On a rainy Saturday morning, there's no better way to start the day than with a coffee and an episode of one of my favorite podcasts. Today I clicked on the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent series, The Alan Johnston story, which you can hear here, or read here.
I sat frozen and listened as his tale told in his own voice described the ordeal he went through. I couldn't help but reflect to my own, not nearly so dramatic, experience as a war correspondent. I may have been lucky for not being captured, or shot and killed during my 4 years of roaming through Bosnia as a photojournalist. I felt almost ashamed that the dangers I faced don't match up to those of Alan's, or other foreign correspondents around the world. Yet, I was there along some of the greatest stars of print, radio and TV news reporting, from Christiane Amanpour of CNN, to BBC's Martin Bell and Kate Adie. I reported, or rather photographed, the same stories, shared the same dangers and many fun moments. But, of course, I was never nearly as important, being a "local hire". Although working for the Associated Press, I never became one of them. To put us, locals, in our place, even UN made a "racial" distinction and issued a yellow press accreditations for the locally hired foreign correspondents, and the blue ones for the "real" foreigners. For over a year, until the Nazi-like rules of distinction was struck down, the yellow IDs were not allowed on UN flights to and from Sarajevo, some UN convoys and even some UN bases in the country. On the UN priority list, when it comes to helping foreign press, the yellow marked ones were the lowest grade.
Today, Alan's recount from Gaza brought back the memory of an instance when I was stopped on a mountain pass by a check point manned by fighters whose faces were wrapped in green scarf. It was, actually, a quite uneventful episode in which a barrel of a heavy machine gun on the hill was following my every move and in which one of the two green-clad men who checked my car for weapons had his Kalashnikov in my stomach for the whole time.
On another instance I was detained together with a Spanish AP photographer for photographing a bridge. We were taken to a small room with a desk, where our interrogator sat, flanked by armed men and questioned for hours. All our possessions were taken: our car, cameras, flak vests, winter coats. We were rescued by a chain of lucky circumstances-my Spanish colleague carried a letter for a commander of a Spanish UN troops based in town. The letter had a Spanish Defence Ministery header, which made our captors nervous, so much so that they let us, under guard, to go to deliver the letter. As soon as we reached the gates of the Spanish UN base, we ran through it, leaving the guards outside the fence.
Then a Spanish UN took us back and even negotiated to have all our stuff returned. Our car was freshly washed and readied to be painted. Later we found out that the local fighters' commander fancied our little all-terrain car so much that he accused us of being spies and photographing a military object (bridge) in order to confiscate it. He planned to have us either executed, or tossed to a prison. Even when we were taken to the UN, he thought he'll get away with it if only they remove the vehicle fast. But, for the one and only time in my life, the UN moved swiftly and we left unscratched and with all our things returned, minus films and notebooks.
Those, and many other instances when I dealt with mad, armed people, when I had guns pointed or even shot at me, surfaced while listening to Alan Johnston. And a thought crept in-all it needed was a one unfortunate moment and one of those men could lose his cool and pull the trigger. A wrong word, a wrong look or a wrong move and I'd never have a chance to type this words. Then, I was in late 20s and all seemed like a game. Today, with the help of Alan reflecting on the meaning of life as he learned in captivity, I got to re-live some of my own smaller trials. And I, just like him, feel lucky to be alive and so happy to be here.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
The House
It was an unusually cold weekend in April 2005, with weather deciding between the snow and rain. Clouds were thick over Toronto, not your perfect day for shopping. Especially not for shopping for a house!
We found ourselves driving through the desolate area north east of town, where we haven't been before. Lately, we spent many weekends driving around and looking for the house sales centers, more to check the model houses than from the real interest in buying. As usually we were in different moods: Margaret loved touring sales centers and their model homes. She didn't mind sales people's endless pestering about everything in our lives that could make them "help" us choose the right model for our "future home". Nor did she mind their disapproving looks when we rushed by, to yet another series of overpriced model houses.
I, on the other hand, hated having to fend off the pesky sales people, taking off the shoes and wandering barefoot through the houses we can't afford, furnished and decorated with arguable lack of good taste. I expected nothing different on that miserable Saturday, when we rushed into a sales centre to hide from the wind and snow mixed with rain. The centre was just open, they had no model houses to show, all there was to see were designers' drawings, floor plans and a model of the neighborhood. Not in a hurry to return to the weather elements outside, we, for change, paid attention to the salesperson introducing the community plans on the model. It was a promising plan with parks and walking paths, forest, playgrounds, and more. We allowed the salesman to lure us inside to check the house models posters hanging around the centre and the strangest thing happened! We found a house, or rather, we found a picture of a house we'd really like to have. Conveniently, there was a mortgage specialist on site, who quickly went through the numbers with me and convinced me we could just make the mortgage requirements. Barely, but still, we could pull it off. And, before we both really realized what happened, Margaret and me were sitting in the small office within the sales centre, signing the papers. There was no thinking, re-thinking, re-calculating and all other "re-things" people normally do before tying such a hefty mortgage around their necks. We just closed our eyes and signed. As a colleague would tactfully put it later, we signed our lives away without thinking twice. Funny thing, there was an awe in his voice when he said it.
Then, for almost a year, nothing happened. Our house was supposed to be built by the end of August 2006. We had a brief burst of excitement when, in spring, the construction started in the farm field where our future home was going to be, only to be put down by the explanation: the houses being built were not on our street, but the street behind. Our street was still under remnants of the corn field. Later, we got a letter informing us that the move-in date has been postponed for 4 months. Although we were told that was going to happen by everyone who ever bought a new house, it still deflated our enthusiasm greatly. In the meantime the model houses were built and we visited them often, dreaming aloud about furnishing our own house soon. Finally, a row of holes was dug along what was to become our street. I never thought a hole in the ground would make me so happy, but this particular one became the basement of our home. We spied on it every weekend from the upper level of one of the model houses, until there was another row of houses built in between, obscuring the view. We drove by several times and were always sent away by the security on site. It was becoming really difficult to check the progress of our own house, for which we already paid 10% deposit. There was nothing to do but wait.
It seemed that everyone else involved in our house-buying waited until the very last moment, too. The mortgage broker wasn't returning our calls until two weeks before the closing date. Then, finally, everything happened at once, overwhelming us in a flurry of activities: the mortgage papers were signed, the lawyer engaged, the house inspection date set, etc. Late in December, the builder rushed to finalize the deal before the year's end. On December 29th, the last workday in 2006, we found ourselves waiting in front of the lawyers office to close the deal. Two hours later, with no sign of the lawyer, we started going through the emergency scenario we didn't really have. Our apartment was cancelled, we had no place to stay and nowhere to go. The lawyer's assistant recognized that we are both quickly reaching the heart-attack point and finally tracked him down. Alas, he forgot about the appointment and decided to start the New Years holidays a day earlier! Cornered and ashamed, he showed up in 15 minutes. We moved into the house in the afternoon.
We found ourselves driving through the desolate area north east of town, where we haven't been before. Lately, we spent many weekends driving around and looking for the house sales centers, more to check the model houses than from the real interest in buying. As usually we were in different moods: Margaret loved touring sales centers and their model homes. She didn't mind sales people's endless pestering about everything in our lives that could make them "help" us choose the right model for our "future home". Nor did she mind their disapproving looks when we rushed by, to yet another series of overpriced model houses.
I, on the other hand, hated having to fend off the pesky sales people, taking off the shoes and wandering barefoot through the houses we can't afford, furnished and decorated with arguable lack of good taste. I expected nothing different on that miserable Saturday, when we rushed into a sales centre to hide from the wind and snow mixed with rain. The centre was just open, they had no model houses to show, all there was to see were designers' drawings, floor plans and a model of the neighborhood. Not in a hurry to return to the weather elements outside, we, for change, paid attention to the salesperson introducing the community plans on the model. It was a promising plan with parks and walking paths, forest, playgrounds, and more. We allowed the salesman to lure us inside to check the house models posters hanging around the centre and the strangest thing happened! We found a house, or rather, we found a picture of a house we'd really like to have. Conveniently, there was a mortgage specialist on site, who quickly went through the numbers with me and convinced me we could just make the mortgage requirements. Barely, but still, we could pull it off. And, before we both really realized what happened, Margaret and me were sitting in the small office within the sales centre, signing the papers. There was no thinking, re-thinking, re-calculating and all other "re-things" people normally do before tying such a hefty mortgage around their necks. We just closed our eyes and signed. As a colleague would tactfully put it later, we signed our lives away without thinking twice. Funny thing, there was an awe in his voice when he said it.
Then, for almost a year, nothing happened. Our house was supposed to be built by the end of August 2006. We had a brief burst of excitement when, in spring, the construction started in the farm field where our future home was going to be, only to be put down by the explanation: the houses being built were not on our street, but the street behind. Our street was still under remnants of the corn field. Later, we got a letter informing us that the move-in date has been postponed for 4 months. Although we were told that was going to happen by everyone who ever bought a new house, it still deflated our enthusiasm greatly. In the meantime the model houses were built and we visited them often, dreaming aloud about furnishing our own house soon. Finally, a row of holes was dug along what was to become our street. I never thought a hole in the ground would make me so happy, but this particular one became the basement of our home. We spied on it every weekend from the upper level of one of the model houses, until there was another row of houses built in between, obscuring the view. We drove by several times and were always sent away by the security on site. It was becoming really difficult to check the progress of our own house, for which we already paid 10% deposit. There was nothing to do but wait.
It seemed that everyone else involved in our house-buying waited until the very last moment, too. The mortgage broker wasn't returning our calls until two weeks before the closing date. Then, finally, everything happened at once, overwhelming us in a flurry of activities: the mortgage papers were signed, the lawyer engaged, the house inspection date set, etc. Late in December, the builder rushed to finalize the deal before the year's end. On December 29th, the last workday in 2006, we found ourselves waiting in front of the lawyers office to close the deal. Two hours later, with no sign of the lawyer, we started going through the emergency scenario we didn't really have. Our apartment was cancelled, we had no place to stay and nowhere to go. The lawyer's assistant recognized that we are both quickly reaching the heart-attack point and finally tracked him down. Alas, he forgot about the appointment and decided to start the New Years holidays a day earlier! Cornered and ashamed, he showed up in 15 minutes. We moved into the house in the afternoon.
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