Freelance war reporting isn’t always about the glamour of sitting in an airport terminal waiting for a ride.  Sometimes it’s about the glamour of spending all day trouble-shooting a piece of vital equipment.

I became a journalist, in part, because my total inability to understand science and technology made a career in, say, electrical engineering impractical.  I’d be totally comfortable working the way that journo played by Martin Sheen worked in Gandhi:  scribbling out my stories longhand and then reading them over the phone to a telegraph operator.  Instead I’m going to be relying heavily on a temperamental piece of communications equipment, the RBGAN.

Or… I won’t be, because as of this writing it’s not clear that the RBGAN will work.  I’d had inklings of this problem in Beirut and Amman, but it only became a full-blown crisis this afternoon.  That’s when the tech support guy back in the States seemed to rule out software problems, user error and incorrect settings and concluded that there was just something wrong with my RBGAN.

Then, miraculously, the unit seemed to “fix” itself long enough for me to download a software upgrade.  Now it’s working a little better (though not actually, you know, working), so I’m hopeful that they’ll have a solution for me tomorrow.

They’ve been very nice about the whole thing, and they’ll give me a replacement or a refund if the thing just won’t work.  I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that, though.  Sending stories and keeping in touch with editors will be a huge problem if I don’t have my own internet hook-up, and my goal of blogging everyday will probably just have to be scrapped for the time being.

If all of this is boring you, don’t worry—it’s boring me, too.  But I think people don’t often realize that, even in Iraq, you spend a lot of your time dealing with the same little annoyances and busywork as anyone in the States.  There was a suicide bombing north of Baghdad today that killed over 25 people; I read about it online as if I were in Chicago, not Baghdad.

After my long wait at the airport getting into the city ended up being a snap.  I found Nelson, the Post reporter who got in touch with me about a lift.  He’d told me to look out for the guy who was neither Iraqi nor a contractor, and that made him easy to spot.  I ended up acquiring, through no effort of my own, an Iraqi porter who insisted on carting our bags through customs on an old wheelchair.  We found a cab and gave our porter a generous tip (three US dollars and a Jordanian dinar).

We hooked up with the Post’s people at the main airport checkpoint and headed into the city.  As we pulled out of the parking lot a convoy of maybe four or five Humvees rolled past on the highway.  I wondered how I’d react to being back.  It feels like I only left last week.  The military vehicles, Iraqi soldiers manning traffic checkpoints, helicopters thwomping overhead, it all seems very natural.

Actually I never had much experience with the Iraqi Army; when I left it was mostly Iraqi cops at checkpoints (given what some Iraqi cops have gotten up to lately I’m not sure I’m looking forward to my first encounter with those guys).

There are some new security barriers at the Hamra, and it’s obvious the place is still recovering from last year’s bombing.  All the victims were Iraqis living outside the compound.  It sounds like it was just dumb luck that no one in the hotel itself was killed.  The Hamra is two white towers with a courtyard and pool in between.  The bomb detonated near the back corner of the second, smaller tower. As far as I know that tower is still unoccupied, and as I wandered around the courtyard tonight looking for a place to test out my RBGAN I saw debris piled in what used to be a little semi-secluded garden.

It wasn’t really a surprise—a few people had been calling that side of the hotel “car bomb corner” because it was most vulnerable to an attack.  Now the whole compound seems even more fortress-like, and it’s hard to imagine any car bomb getting that close again.

I spent most of today just trying to get my equipment working, so I didn’t get a chance to see anyone at the hotel.  But the vibe seems different than on previous trips.  Security is a bit tighter, I think.  The process of sealing off each individual floor behind its own security barrier, well underway when I left last February, seems to have been completed.  I’m staying with Knight Ridder and their entire bureau is sealed behind metal and bullet-proof (I hope?) glass.

But the weird myth that reporters here don’t leave their hotels seems as unfounded now as it was when I was working in 2004 and early 2005.  One of the friends I’d hoped to see is on a trip outside Baghdad.  The KR people are going about their business.  Security is on everyone’s mind but it’s not making it impossible to work.

One thing I never got used to in Baghdad is the sound of the generators.  For some reason I was surprised that the power is still going out for long stretches several times a day.  It is, and the gas-powered generators out on the sidewalks roar like rusty jackhammers.  The sights and sounds are all very familiar.  I heard a solitary gunshot earlier today, and a distant mortar last night.

The power came back on a few minutes ago, the generators are off, and things are quiet except for some stray dogs barking.  I’m going to hit the sack and try to get a lot done tomorrow.