I’d forgotten that walking under the rotors to climb aboard a Blackhawk helicopter isn’t just loud; the sound and the vibration are almost nauseating.  Last January in Mosul an Army medic gave me a spare pair of earplugs, which I managed not to lose.  They’re reusable and dual-purpose—the yellow ends are for muffling the sound of gunfire and the green ends are for being near loud machinery.

I was traveling out with another reporter, and we tossed our bags behind some netting before strapping ourselves into our seats.  Rather, before trying to strap ourselves in.  The seatbelts in helicopters are four-point harnesses that connect over the chest in a circular buckle.  By the time I left Iraq last winter I’d mastered the art of fastening my seatbelt. 

Now I’m back to square one.  The buckle seems deliberately designed to be a puzzle; you can get two prongs into the buckle without a problem, only to find that prong number three won’t fit into the remaining slot.  The soldier next to me saw me flailing and fastened my belt for me.  My fellow reporter tried once or twice to buckle himself in properly, calmly decided he didn’t care, and strapped the belt across his lap like a backseat car belt.

For all the noise, helicopters are a wonderfully smooth ride most of the time.  You hear the machine whining and thumping as it gears up to leave the ground, but there’s no jostling, no sensation of building speed like in an ascending jet.  We gently lifted into the air, made a shallow bank over the landing zone, and flew out of the Green Zone towards Anbar.

I’ve forgotten what Baghdad looked like from the air in 2004.  But time around it seemed brighter, more like a normal city.  I don’t know if there are actually more lights on now, or if my memory was playing tricks on me.  It wasn’t long before we were away from the lights of Baghdad and out in the open desert.

That’s the same as I remember it—chalky sand in the moonlight, scrubby underbrush, occasional houses that look more like utility sheds than homes.  I was in the last row of seats, facing the back of the chopper, so all of this rushed past me in seconds.  After minutes and minutes without any signs of life, I looked out I looked to my right and saw a convoy of trucks.  Their headlights were on, and they were shining searchlights into the low dunes that rolled away from the road.

Many minutes passed, and then I saw a small, solitary car driving down an empty unpaved road.  This seemed as incongruous as casually discovering life on another planet.  This far out in the desert is off the map for me, a part of Iraq I don’t think I’ll visit without a military escort for many years.  That’s a tough and embarrassing reality.  I haven’t been as far west as Fallujah outside a military embed since the end of March 2004.  I haven’t traveled to or from Baghdad airport without an armed escort since June 2004.  I haven’t walked by myself on the streets of Baghdad in about two years.  I don’t have the Arabic or the connections to do good journalism out here, and if I did have the Arabic and the connections it’s an open question whether I’d have the balls.  In this I’m in the same boat as most of the western press corps (I happened to be flying with one of the exceptions, Nir Rosen).

This sort of thing lends itself to caricature by people who haven’t spent much or any time in Iraq.  I can’t speak for my colleagues, but from what I’ve heard and what I’ve observed I think journalists are finding ways to get their jobs done.  It just requires a lot more planning, a lot more care, and compromises that are inevitable given the danger.

For me, operating with a limited budget, the compromise is reporting from Iraq entirely from embeds with the US  If and when I can rub a couple nickels together, or get contract work, I’d love to get out on my own again.  But for now the culture I’m covering is the United States Marine Corps, not Iraq.