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Homage to Catatonia
This entry was posted on 4/12/2006 12:02 AM and is filed under uncategorized.
I watched a little baseball in bed last night (live on ESPN) and dozed off around 2:30 am. I got my wakeup call at 4:30 and, instead of either getting up or going back to sleep, just lay in bed astounded at how tired I was until I got the back-up call at 4:45. I took a quick shower and was out in time for breakfast, which arrived right on schedule at 5 am. The previous night I’d been ambivalent about ordering eggs, chicken sausage, toast, sliced grapefruit and orange juice for the equivalent of over $20, but figured it would be the last good meal I’d have in a while.
I sent a few last-minute emails before heading down to check out, and ended up being almost 20 minutes late for my 5:30 meeting with the International Traders driver. Since I don’t have access to my own safe transportation, arranging transportation to the hotel after reaching the airport has been a convoluted process. While I was back in the States I asked a few of my friends in town if they could send their people out to pick me up, but they couldn’t for insurance reasons (there’s also the very reasonable concern that their employees not put themselves in danger just because some guy can’t find his own ride).
My second idea was to ask the military if they could transport me from the airport to the Green Zone, where hitching a ride from a bureau would be more easily done. Uncertainty about what would happen once I landed at laceName w:st="on">BaghdadlaceName> laceType w:st="on">AirportlaceType> was a big reason I decided to go to Beirut last Tuesday instead of waiting to fly into Baghdad last Wednesday. That turned out to be a huge mistake, hence my return to Amman.
I’ve been dealing with several people in the US military, at the airport in the Green Zone and out in Fallujah, as I arrange both my ride and my eventual embed. I don’t envy them, because my attempts to figure out new and exciting ways to get to the Hamra probably come off as the twitchings of an insane person. First I was arriving from Amman on Wednesday; then I was arriving from Beirut on Saturday, then from Beirut on Sunday. Then it was from Amman on Monday, with no need for a ride from the airport. Then it was from Amman on Tuesday.
When I arrived in Amman on Sunday Traders told me I’d be leaving the next morning, on the same flight as my friend Larry. All problems solved. I slept most of the afternoon, and woke up at 5 pm to find that, oops, that flight was full and I was flying out Tuesday morning.
The final twist is that, through the good graces of my friend Tom, a reporter at the Washington Post put me in touch with a colleague who’s arriving on an early afternoon flight. So now I’m waiting around at the laceName w:st="on">BaghdadlaceName> laceType w:st="on">AirportlaceType> baggage claim hoping to flag him down and get a lift into the city. In the meantime a captain in the Estonian army has an email from me sent at 5:30 this morning telling him that I may or may not need a ride, that if I do need a ride I’ll need it around 4:30, and that I’ll try to call him if I don’t need a ride.
Sometimes I get frustrated with the military bureaucracy. Then I remember this sort of thing and wonder how they put up with my shit.
My lateness getting downstairs threw off Traders’ schedule, and I got to the airport about 20 minutes late. Then I sat around the airport for about half an hour waiting for someone to materialize with my tickets. (I bought a flexible-date return ticket, too, hoping to avoid the horror show last February when I had to desperately beg ANYONE in line to give me a hundred dollars so I could buy a ticket out of the country. I’d been led to believe my ticket was waiting for me at the Royal Jordanian office at the airport, which it was not. They didn’t take credit cards, so I had to empty my pockets and take out a loan to get out of the country.)
This time all three of my bags were searched as I went through security. When I got to the ticket counter they told me the 8 am to Baghdad was booked. I decided not to care, on the grounds that they assured me I could get on the later flight. That meant meeting up with the Post guy in Amman and flying on the same flight, which seemed easier anyway. But then they told me they had a couple openings in business class, and after thinking it over I figured that the quicker I got to Baghdad the fewer things could go wrong (not a common sentiment these days, I guess).
By the time I went to the wrong gate (Iraqi Airways to Baghdad, not RJ to Baghdad), crossed the airport back to the correct gate, and once again had to explain in minute detail the workings of each piece of equipment I’m carrying (“Can you steal internet with this?” “No, you have to pay for the service” “I’m trying to find the equipment that lets you steal internet”) the departure area for my flight was completely empty. I figured I’d just missed the first bus over, and that there’d be another one soon. Then a man appeared and said, “Are you going to Baghdad?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, you missed it. So you have to go back.”
“Okay, well…” I was trying to figure out if I should ask first about my luggage, already in transit to Baghdad, or about my chances of getting a do-over and booking a seat on the later flight.
"I'm just kidding!" Then he disappeared back out the glass door and down the stairs.
“That’s not very nice!” I actually didn’t mind, mostly because I was so relieved.
I ended up taking a tram over with what looked like an Iraqi family—there were several small children in tow. The rest of the plane seemed to be the usual mix of heavyset Iraqi men in slightly unfashionable suits, guys who practically had AMERICAN CONTRACTOR tattooed on their foreheads (beefy dudes in baseball caps, sunglasses, jeans or Ex-Officio-style hiking pants and either hiking or military-issue boots) and the occasional willowy refugee who was most likely a diplomat, an indoor-cat for a private company, or a journalist.
My reward for being late to both the airport and the airplane was a seat in the second row of business class and a plane that locked its doors and started to taxi about ten minutes after I fastened my seatbelt. We got newspapers, hot towels and, after takeoff, a little bowl of fruit and a pastry. I slept a little, but it was a little bumpy and I kept sitting up so I could get a better grip on the arms of my seat.
Behind me a man and a woman conducted a spirited conversation in Arabic; the only thing I made out was the man repeatedly saying “Rumsfeld.” He didn’t sound happy. Then again Iraqis often sound mad or unhappy when they’re just having a normal conversation. If I keep at this long enough my lack of Arabic will stop being just a serious handicap and turn into an embarrassment.
The flight’s not long; 90 minutes if that. I woke up when we tipped to one side and started doing a loose spiral down into Baghdad. It didn’t compare to the sustained death-spiral I’d experienced flying in a tiny AirServ prop plane; the RJ jets are too big to pull off that maneuver. Instead we spiraled down a bit, then evened out and spiraled down the other way. I’m a nervous flyer but this kind of thing doesn’t bother me; you definitely feel gravity pulling you into your seat, so there’s no sense of freefall and no lurch in your stomach.
We landed on the runway and the pilot welcomed us to Baghdad. I remember when I arrived in the city for the first time in January 2004 I felt the reality of it very strongly. I’d driven all the way in; maybe that had something to do with it. This time the pilot might have well announced that we’d landed on time in the Land of Oz. I’ve been gone for a year and I’m back to knowing Iraq mostly as a story in newspapers and magazines and on television. The reality of the place is something I’m going to have to rediscover.
In the line at passport control I got a better look at the contractor class—mostly just garden-variety Americans, but a decent number of uber-Americans. There was a guy in a corduroy-and-faux-fur jacket with a shock of naturally orange hair and a pointy orange beard; if he’d been pointed out to me as the leader of a California biker gang I would’ve believed it. I noticed that, despite all the differences between Iraqis and Americans, Iraqi and American men of a certain age seem to carry about the same amount of weight in the gut.
I was shocked and amazed that I had no trouble at all getting my visa; that had been my biggest worry as I planned the trip. Apparently my letters from the US Embassy and one of my client papers did the trick. I was a bit concerned when I somewhat irritated guy disappeared with my passport for a few minutes, but he brought it back and I got my visa stamp. The cost, which I’d been told would be $80, was $1. And because I’d had to pay an excess baggage fee in Amman I even had exact change.
In the winter of 2004 I chatted with a hustling American entrepreneur, a guy called the Duke, who said that it was a magical moment in Iraq and that the moment would end when the airport re-opened. The magic, if there ever was any, is gone (the word seems grotesque now), and I can’t really say if the airport is “open.” There are, I think, three RJ flights from Amman every day, plus a couple Iraqi Airways flights a week from Beirut and a few a day from Amman. IA flies in from Dubai as well. There’s a fair number of miscellaneous charters. But it doesn’t feel like a functioning airport.
Some of that is petty aesthetics (the planters in front of the passport booths are filled with dry dirt, and flies buzz around inside the terminal), but more than that the place just feels empty. I’ve been sitting here for over three hours and only two other groups of passengers have arrived. One group was some kind of contractor charter—a group of maybe 20 Americans sneaking cigarettes and chatting at high volume (i.e., conventional American volume).
The emptiness is a little ominous, because it makes me wonder, irrationally, if any more flights are scheduled to arrive at all. The arrival/departure screens are dead. Maybe I’ll just sit here indefinitely, with no ride from the Post and no ride from the military. The place has white marble floors and metal columns and white ceilings and fluorescent lights and the ambiance of a futuristic insane asylum.
I couldn't post that when I wrote it. I'm now in a room at the Hamra and it's a bit after 1 am. I'll get into the ride from the airport and seeing Baghdad again tomorrow.
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