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.
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