May 31, 2003

Ten Dinars!

IRAQ HIGHWAY 1 – Little traffic populated Baghdad’s streets as dawn broke Saturday. Light slowly filtered through a thick blanket of clouds hovering over central Iraq. It wasn’t a morning slammed awake from sunlight over the horizon.

As recently as five days before our journey, an incoming convoy was stopped at gunpoint and robbed blind of their cash and valuables. We were ready to leave by half five, but a another car’s sleeping driver delayed our rendezvous at the Palestine Hotel with the rest of the convoy.

I was on edge. Precious minutes dragged by as the driver was roused and their car was loaded with passengers and several months’ worth of luggage. The seconds still clicked by as in an echo chamber on my digital watch.

Rain fell on two occasions while I was in Iraq: a brilliant thunderstorm the night preceding Mohammed Baqr al Hakim’s arrival in An Najaf, and now, headed to Jordan on the freedom ride from a storm that had begun the night before.

The hazy fog of dust mixed with rain concealed our white GMC Suburban along the main Jordan-Iraq traffic artery. Our departure from Baghdad was synchronized with the moon’s partial eclipse of the sun, which was visible low in the Iraqi sky. The cloudy camouflage helped disguise the fact that the convoy’s formation got looser than a three-dollar whore not 10 kilometers into the trip. If anyone wanted to pick off one of the vehicles they could have done so quite easily.

So when we passed Fallujah, and started rolling through Ramadi, I mounted an unsuccessful search for our roadmates. All of our eyes scanned the road for any sign of problem or impending danger. Ali Baba must play it smart. Outgoing journalists and aid workers have little cash left over from their stay in the cradle of civilization. Little fish, we were.

Fine by me.

We stopped once in the Iraqi desert for benzene at an unofficial station. Random men with jerry cans stood waiting for customers. The only way I knew our location? GPS. 33 DEG 10’ 9.95” N, 41 DEG 40’ 8.98”E, about halfway between Baghdad and the border.

Things went just like a long road trip should: boring as hell. My colleagues, Dion Nissenbaum and Tim Potter, and I decided what our first “real meal” would be when we got back to the States. We talked through problems we’d had through our trip and decided the best way to solve them for the next deployment. Nothing outside the GMC interrupted our conversation until we got to the border.

Thanks to commerce returning between the two Arab neighbors, trucks headed west formed at least a two-kilometer queue from the narrow crossing. And unlike the trip in, the gas station on the Iraqi side had electricity and was working like a charm. We breezed right by the guys with the Jerry cans offering who knows what kind of benzene.

The Iraqi – or rather American– side of the border was really quite easy. The only detail not present was a sign thanking all drivers for visiting the United States. Last handshakes of soldiers who searched the truck out of the way, we proceeded through no-man’s land to the other side.

The Jordanian experience was quite different.

Everyone wanted to see our passports: the guy as we left no-man’s land, the guy as we got into the queue for our baggage search, the guy at immigration, the lizard we walked past on the way to the WC, the palm trees lining the road, the… Well, you get the idea.

The most interesting part of the border crossing was in the minuscule visa office. It wasn’t marked, had no directions to it, not even a line of breadcrumbs. Once found, we stood in queue about 10 journalists deep, including the Knight Ridder contingent.

Mr. Visa wore a short-sleeved, light blue uniform shirt pressed to crisp perfection. His jet-black ‘do hadn’t a hair out of place, with matching mustache. He eyed everyone in the queue with a suspicion that failed to belie his poor attitude about doing his job as he collected our passports and stacked them face down on his desk.

It was as if his gaze told, “I can’t believe you’re going to make me work.”

One by one he got through the little books. He’d bark our first name and linger his gaze as we chimed up like good little pupils. Then, he’d turn his head a half turn right and check the computer on his desk for something, we didn’t know, and begin placing the visa in the passport with a whap of the stamp and some handwriting in Arabic.

For some reason I’d thought that he’d seen the Seinfeld episode about the Soup Nazi because he ordered entry tax like the “No soup for you!” line in the show.

“Ten Dinars!” he’d command of each person. His lips barely moved, and his gaze would move slowly from the passport in which he’d just placed the visa to its owner. Everyone needs his little fiefdom.

Immigration and baggage search was quite the breeze comparatively, and we zipped through the remainder of the border.

Just as the way into Iraq, we stopped at the same restaurant in the shantytown about 15 kilometers inside of Jordan. The business cards on the wall multiplied by at least two times as my card no longer edged the pack, but was in its middle. We enjoyed the first clean meal since we got to the Middle East.

We walked out of the restaurant, hopped back into the truck and were off after Tim wrestled with front passenger seat safety belt for the umpteenth time.

Me? I broke out the Cuban cigar I had, flamed up and leaned back in my seat as Iraq faded behind us.

- Rich