The polite insurgents
One of my friends was almost killed today.
It happens a lot…but this time it was close.
He was driving to Baghdad to see me after having finished a story I’d asked him to do.
He had been interviewing Sunnis in Hit (a war-torn town near Ramadi) about their feelings after the elections.
"I finished and was driving out of town, when a car pulled in front of me, and cut me off," he said. "Gunmen got out, with headscarves over their faces."
Now to understand my friend it is important to know that this didn’t bother him especially. He is at home with these kinds of people, and moves easily in their circles; many do in western Iraq, or you are in real trouble.
"I talked to them (the gunmen) and they said they had seen me in Hit. They said, ‘no reporters come out here’ and wanted to know what I was doing."
"And did you tell them?" I wanted to know.
"I told them I was doing a story on the Sunnis and their reaction to the election."
"Is it positive or negative?" the gunmen asked, and demanded to see the tape.
In a scene I can only picture in my head, together they huddled by the side of the road, looking at the little screen on his mini-DV camera.
And you know what? It turned out my friend wasn’t lying. There were interviews on the tape - Sunnis talking about their reactions to the election just like he'd said.
"Oh," one of the gunmen said…suddenly polite. "Do you need any help from us?"
"Actually," my friend suggested, "I’m low on gas."
The masked men went to the trunk of their car, took out two jerry cans and filled up his tank.
There were the usual "go with peace" and "may God preserve you" and that was it. But before he left, the gunmen said if he’d been from Iraqiya television (Iraqi state television) they would have "cut him up."
They all laughed and my friend drove off.
It is a strange time, with strange rules, even-stranger ways of reporting, and where life is cheap and one slip of the tongue, one miscalculation, can cost you your life.
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