls a photograph of his three children from under the sun visor and asks me if I have any of my own. I produce a photo of my daughter and I at an Ohio peace demonstration, days after U.S. bombs starting falling on Baghdad a year ago. She’s holding a sign that says “9/11/01: 15 Saudis, O Iraqis.” Majid smiles and I long to ask him what he thinks of it, but Farouk is many
kilometers behind. Waking from a quick nap, the passing scenery momentarily startles me. I can barely believe I’m looking at the western Iraq desert! In two months this landscape has become familiar, but this is the first time I see real beauty in it instead of just feeling disoriented by its arid starkness. One sign of rebuilding that wasn’t here before is a long line of bright, shining electrical transmission towers, gleaming against the azure sky.
I’d love to take a picture but stopping along here is not considered wise. A week prior I prevailed on my cab driver to stop not far from here so I could get a picture of a pile of guard rails. When I got back in the car Farouk informed me I nearly gave both of them a stroke. “Later” and breakfast time arrive and we pull into a tiny roadside establishment that appears out of nowhere. Majid turns around to give me the drill. “Mistah Mike—breakfast,
welcome. W.C. (water closet or toilet), welcome.” But then, he makes a mouthing motion with his hand and admonishes seriously, “No talk! No talk! OK? Americee—no talk!” This time I get his drift immediately. We’ve just passed Fallujah and Ramadi, two hotspots of anti-American resistance, and nobody needs a blue-eyed westerner walking around speaking English. I quickly pick a nationality, and because in a pinch I could muster ten words of Tex-Mex Spanish, I point to myself and tell Majid with a
wink, “Ramadi, Fallujah…Espana sahife (journalist).” Both he and Isama laugh and breathe a sigh of relief. After taking breakfast in the dolphin, we’re back on the highway. Majid again turns to me and at something over 80 mph takes both hands off the wheel to draw an imaginary line across the palm of his left hand with his right index finger. Pointing back and forth several times to either side of the line, he gesticulates “way” down the road and says, “Soldiers.” Indicating way down the
road again, he repeats, “soldiers…Americee. Soldiers…Americee. You talk.” By now I’ve got a good enough idea of what’s going on to know that Majid has found a useful role for his Americee passenger when we hit the border—and confident enough with our level of communication to pull his chain. “Espana! Espana sahife,” I deadpan, pointing to myself. “Espana?” He replies, with a very confused look.
“Espana? No—Americee. Americee sahife!” I couldn’t resist messing with Majid’s mind one more time. “Americee?? No! Espana…Espana sahife!” “Americee…soldiers…you talk,” he responded, looking almost desperate. And then he got the joke. Before the border it was time for a pit stop at the most godforsaken filling station on the planet, and one more lesson in how to be a useful passenger. Majid and Isama busied themselves rearranging luggage in the dolphin’s trunk, eventually pulling out several cartons of cigarettes. First Isama, and then Majid try giving me a couple cartons. “La sucran (no thank you)…la smoke.” They said something else in Arabic and extended the cigarettes again. I refused politely. Puzzled at this extremely generous custom, I returned to the back seat. My fellow
travelers talked for a while longer at the trunk and then it dawned on me what they were probably saying: “How many times do you think we’ll have to explain to that idiot how to help smuggle cigarettes across the border?” At the border lineup, with “my” two cartons of cigarettes sitting atop my bags, Majid gave me a final lesson in Useful Passenger 101. Tapping his shoulder to indicate an army officer’s rank, he said, “Americee sahife…airplane…Amman…8,” and pointed to his watch.
So this American journalist had a flight out of Amman at 8:00 pm and couldn’t be fooling around with typical border formalities...Sounded like a reasonable way to reduce the expected three-hour crossing fiasco. How much it would cost for this “express service” was a question I figured we’d deal with later. Turns out I didn’t have to worry because the Iraqi officer I pitched that line to shot me a look that said, “Yeah, sure. You and every other western geek that’s come through here today.” In due time we paid for our exit visas, (since “transit” travelers like me—people staying in the country less than 24 hours—are not supposed to be charged this fee, I hope the $10 I paid the sergeant goes into his kids’ college fund) got our passports stamped, and were ready to complete the trip to Amman. But not before one more incident of cigarette smuggling. After negotiating Jordanian customs but before we hit the road again, a man approached
Majid’s car window and pulled two cartons of cigarettes out of his overcoat. They engage in an animated conversation that twice nearly ends with the stranger walking away in disgust. But eventually they reach an agreement, the stranger places his cigarettes in a black plastic bag, tapes it securely, labels it, and passes it through the window to our driver. A couple hours into Jordan at a desert restaurant, we stop for a late lunch. As Majid pays his bill, he hands his carefully wrapped contraband to the clerk working the cash register,
exchanges a few words and goes on his way. In an hour or so, the owner of the illegal smokes will pick them up from the same clerk and the operation will be successfully completed. Reaching Amman, Majid deposits me at an informal taxi terminal on the edge of town where he hugs me goodbye and I return his bootlegged cigarettes. Grateful for this part of the journey to be completed, I’m now faced with negotiating a ride to my two-star hotel. First the drivers want to take me to much nicer
establishments, run by brothers and uncles. When that fails, they demand nearly as much to take me across town as Majid charged to cross the desert. I’m not the greatest bargainer, but good-naturedly I turn down their offers until the price is halved and agree to that. No doubt Farouk would still be appalled but I feel slightly victorious. ########## Ferner returned to Iraq this year for two months to write on developments since his trip just prior to the war with
Voices in the Wilderness. He served as a Navy Hospital Corpsman during Viet Nam, is a member of Veterans for Peace and a former member of Toledo City Council. © 2004 by Mike Ferner |
