Advice to heed before traveling road to Baghdad

Editor’s Note: NEWS staff writer Alicia Anstead is sending periodic dispatches from Iraq and points along her itinerary to Baghdad, where she has traveled with fellow journalist Peter Davis of Castine. Davis is on assignment for The Nation magazine.

AMMAN, Jordan – When we agreed more than a month ago to go to Iraq, the circumstances were quite

different from those we face as we head out in the darkness of what is otherwise a stunningly clear, cool and handsome night here, our first stop en route to Baghdad. Iraq is in critical chaos, we have been told by a handful of reporters who recently left that country through Amman. Some of them were there during the war and said it was safer then. Others simply shake their heads and say the aftermath is a shameful mess.

One reporter from PBS, making his third trip into Iraq since the war, said this is the one he dreads the most. The stories he told of Iraq from just four weeks ago were of a place where he ate fresh river fish at nice restaurants and strolled along the Tigris River at sunset. The city wasn’t put back together, he added, but it was heading in that direction. Now he doesn’t know what to expect, except that he won’t be going out at night.

That is one of two directives we have been given repeatedly by other reporters and one government official who left the country only yesterday. The other is to avoid associating with the American military, the No. 1 target of violence. Work the streets by day, but be back to your hotel at night. Some say wear flak jackets and helmets; others say they make you a target. It’s very hard to know how to feel safe. If we can feel safe.

We are leaving at night, by the way, because all trips from Amman to Iraq depart in time to reach the border by daybreak and to make the dangerous dash across the desert when the sun is shining. Many ambushes take place on this road, which is why we are meeting with a caravan of other journalists at the border. To minimize problems, as many as six or seven cars always travel together. Our drivers were provided by a former lawyer and journalist turned “fixer,” a term used here for someone with good connections and resources for journalists. A native of Jordan but with roots in Nova Scotia, she has aided hundreds who have crossed into Iraq from Amman since January. None of them has met with any problems, she said – and always added, “Knock on wood.”

Earlier today, she took us on a shopping trip to buy provisions for the journey. She advised that we take water (10 cases of it), crackers, juices and cheese. Then she took us to a candy and nut shop where she insisted we purchase cashews and almonds, which we did. “For this, you will love me,” she said about the nuts with a broad smile. The next stop was at a pharmacy for drugs to help with diarrhea. Eighty percent of her media clients have suffered from an “Iraqi amoeba,” she said. “That’s Saddam’s real chemical revenge.” It crossed my mind that we may love her more for these drugs than for the nuts.

When I told her that the fun of the shopping trip was in direct contrast to the fear I was feeling, she smiled quietly. Earlier, when she was praising Baghdad as the historic focal point of the Arab world, I asked her whether she had been to the city. “No,” she answered. “I refused to go there under Saddam Hussein. And now I refuse to go there under Bremer.”

But we are leaving to go there in a few short hours. I do not look forward to leaving Amman, which is a vibrant city of daytime activity, rich nightlife and extraordinarily urban vistas of sand-colored stone buildings set off by deep blue sky. I do, however, look forward to meeting other Mainers in Iraq, those in the military and those doing humanitarian work. They are far away from “the way life should be,” but, for them, now, this is the way life is.

Anstead’s “Notes” and articles she plans to write after her return will be based on conversations with Mainers and Iraqis with common ties and her first-person perceptions of daily life in that troubled and volatile region.