03/28/03

Wake up this morning in Sulaimaniya. Breakfast with Don McCullin. He is 68 going on 20, with such life in his eyes and, as my English colleague remarks, so “well spoken.” Don is deciding what to do. He has a new wife and a new baby and he’s been waiting for the war in the north for the last month and doesn’t know how much longer he can wait.

Sulaimaniya is full of journalists, many of whom have been here for the last two months. I am happy to leave and head for a more remote locale. We drive down a road to Kifri, the furthermost town on the northern front line, an hour and a half from Baghdad on the eastern side near Iran. I have a Bganbegan - a new hi-tech satellite modem pointing out of my front car window. It will allow me to transmit data and images as we drive. I have an antenna on the roof for a Thuraya satellite phone that gives me the capability to make a call anywhere -- like a local call.

Ahead of me, the mountains loom on the horizon. The houses in the villages we pass are stone and cinderblock; the countryside, as we head into spring, is green and lush. We see women in black robes with their heads shrouded and tattoos on their foreheads. Shepherds stand in the countryside tending flocks of future shish-kebab. One senses that there is a war-- there is a vibe is in the air-- but so far there is no concrete sign of a war anywhere I have been. And yet, expectations that the fighting would be over fast seem to be fading. Twelve years of an American-led embargo against Iraq and a sense of national pride in response to the invasion of their country have been catalysts for more resistance than most people imagined. Earlier this afternoon, while we were setting up a videophone to connect to Atlanta, a man approached to show us several pieces of photocopied photographs and text. He wanted us to know the terror that Ansar-Al-Islam, a fundamentalist ancillary group of Al Qaeda, has brought to this corner of the country.

We also heard last night that six suicide bombers tried to enter from the extremist area near Halabja, near Iran, into Kurdistan: three were shot and the other three arrested. American paratroopers landed last night outside of Erbil and took over the airstrip. We drive over a mountain and see ahead of us a majestic vista with a Galapagos-like lake shimmering beneath us. The sun is shining through, the clouds are spring-like and soft. I just want to make some beautiful pictures. I would come back here again - in peacetime - to enjoy making images for myself. I guess I always try to make images for myself that can stir my senses and that remind me of the power and potential of the natural grace that surrounds us.

As we drive, I think about a poem that Pete recited at dinner last night. One verse went something like this:

This is the lore of the Yukon
and ever she makes it plain:
send not your weak and your feeble,
send me your strong and your sane.
Strong for the red rage of battle,
sane for I hurry them sore.
Men who are grit to the core.

We stop beside the road about 30 kilometers Kifri. The Mahmud Ahmed Abdullah family, seventy-four strong, are living in a field by the road, in tents made from sticks and flour sacking. The family members have a common trait: blue and green eyes. The elderly women have black tattoos on their faces, the younger women and girls wear black scarves over their heads. The men wear carefully trimmed, full moustaches, and have well-groomed eyebrows.

The Mahmud Ahmed Abdullahs left Kifri because they were afraid of missile attacks (the front line is two kilometers from there, and one and a half hours from Baghdad). They think the war will last twenty more days. They say the Iraqis are fighting because Saddam hangs insubordinate officers and the soldiers are afraid.

The family is for a free Kurdistan after Saddam. The men explain to me that they welcome the Americans as liberators, but not the Turks. Despite their plight as refugees, we are immediately invited for tea. The dignity of these people is very strong. One of the elders of the clan had worked for an American company and wants to know if he can work for us.

I spend the late afternoon photographing in Kalar, a town 30 kilometers from the front line about one and one half hours from Baghdad. There is an acute state of high energy here. People say many have left the city for fear that Saddam will unleash chemical weapons. And yet, their anxiety about being so close to the front lines is mingled with a sense of anticipation and enthusiasm that the war will ultimately benefit this country and its people, despite the unknowns ahead.

We put up for the night with a Kurdish family, three generations of English teachers: father and mother, their two sons, and their granddaughter. They watch Fox TV and enjoy speaking English with each other. They have an American perspective on their country. The grandfather explains: “For thirty-five years I have not been living comfortably. I have no car, no good life. Here you work your whole life just to survive. We are a rich country with more than twenty thousand oil wells but we don’t get to enjoy any of these riches.”

It is surreal to be watching Fox TV, drinking mint tea and enjoying the warmth and hospitality of this Kurdish family. Everybody crowds around us to eat the dinner laid out on a table cloth on the sitting room carpet.

3/29/03
I wake up this morning to hear that on the American side down in the south, there will be a four to six day pause to re-supply. My guess is that the Americans will also use the hiatus to mount more of a presence here in the north.

Over the last two days, I have transmitted 80 photographs to CNN to use as visuals when we hook up. Pete Hornett, my traveling companion, has been quite awesome in helping to get all of the technical things accomplished to set up these live shots.

Yesterday I did my first live stand-ups for CNN, three in all. I described the situation here in the closest border of the northern front, two kilometers from the Iraqi front lines, 180 kilometers from Baghdad, and near the Iranian border. We spoke about conditions in these border towns, where there is very little work and where people make their living by smuggling petrol and kerosene from Iraq.

I also photographed in the market places of Kifri, the northern front border town. The people there scrutinized me in a different way from other parts of Kurdistan where people are always open and very warm at first contact. Here, we are just north of Al Qaeda group Ansar as-Islam territory -- near Halabja, where Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. I don't know if the looks I got are due to my "exotic" appearance, or whether I symbolize the presence of the Americans -- a thousand paratroopers arrived near here two days ago. Could be there is more tension here, on the border with Iran, with the war looming.

My spirits are good. Yesterday was a full and gratifying day. I felt like I was tapping the many different layers of my sensibility and expression. I attended a funeral near here in the mountains for a man who died of natural causes. The small, beautiful cemetery stirred thoughts of the number of funerals I have photographed around the world. My own sense of mortality at age 47 is setting in and the cemetery and the grieving for lost life took on a strong meaning for me on this day. When the mourners scattered the earth over the coffin, I was once again reminded that, since this is the way that we all must go, I must live every day fully and appreciate my family and friends every second along the way.

03/30/03
Early morning in Kalar, in the small house Pete Hornett and I have rented to cover the eastern side of the northern front. Our team is coming together: Salar, a recent college grad, bright and handsome -- our translator and now "chief live shot engineer"; our driver Sherwen, the elder of the group; our Peshmerga "guards" -- two brothers Dilshad and Hunar, who could both be fashion models in New York or Paris; and our housekeeper, Ahmad, who everyone thinks talks too much. Seated together on the floor around a table cloth, we finish a breakfast of bread roll and jam, eggs, and tea and coffee.

There is beautiful light this morning. It is Sunday and spring is here, the weather having changed overnight. Driving down the roads evokes in me a strange mix of feelings -- as if I were in the Karoo, a vast flat open prairie in South Africa , with the trappings of the mid-east.

Yesterday, we were in Kifri. Coalition forces bombed the front lines there and while we were on the roof of a Peshmerga bunker, two mortar attacks fell a couple hundred meters short of our position. I spent the afternoon in the market place photographing people in the beautiful light -- so many strong, proud faces in this town of little work apart from the smuggling trade.

Late last night, we set up a live shot. We were all jacked up and ready to go: I had Wolf Blitzer talking into my ear phone and I had begun my delivery and was in mid-anecdote when the transmission line went dead and I disappeared off the air. We'll try again this morning.

Now, in a spare moment, I'm reading emails from friends. I am fortunate to have some really caring, wonderful friends who mean so much to me. I will call Charlie later. I spoke to him yesterday: his mom said he is worried and waits for my call everyday. Such a sweetheart.

Later I spend another afternoon in Kifri photographing more people in the market. I ask them to tell me about their lives. There's a widow in black who lost all of her family in a Saddam Hussein mustard gas attack on the town of Anfal in 1988; a soldier who earns $30 a month - he bought his Kalishnikov on the black market for $100; a retired house builder who spends his days playing Tawli, a kind of backgammon; and a man whose five children sell eggs in the market - 30 for $1.50 -- that he smuggles in by donkey from Iran, over the mountains.

On our way home, we see a militia marching in formation. We stop to get the story. They are not Kurds, but Arabs, recruited from the south, members of the Iraqi National Congress financed by the United States. A Canadian guy of Iraqi descent comes out to speak to us. In perfect English, he says that the Americans have completely screwed up so far in this war, particularly due to the fact that the Turks wouldn't let them launch a northern offensive from Turkey. A bit farther down the road, in a remote village off the beaten track, we encounter a houseful of American Special Forces who refuse to talk to us.

I now think this war could go on for some time. A depressing thought. Spring is here: I feel sad not to be able to enjoy the birthing process and the positive energy of life that the new season represents. This war - with its death and destruction, it crushing military hardware -- is the antithesis of spring.

04/01/03
Kifri : Visit the local headquarters of PUK, the Kurdish political party that is popular in this area. After tea and lunch with the commanders, I leave with a brief and an aviation map detailing where the front line is across the north.

We are about an hour from Baghdad, as the crow flies.

Overnight, the weather has changed directly from winter to summer, short-circuiting spring. Pete has bought our guards, the two brothers, new pants and shirts, belts and shoes. Their sweet faces glow with pride. They have been so attentive, trying so hard. I am sure that the shoes that the younger brother chose are too small but he is so proud to have them that he refuses to admit it.

We spend the afternoon visiting a front line position where about a dozen Peshmerga soldiers live in a small mud-packed bunker just outside a village. On a hill about two hundred meters away, the Iraqi Army is poised. We go into the village where previously, some 300 families had lived. Only a few remain. The others have fled to the mountains for fear of a chemical weapon attack. This village is regularly shelled by the Iraqis and the other night, when the coalition forced dropped bombs on the Iraqi positions, the people said that "metal rained from the sky." I will try to tell the story of this village and transmit a set of photographs to CNN.

I am very melancholy today. Don't know if it is the weather, the beginning of April, the fact that my ex-girlfriend's birthday is in two days -- but my heart feels heavy, for the first time in several weeks. When we crossed the river, we lost a laptop computer with some digital photographs I had made in Turkey. Fortunately I had already edited the best material, burned them to CDs, and shipped them back to New York. Nevertheless, we might have lost some original images. Perhaps this thought has temporarily set me back a bit: in twenty two years, I have never lost any original photographs.

I remind myself that we are still alive, breathing, limbs intact. I think about all of the equipment we could have lost- and of course that puts things in perspective. I realize that as so many others, I have been deluded into thinking that this war would be over quickly. Now I figure it could take weeks, maybe months, with many dangerous days ahead. I've been on the road two months - they've gone by fast and yet I feel like I've been away a long time.

04/02/03
After several weeks on the road - ingesting countless shish kebabs and sweet teas - I'm desperate for some exercise, usually a vital part of my day. I go with Pete to a local soccer pitch, a slab of dirt field with craters, and run laps for a half hour. We quickly become the center of attention. I get the kids watching along the field to run with me. I hold hands with one of them as we run, enjoying the moment and wishing (I must admit) he was my son Charlie. Afterwards, we do wind sprints, sit-ups, pull-ups. Then I get all of the kids in a circle and we kick the soccer ball.

In the late morning, we head for Kifri. On the way I say to Pete that even though it's been quiet the last few days, we should be careful about getting sucked into a false sense of security. Minutes later we encounter carloads of people racing out of town: during the night and early morning, coalition forces had bombed the "castle" where the Iraqi army has its front line position. The castle, only 200 meters from town, took a direct hit, so the Iraqis retaliated by lobbing mortars into Kifri, killing at least three and injuring many others. This is the same town where I had been walking among the townsfolk in the marketplace.

I make calls to Atlanta and go live with the news. It makes me anxious to have the ear-piece that connects me with the anchor go in and out of sound as I'm standing there waiting to respond to them after they set me up on air.

After the broadcast, we race into town and are directed to the home of a young school teacher who had been killed.

We come upon a very dramatic scene. The men, in Muslim tradition, are behind a curtain in the back yard washing the body and preparing it to be wrapped in a white sheet for immediate burial. On the other side of the yard, three generations of Kurdish women are wailing in grief, pounding their chests, beating or scratching their faces, and angrily screaming "Saddam Hussein!" as they look skyward.

The body is taken into the house and the men kneel beside it. A wooden coffin is delivered. After the corpse is laid inside it, the family members throw themselves on the casket. Then, as the grieving women wail, it is put into a small truck and driven, in a motorcade, to the cemetery, through what is now a ghost town.

That teacher and his family had awakened this very morning to a new day. In an instant, their family history was changed forever - along with the history of this community. I haven't been amid such suffering and grief for a long time, though what I see around me is all too familiar, an echo of other wars I have covered.

I am accepted into the heart of this most intimate of moments -- why, I can only surmise. There are, perhaps, several reasons: the Kurdish people's awareness of their historical disenfranchisement, and their collective will for their plight to be recognized and addressed. I feel the sharpness of their need to shout out their despair and to share this universal moment of mourning with others who understand their grief. Perhaps, too, they recognize the camera as a tool to memorialize the life of the person who has just passed. Finally, there is a sense of kinship we all feel because we are exposed to the same risk of random death. I feel privileged to have such access to this moment. I can only hope that my pictures do their small bit to arouse people everywhere to recognize and affirm life and to find a resolution to conflict.

Lofty ideals, perhaps, in the face of one family's tragedy, mixed with my heart-felt commitment to preserve their dignity. At times like these, I feel conflicted: moved by the unbelievable, almost theatrical beauty of what I am witnessing, chilled by the reality that the slain teacher could have been me or a member of my family. I have a heightened awareness of the value of our precious and ephemeral lives. In one moment we share in the banalities of everyday life, in the next moment we are gone.

On another level, though, I am thinking of this as my work, and that I am grateful to be working with my colleague Pete. We have really good chemistry - temperamentally, we complement each other. He is very focused and calm in the midst of chaos -- just as I have been trained to be over the years. Or perhaps those qualities come naturally to me.

What I am learning about myself this time, out here, is that I possess a good measure of stamina: I realize I can bank on myself. And yet, I can be thrown by other things-- like this morning's email from my ex-girlfriend, who haunts my thoughts. It was a simple line saying she hoped I was okay and that I would come home safely. It is her birthday today. I miss her a lot and I am pained by the loss of our friendship and our dreams together.

I get to bed at about 4 a.m., still running on adrenaline after a physically and emotionally draining day. And I had spoken with my mom. She said she is more worried this time than ever before, with both twin sons in the theatre of war. It upsets me to be the cause of her concern.

In the morning I get up and go for a run. While I am here, the best way I know of to cope is to be a responsible part of my small team and of CNN's effort to cover this war. I am also responsible to myself -- to do my work in my way.

04/04/03
After circling around Kifri for days, Pete, Salar, Dilshad, and I roll through the town marketplace. The Iraqis have finally retreated from their front line position just outside of the town. They'd been lobbing shells into Kifri for the last 72 hours.

As we drive through town, people peer into the windows of our car and wave and smile big smiles. They act as if we have liberated their city, or so I surmise from the sentiments they are expressing. Or maybe they are simply projecting their happy recognition of us as Americans, whom they appreciate for bombing the Iraqi front line.

We stop for a cup of tea. A man with a huge, very touching smile suddenly walks over and kisses me on the cheek. He looks at me and makes hand motions to represent an exploding bomb, and then he points at me. Then I realize what he's trying to say. Everyone in town who got to know me while I was photographing in the marketplace knew that a cameraman had been killed the day before. They had assumed that I was that cameraman - and they are happy to see me alive.

Three more men come over and give me sacks of fruit and vegetables and a kiss apiece. The tea shop owner won't allow us to pay the bill. I am as touched by their reception as I am saddened by the death of a BBC cameraman. We find out later, when we visit the castle that the Iraqis had held, that he had driven off the road into the middle of a nearby mine field.

We spend the rest of the day exploring the castle and an old police station, both overrun, now, with Kurdish Peshmergas. We watch these fighters gleefully burn an Iraqi flag, tear a poster of Saddam Hussein to shreds. The Peshmergas find log books with the names and birth places of the Iraqi troops who had occupied these positions. They also find craters from the American bombing of these positions.

The war definitely is gaining momentum. We hear that the Americans are about to enter Baghdad and that troops will finally be allowed to travel through Turkey into Northern Iraq. I have a feeling the coming days will go quickly and will bring rapid changes in the war.

04/06/03
Pete, my colleague, calls his mom today. I hear him on the phone saying: "Well mom, I haven't seen all of these glamorous reporters you are talking about where I am. This is the mother of all sexual deserts."

Yesterday morning, I wanted to get some news so I asked the man who has been bringing us food if I could visit his family to watch TV. When we got to his house, his nine-year-old sister Avin, who knew I had a son her age, wondered if I had spoken to him. She left for a moment, then returned with a red rose, which she gave to me.

Sitting on the terrace of their home, looking out on the quiet and lazy town, feeling the warm air, I stared for a while at that rose. It was as if I had never see a rose before. I examined the aesthetics of the flower, the petals, the color, the pistils in the center. All aroused my interest and appreciation for the beauty of a growing thing, the beauty of our natural world, in sharp contrast to the destruction and pain that I have been witnessing in this war. It was a quiet, simple moment of respite and contemplation, a restorative time out from always trying to keep on top of the "big picture."

Last night, we had a visit from another CNN crew, a good group of itinerant professionals, including Brent Sadler, who are very driven. I was up on the roof of the house where we had done a live shot, trying to feed some footage through a camera and a video phone. The stars were shining and the moon was overhead. Salar, our translator, was there, too. He's a young Kurdish mathematician, very self-contained, dignified, strong, with lots of initiative, and completely low maintenance. We were having a beer when this incredibly smart young man took me by surprise. "David," he said, "I am twenty five years old and I don't know what it will mean to live with freedom. I have no idea. I have never been anywhere outside of four towns in northern Iraq, and that is it."

I suddenly realized that in all the talk about freedom, oppression, and democracy, no one has addressed the fact that this society, for 35 years, has known nothing but one regime. No one has acknowledged that a change of government will bring its own challenges. And nobody even really talks about what "freedom" means -- I have to ask myself about the significance of this concept that we take so much for granted.

******

Today, we visit a group of elderly Kurdish fighters in Kifri. Sitting with them, it occurs to me that this war is going to be over soon. It's a question of days: the Americans have entered Baghdad. Up to now, I have been on guard for all of the unpredictable occurrences of war. Suddenly I feel free to envision getting on with my life, going and staying home, watching children play baseball or kick a soccer ball. I envision the possibility of romancing a girlfriend and doing the things most people do on the weekends.

I ask one of the elderly men what he thinks about the war. He answers: "This military strategy has been so good. They haven't taken out electrical power or bridges. They've tried not to hit civilian areas." Whether this is true, I don't know. But I am overcome with emotion to think that possibly - in the midst of this horrible, destructive, divisive conflict - the cost in human lives had been considered.

I would like to think that this war will make possible a new future for Iraq, a future with a positive direction. Ideally, a democratic Iraq will enable the world to refocus its attention in the mid-east and to create a Palestinian state that isn't at the expense of Israel. Ideally, it will offer us the chance to be less dependant on the oil of the Saudis and their regime -- which I found oppressive in its way when I was there in '91. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the Kurdish people. I have been very impressed by them. Rarely, if ever, have I met a people so gentle, gracious, dignified, and so appealing.

Baghdad will fall any day now. My mind is on my next challenge: getting there, staying safe while making photographs of the changes to the country and its capital. I also look forward to going home soon, to seeing my son Charlie, to sharing life with my family and friends.

I feel emotional tonight. It has been a long week. The tragic death of the BBC cameraman this week really shook me. The following day, the field where he died looked so peaceful. The townspeople had already moved beyond the event, looking forward with excitement to peace and a new way of life. But I remain saddened by the loss of his life. I think about his family, and about the many others in this war whose lives have been changed from one moment to the next. I think about the history of a family and a community changed forever by the random incidents of war.

And I keep thinking back to the rose that Avin gave me yesterday.

I walk into the house, into the room where I sleep along with Ibrahim (the homeowner, Dilshad and Hunar -- our two Kurdish Peshmerga guards, Salar, and Pete.

It is after 1:00 in the morning. Pete and Salar are asleep. Sprawled out on the floor in front of the TV set, with the new satellite dish we acquired yesterday to get news, are Dilshad and Hunar, watching a European X-rated channel. A ménage á trois is happening on screen.

04/07/03
I'm a bit hung over from last night's wine and beer. Drink three Nescafes, and then decide to go over to the local soccer field to run and exercise for an hour.

My entourage of children awaits me. At one point I am doing sit-ups when I hear a cow mooing somewhere. I moo back. Then I start making animal sounds, imitating a sheep, a dog, a rooster, a cat... The twenty or so kids mimic the sounds. It's more fun than I've had in a long time.

When I get to town, Pete and Salar are in a huddle with our whole team: the two guards, Sherwen the driver, and Ahmad, the middleman who is brokering the house deal and who collects $80 a day for the rent, the housekeeping, the laundry, and the food, and his brother Mohammed. There seems to be an uprising: Ahmad talks too much and is getting on everyone's nerves, our crew hates the food, and Ibrahim, the owner of the house - who actually is doing all the work- is getting a very small cut.

Pete, in his direct and funny way, is mediating. Apparently Ahmad and Mohammed want to raise the rent because of a fall in the value of the dollar. Mohammed quickly adds that the electricity is costing Ibrahim quite a bit. Pete's happy to hear this - it plays into a strategy he's been working. Now it's on the table that Ibrahim deserves more money.

Mohammed hems and haws and comes up with the figure of $90 a day for his mother's exquisite cuisine, washing, being our "fixer," finding a car to replace ours, which is out of commission. Pete happily agrees. Everybody is pleased. Then Pete plays his trump card: the conditions are that Ibrahim will be paid his fair due, which means less for Ahmad and Mohammed in the end.

The upshot is Ahmad quits, Mohammed storms off, and Ibrahim takes over for $20 less than what Ahmad's been getting. There are smiles all around. Sherwen exclaims: "Our minds are at rest - we are released from the chatterbox Ahmad!" Pete retorts: "He is probably a really nice bloke, but he isn't going to be on my Christmas list. And I suppose at three in the morning a hand grenade will be lobbed over the house wall."

Later today we are downloading photographs from my computer when John Simpson from the BBC reports on TV that a large convoy -- including himself and a large contingent of Peshmergas -- had taken control of two Iraqi tanks moving along the front lines. The convoy was then spotted by an American airplane that dropped two bombs and killed 18 people, among them a translator for the BBC and American Special Forces soldiers. Forty people were wounded - one of them the brother of the Kurdish leader Barsani. Pete remarks: "It is a further shock wave about the dangers of friendly fire."

I spend the day figuring out how to record and download and transmit a sound track through my computer and send it back to Atlanta. I get frustrated trying to learn the minutiae of using a computer. It's time-consuming and often I feel so inept as I try to accomplish a simple task. I finally succeed, after an hour on the phone with a techie in Atlanta. Pete cheers me up: "It hasn't been a big day photographically but it has been an important day. We are all a lot happier, the food is better, we have a visit from another CNN team -- and we have survived another day of coalition bombing!"

I am also amused by the story of the British Helicopter pilot. American ground troops mistook him for the enemy and fired on him using surface-to-air missiles. They missed the target and the British helicopter pilot landed and strode over to them with his white scarf blowing in the wind. He asked them if they had ever seen an Iraqi helicopter, and then got back into his aircraft and flew off. To miss your target, then to find out your target was friendly, and then to be told off by your target, would dwell on my mind for months! The story is typical Brit.

This morning I go to the market and ask a tailor to make some shirts for me and a little Kurdish costume for my son Charlie, like the one that the men wear here. I choose a beautiful material and find a boy his size for the fitting.

04/08/03
All day yesterday, I was learning how to transmit footage to Atlanta with Final Cut Pro. Even though I have spent my career making strong photographs, there's a whole other time span ahead that requires the same commitment to mastering the new photographic and film editing technology. As long as I keep reminding myself to break the learning process down into small steps, I can manage. Still, I experience moments of frustration and intimidation. At those times, I feel quite inept, something that I have to fight against. I know that having access to these tools is empowering and will give my expression and voice more reach.

Back in Kifri today. Coalition forces report they have found "Chemical Ali," dead in Basra. We do a standup in the streets with a man who has just returned from Baghdad. He has smuggled in a truck full of rice. Like so many people in this town where there is little work other than smuggling, he's been plying the trade for the last ten years, bringing in kerosene and petrol, at great risk. Several relatives and friends were killed by Iraqi military as they tried to make their way back to the north across Iraqi lines. He tells me that his trip last night was the easiest in the last ten years because there is no longer an Iraqi military at checkpoints in Baghdad.

In a tea shop, I interview the patrons about their reactions to Chemical Ali's death. "We are feasting here today at this news," one man says. "Chemical Ali was responsible for the mustard gas attack on Kurds in 88 when some 5000 people were killed. And there was the Anfal operation in Kurdistan when Chemical Ali tried to 'ethnically cleanse' Kurds from this region. Thousands of men were taken from their homes and have never reappeared."

After a moment he adds: "We are so excited that our freedom is coming now soon - that we can live in a democratic Iraq."

American troops are in Baghdad. The Iraqi minister comes on TV to announce that Iraq is defending the airport and the city. Seconds later, a Pentagon briefing and CNN show pictures of tanks taking over the Presidential Palace.

News travels slowly to these regions. We stop at a small roadside stand to find no one knows the Americans are in Baghdad. One man suggests that 'the special forces bring in big TV screens and set them up in town squares throughout the country so the people know what is happening."

I enjoyed interviewing the smuggler today in Kifri. I have been doing these kinds of interviews for the last three weeks and it's dawning on me that I can do this pretty well, in fact with some flair. The process is natural for me; I simply exercise the same curiosity and appreciation for contact with people that I practice in every other moment of my life. It's all about facilitating understanding between myself and others and learning to appreciate the flavor of different cultures, of different ways of thinking about things, as well as the similarities.

We get our shirts today from Ibrahim, our housekeeper. Also, Charlie's Kurdish outfit that I had made for him. I will enjoy seeing my son in the Kurdish pants. My friend Robert Weiner, who wrote Live From Baghdad, calls them "dump pants" because as he says "they are baggy enough to take a dump in and no one will know." I am sure that Charlie will appreciate the bathroom humor - and that he'll be enchanted by the idea that his outfit comes from an exotic culture that was part of his daddy's adventure, and now his.

04/10/03
I spent yesterday, once again, trying to manage a computer crisis. I was on the terrace at 4:30 a.m., transmitting footage, when it started to rain. There was a power outage and then a surge and the computer screen went black. Didn't sleep the rest of the night, knowing it would be impossible to transmit my photographs without this computer. There is no way to imagine where in northern Iraq I could get another one.

All morning I've been drying the thing with a hair dryer. It still won't start although the hard drive seems to be intact. I finally reached another CNN producer here in the north who was able to locate a spare laptop with another crew up here. Spent another bunch of hours on the phone with Atlanta getting it configured.

Now it's about 4:30 p.m. Baghdad is falling. Our TV shows American tanks in front of the Palestine Hotel in the center of the capital.

I get a call from Earl Casey and Eason Jordan at CNN. They thank me for my work but say that given what's happening in Baghdad, they are pulling back crews -- including mine. I tell them that in the next 24 hours, I hope to make it to Baghdad if at all possible. Of course, there are lots of ifs.... if the people here in the north know what is happening in the south ... if we can get through the front lines ... if we can avoid friendly fire as we head south. Eason gives me the green light. We agree to speak again on Sunday to assess my next move.

We race out the door to Kifri to see if we can find a way to get to Baghdad.

04/11/03
We made it a little ways past Kifri yesterday. The Peshmergas had taken much territory but the path south was still not open. Lots of excitement in the air, the anticipation of triumphant days to come. But so far, no clear news about the situation at the front line. When we got back to the house, CNN was showing the scene outside the Palestine Hotel. Abrams tanks were arriving and taking charge in the middle of the city. Then we saw the dramatic footage that will become the icon of the fall of Saddam: of the people toppling his statue, dragging the head through the streets of Baghdad.

The mood in our house is charged tonight. Everyone's keyed up: our guards, driver, and translator, all Kurdish, are excited and anxious that today we're heading for Baghdad. Of them, only the driver Sherwen has been in the capital, to work as a taxi driver. There's also a sense of jubilation over the fact that the man who has ruled all their years in this country has just been deposed. At the same time, there's a feeling of melancholy. Everyone knows that soon we will part and go our different ways.

Ibrahim makes a big feast and we sit together, companionably but quietly. After dinner, Hunar and Dilshad put on Kurdish TV which shows people dancing in the streets to Kurdish music. They immediately start dancing and so do I. Sherwen joins us. We dance together, the way Kurdish men do, with our hands in the air, sometimes linking our little fingers.

I am truly overcome with emotion. No matter that three of my companions can't speak English and I can't speak Kurdish. We have learned to speak another language with one another, the language that comes with sharing intense moments of happiness, solitude, fear, sadness, sensuality, respect, jubilation. We have slept in the same rooms, eaten the same food, used the same toilet, suffered the same estrangement from our families. Through it all, we've forged a bond through working together and becoming a team, each of us vital in our different ways.

By nightfall, the celebration in the neighborhood hits a high pitch. There is the banging of tin drums, music, singing, and the sounds of people dancing. We go outside our compound. In the darkness, several hundred meters away, a block party of Kurds has formed to dance together in the street. Drivers honk their horns as they go by. This is a society which generally segregates men and women. Tonight, all come together to hold hands and share the language and joy of dance.

The women, who are usually in the background in this culture, have a clear sense of their strength and power of seduction tonight. Pete, Salar, and I go over to photograph the dancing and are invited to join in. I find myself linking little fingers with a beautiful Kurdish women on one side and a handsome Kurdish man on the other. This moment of dancing and joy is no doubt being shared by Kurds all across the north of Iraq tonight as they celebrate a new future in this country.

This morning, frantically, I try to get my computer to receive emails (I am overwhelmed by how dependant I have become on a computer and by the need to stay in touch by emails with my family and friends. Meanwhile, the team prepares to head for Baghdad.

We get a call at noon that Brent Sadler's crew had already headed south. I go immediately into rush mode: got to hit the road. We install the special racks we've had made for the roof of the car so we can permanently attach our satellite dishes. This way we can transmit live as we drive south.

We finish packing, share a goodbye tea, tie the luggage to the roof of the car and cover it with white canvas on which we've painted TV in large letters. We shove off in a convoy of two vehicles for the south. Salar is with Pete and me in one car; in the other are Sherwen, the driver, and Hunar and Dilshad, our two Peshmerga guards.

We reached the town of Jabara, which only that morning had been liberated. People rush out into the streets to cheer our arrival -- reminds me of Bucharest when Ceaucescu had been deposed in Romania. Down the road we meet a small contingent of American Special Forces and Peshmergas who are moving forward very carefully. We follow them for ten kilometers until they stop in an Arab village. They invite us to visit the house of an important elderly Kurd in the village.

Turns out there's an agenda. The visit to this elderly gentleman is a scouting mission on the part of the Kurds. They want to know if anyone in this predominantly Arab community has a car they can take over and make part of the Kurdish Authority. I think I'm witnessing an emerging system of barter, and apparently the Kurds' capacity for colonizing.

We are told not to go any further south because on the outskirts of the village, there are Iranian mujahideen who haven't yet retreated like the Iraqi army. So we drive back a few kilometers and then make for a parallel, more westerly road that goes to Baghdad. We have about two hours of light left and we want to push all the way. I sit on the top of the roof of our Pajero hanging onto the luggage rack as we race south, taking in the truly beautiful countryside that spreads out in all directions.

As we approach the town of Jalulah - which until this morning had been firmly in the control of the Iraqi Army - we see dozens of armored vehicles and tanks that the Iraqis had just parked on the side of the road. We also see many soldiers and it starts to become difficult to distinguish the Iraqis who have surrendered from the Kurdish Peshmerga who have taken over. Outside of this town of some 500 thousand people, we see men looting refrigerators and every other conceivable booty from the local Iraqi army barracks. The scene is intense. The streets are jammed with people. I do two live standups that put us on the map heading south through uncharted ground - an opening corridor from the north.

At dusk we head south again, but run into another group of men who say there are 300 Iranian mujahideen up the road and that we should wait until tomorrow morning. We return to Jalulah. Sherwen pulls up in front of a kind of villa and he, Pete, and I walk to the front door. An Arab gentleman greets us. We ask if we can sleep in his house for the night. He doesn't hesitate to invite us in and introduces us to three of his children, his wife, and his parents.

We are ushered into a guest room. And then food is prepared and laid out on a table cloth on the floor. A strong, very tall Iraqi man sits near me. Later, I find out he our host's son-in-law, Hillal. I ask him how he feels about Saddam and the current situation. With sadness in his eyes, he says he doesn't want to speak of it. Still, he is gracious to us: the family then proceeds to serve their guests, one an American stranger, a veritable feast, and to then accommodate us with beds and blankets.

The next morning, Hillal is in the foyer praying. He lays out another spread of food for us. I ask if he is a sportsman. He smilingly admits that he had been the goal keeper of the Iraqi National Soccer team. Does he coach children to play? No, he says, he's been involved with other work: "the army." And what did he do in the army? He quietly acknowledges that he had been a colonel in a Republican Guard unit in Baghdad. He and his family had arrived from the capital yesterday.

We converse for the next hour. He wonders if there couldn't have been another way to disarm and to remove Saddam Hussein without bombing and hurting so many people. I agree. I tell Hillal that I have had only two heroes in my life. One was my father, a wonderful husband to my mother for 52 years, a compassionate doctor who charged people only what they could afford, and a tireless fighter for the integration of schools in our corner of Indiana. The other is Nelson Mandela. What I deeply believe the world needs is for its leaders to communicate and to facilitate the consensus of their people in the spirit of Nelson Mandela. We both agree that neither Saddam Hussein nor George Bush is a Nelson Mandela.

Hillal is upset that Americans want Iraq's oil. I believe that, certainly, the multi-national oil companies do. But if there is anything positive to come of this, perhaps the war will lessen the grip that Saudi Arabia, another oppressive regime, has on the world's oil resources. I tell him that in a best-case scenario perhaps his children will be able to participate freely in a democratic society. After a long conversation, to my embarrassment, he thanks me. It is I who owe him thanks, I say, for touching me so deeply with such gracious and generous hospitality that I will never forget. We must now leave for Baghdad.

We are about ten kilometers south of Jalulah. A group of Peshmerga fighters excitedly stop us from going further. They say that Iranian mujahideen are firing from the fields. We pull over and try to sort out what's really going on. Suddenly an army jeep races up with a fighter who has taken three bullets in the abdomen and one in the chest, just missing the heart. Pete, who has extensive medical training, grabs his first-aid kit. We lay the man on the ground. Pete cuts through his bloodied shirt and seals the entry and exit wounds with plastic bandages. We put the man into the back of a truck and he's raced off to the hospital.

I had photographed and filmed Pete as he treated the wounded man. I am now determined to get these images on the air as my tribute to Pete's efforts and to reveal the realities of war.

We hit the road again. The further south we go, the more intense the scene around us. We continuously meet up with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who tell us to turn back because they have been shot at. Then we meet Iraqi Arabs who insist that the Peshmergas are looting everything in sight. But we keep going. I am sitting once again on the roof of the car. The countryside is beautiful, although littered with abandoned tanks.

We pull into to the town of Al Khakis, with me still on the roof of the car. In the other towns we'd driven through, we could quickly get a sense that the tide had turned: the murals of Saddam Hussein had been defaced and the people would cheer us. But in this town the murals of Saddam remain -- and nobody's cheering.

At an intersection men in civilian clothes with Iraqi flags around their shoulders are checking all of the vehicles. Several spot me. No smiles there. They look like hawks with prey in sight. A man about 20 meters away points his AK47 in my direction and, shouting something unintelligible, starts running toward our car. If there ever was a life or death situation, this is it.

I dive into the car, pushing aside the video camera so as not to damage it, and scream to Pete to step on the gas. Salar, in the passenger seat in the front, also dives to the floor. Gunfire starts blasting in our direction as Pete screeches through the intersection. The car is weaving and dodging like a scene in a bad movie, with bullets cracking as they whiz by. Flattened against the floor, I keep thinking any minute now I'm going to feel a bullet come through the door into my legs or my ass.

Pete races the car forward about 300 meters. Up ahead is another checkpoint: a traffic light and men stopping cars. With the gunmen chasing us, Pete makes a sharp right turn and careens down a street directly towards an army barracks where Sadism's figure looms on a huge poster. Seems to me that we're heading straight for a hornet's nest. How can we get out of this? I have the desperate notion that our only option is to ask a family somewhere for refuge. I yell to Pete: " What are you thinking?" Pete yells back: "I think we are in the shit, that's what I'm thinking!"

Somehow, we get back on the main road, having bypassed the traffic light, and find ourselves racing through town, heading south into the countryside. A car is coming up fast behind us. A man shouts out the windoww: we find out that the car with Sherwen our driver, Hunar and Dilshad, our two Peshmerga guards, inside had escaped the angers of Al Khakis by turning off a side road and taking a detour toward the north.

There's no turning back now. But as we move south, we realize that the rest of the route to Baghdad is probably not liberated, and we will probably run into more of the same. We reach another small town, and another roundabout where the traffic is stopped. In an instant, we're encircled by a dozen armed Iraqi men in kaffieyhs. This time, though, I catch someone's eye and he smiles. I motion him to get in the car with us, and he climbs in. To our relief, all the other armed men, deferring to our unknown passenger's authority, escort us through the roundabout and out of town.

I am holding Pete's navigator which indicates we're only 40 minutes from Baghdad. There don't appear to be any more towns in between. I call the international desk at CNN in Atlanta and describe our situation. They're worried: no one else has been south on that road. They have just heard about another crew which was robbed and beaten near Chamchamal - among them is Mitch the New Zealander, my fellow-traveler across the river into Iraq.

We stay in phone contact with Atlanta as we race south. There are masses of vehicles heading in both directions, stacked to the roof with dozens of family members and all their belongings. The closer we get to the capital, the more cars clog the roads. People stare at us - the first westerners to appear on this route -- with suspicion, fear and anger. Smoke from oil fires blackens the horizon. There is an intense afternoon light, an almost monochromatic, ominous charcoal blue sky.

Luminescent highlights glint off the objects and people beneath it. The effect is as if someone has put a huge soft box over the sun. It's a backdrop I've only seen before in pictures from Kuwait in '91. The navigator reads nine minutes to Baghdad. With the city sprawled in front of us, the roads congested and chaotic, I fear that we are driving into another hornet's nest. Then, in a field to my left, I see a huge arsenal of military machinery. It doesn't belong to the Iraqis. It belongs to American Marines. We've hit the perimeter!

We pull over when we see a group of Marines and report where we've come from. They can't believe we've forged our way along that treacherous route. After a few moments to stretch and collect ourselves, we're back on the congested road, heading south. This time we're following a Marine convoy into Baghdad. From my rooftop perch, I look out on scenes of destruction, streams of refugees, oil fires.

The convoy pulls over, but we drive on towards the city center. We find a man who speaks English and ask him to take us to the Hotel Palestine. He hops into the car and we race through burning Baghdad neighborhoods. Massive murals of Saddam Hussein are still plastered everywhere. Baghdadis push shopping carts stuffed with looted goods through the streets to the sound of sporadic machine gun fire in the distance.

Ten minutes later, we pull up in front of the Palestine Hotel - in the same spot where only two days earlier we had watched the statue of Saddam Hussein come crashing down. Welcome to Baghdad. In the lobby, I meet Patrick Robert, a French photographer I've known for years. He calls me Peter, my twin brother's name. This has been a familiar experience over the years- it probably means Peter is already in Baghdad. I locate the CNN crew: Walter Rodgers, Martin Savage, and Christiane Amanapour. It's great to see Christiane again - we first met in '91 in the first Gulf War where we spent days in the Dharan Hotel trying to figure out -- along with Forrest Sawyer -- how to evade the press pool situation of that war.

I move on through the lobby. Ahead of me, I see my twin Peter, wearing a flak jacket, his face tanned, his long blonde hair blonder from days in the sun. There's nothing new in this encounter: it's the characteristic way we've been meeting in war zones for the last twenty years. We hug - feeling the bond and intimacy that springs from knowing another person from the womb on up, through a childhood playing in the fields of Indiana. Images of our shared life flash through my mind as we stand together, staring at one another, in the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

I introduce him to Pete Hornett. Then I check in and my brother goes with me up to my room. I help him transmit his photographs back to the Denver Post. I send my own photographs to CNN, then do a live standup on the hotel roof.

At the end of a long day - a long several days, really -- Pete Hornett and I share some Russian Vodka with my friend Seamus Conlan, one of the sweetest and most generous photographers I have ever met. It's a special evening of swapping stories in a hotel room a few floors away from the spot where, several days earlier, a US tank round killed three journalists.

Back in my room, I discover Salar fast asleep, stretched out naked on one of the beds. Pete Hornett sprawls on a mattress on the floor. I crawl into bed and am out for the count in Baghdad.

04/13/03
Wake up a little the worse for wear, after a day of high adrenaline and a night of downing more vodka that I am accustomed to.

We hit the streets of Baghdad to photograph. I had been here in '91, before and after the first Gulf war, and again in '96. I immediately sense that the mood has changed. After a twelve-year embargo and another war, the Baghdadis seem to be drained of the life force. They no longer exhibit the generosity and curiosity toward a foreigner that I remember. Instead there is a look of real concern in their faces: concern over where to get water or food in a city without electricity, a government or police force. And for now, the only manifestation of "freedom" seems to be the right to loot. I see people gleefully racing out of former government buildings toting cabinets, chairs, light fixtures, you name it. People come up to me constantly with the same message: "Tell George Bush we are waiting: waiting for a new government, food to eat, and a return to order."

A small girl walks by me with two AK 47 ammunition clips. Groups of men exchange bundles of Iraqi dinars for dollars. At the marketplace, there are only meager food supplies: potatoes, tomatoes, a few apples. The water from fire hydrants is used to bathe in and to take back home in buckets to drink.

I transmit the day's photographs and do a live hook up with Wolf Blitzer; a bit later, a live-to-tape piece to accompany my photographs. In the stand-up I report that while the people in Baghdad didn't necessarily support Saddam Hussein, life under his regime was a known quantity. What they seem to fear now is the lack of any sense of what comes next.

04/14/03
Up at 6 a.m. I go to the hotel across the street where my brother Peter is staying. Until yesterday, I hadn't seen him in three months. From conversations with our mother, I know he had a tough time in the south. As a "unilateral" photojournalist, that is, unattached to an American military unit, he found it hard to find places to sleep and food to eat and the work was dangerous.

The electricity is out in Peter's hotel. As I knock on the door to his room, Eric Feferburg, a wonderful French photographer, shows up. Peter lets us in to his gear-filled room. I am struck by the thought of how many stories my brother has covered and how many of his hotel rooms I have visited over the last twenty years. There is a familiarity to the things he travels with and the way he organizes them, creating his own world, his cozy bunker, in the middle of chaotic war zones.

The three of us converse in French. I have read that many twins create their own secret language when they are growing up. Peter and I, though, have always taken pleasure in learning and speaking foreign languages. We particularly enjoy the colloquialisms and argot of French. So now, in that flavorful language, we share our war stories. I can't describe how pleasurable it has always been for me to hear my brother recount his experiences. He speaks with such passion and such a thirst for life --as well as some self-deprecation --as he describes his incredible adventures in vivid detail. This time, in addition to telling great tales, he makes us a good cup of coffee.

Peter and Eric show me their photographs on their computers. It's astonishing how digital photography and computers have changed the experience on the road -- enabling us to see our work while we do it. It's both motivating and rewarding to download a day's work, edit it, and immediately re-experience the intense emotions and sights of the war zone. Our images not only embody the impressions that we need so desperately for other to see, they are also our emotional souvenirs.

My brother asks me if I want to travel and work with him today. I am torn because we haven't worked together in a long time. We both came into photography as teenagers and spent three years with one camera documenting one inner city street together in Fort Wayne. Spending a day together has been a special privilege going back a long time. But this time I refuse. I have been very worried for him during this war - tragic things have happened to so many of our colleagues. Somehow, I feel that our karma on this story will work best if we continue to work separately. My intuition is not to change that dynamic now. And when I am working in the middle of conflict, it's always been my habit to honor my intuition -- that ineffable sensation of some kind of energy that I must stay true to, to keep my guardian angel happy.

Later this morning, I am in the old city doing interviews. Before coming to Baghdad, I imagined that I would see American tanks driving through this part of town. But I see no American troops. I wonder if the old city is not considered a strategic zone for the American military to manage. Then, literally behind my back, American tanks come rolling along the pavement and barrel through this ancient quarter, a roaring convoy of monstrous machines. I spin around -- and make one of the most memorable images from this war for myself. It shows Iraqis- in particular a young Iraqi girl - cheering the arrival of the troops. It's serendipity- one of my favorite words, because it embodies the idea that if you just keep working with concentration and purpose and discipline, interesting things come at you.

Later in the day, with Pete and Salar, I go to one of Saddam's Palaces along the Tigris - the one where he actually lived much of the time. U.S. Marines patrol the perimeter of the kilometer-square compound, keeping journalists out. Nonetheless, they let me in when I flash my CNN credential. Pete and Salar wait in the car. For the first time in weeks I am alone, walking in the bright sunlight through the stunning and immense landscape that was Saddam's backyard, enjoying the solitude and peacefulness in the midst of the chaos of Baghdad.

I pass by a tank; a single American soldier sits on top. We start to talk. He's from Warsaw, Indiana, minutes away from where my mother lives. When I tell him I had played football for Fort Wayne Elmhurst, my high school in Indiana, we really connect. He says he's going home to visit his mom in Indiana as soon as he gets out of Baghdad. Walking on, I think about my mother back home who is constantly thinking of Peter and me over here. I know that she's glued to the news on TV. I cry a little. For some time, I've been yearning to see her in her country home where the only sounds are hummingbirds chirping in the morning. I'm aware of how her time on earth is not infinite and how much I love her and miss her.

I continue my walk to Saddam's "house" -- a gargantuan palace with a huge arched entry way and a colossal gold chandelier. The front steps are thick with the concrete dust that settled after the palace was bombed. I walk through it photographing the remnants of opulence that had been Saddam's daily ambience: sitting rooms with marble floors and walls of inlaid ivory, the size of high school gymnasiums.

Inside, I bump into a petite Roumanian journalist. We swap deposed dictator stories. She describes her tour of Ceaucescu's mansions after the fall of Bucharest in '89. I tell her about being in Ceaucescu's office with the militia who had taken over the Roumanian Presidential Palace in '89, all of us watching his execution on a TV screen.

We walk together through the palace and find Saddam's bedroom, an auditorium-sized room with a marble floor. I stretch out on a luxurious divan next to Saddam's bed and film my colleague doing a standup for her Roumanian television network. In turn, she photographs me lolling on the divan. At that point, I realize I have a serious urge to relieve myself. So voila: into Saddam's bathroom I go and piss in his gold plated toilet, only realizing in mid-stream, as it were, the exquisite irony of the moment.

Back at the hotel, I organize a story for CNN with the day's photographs and some sound bites of an old man I had interviewed in the old city. As I do a live to tape standup on the hotel roof, Christiane Amanapour sits next to me -- she's been up all night doing live shots and has a half-hour before her next one.

After my delivery, we joke around a little. She tells me I have done well - except for using the word "bellowed" when I had meant to say "billowed." I tell her that doing this standup in front of her was only slightly intimidating and that anyway, my mother still corrects her 47-year-old son's grammar. She shows me photographs of her son Darius and talks about getting home to him and her husband. We chat about mutual friends from the time we both lived in Paris and reminisce about how we had originally met --in the first Gulf War in '91. As always, I feel enormous respect and admiration for her strength, professionalism, and intellect.

04/15/03
Today is my last day in Baghdad. It is also my ex-mother-in-law's birthday. It is also the anniversary of my wedding to my ex-wife. A very emotional day for me.

A huge explosion just went off near the hotel. This has become part and parcel of this life: I have learned to put it out of my mind.

It has been a long almost three months on the road. My body is only starting to release the deep tensions that result from being constantly on red alert to what's happening around me and from the relentless concentration it takes to do my work. Not to mention the steep learning curve in the world of television reporting -- a new form of storytelling for me. I'm also unwinding from the strain of sharing a room with two other men for the last month, of being so far from loved ones and friends, and from the pain of witnessing the devastation and disillusionment the war has brought to the lives of so many people.

Last night, in search of a computer cable, I went to Peter's hotel and called his room from downstairs. I was about to make my request when I caught myself and asked him how his day had gone. He told me that he had just experienced what was perhaps the saddest moment of his professional career. He had been at a hospital when a father came in with his beautiful, 11-year old daughter. She had been suffering from pulmonary pneumonia, but her father had been unable to get her to the hospital until then, because of the war. She died in front of them; the doctors tried to resuscitate her, to no avail. Peter said he broke down crying, along with the doctors, his driver, and the child's father. I went to his room to hug him - and be hugged.

****

This morning, around six a.m., I go to the CNN workspace where Christiane has just finished her live shots for the night. We talk for quite a while -- the way we used to several years ago. I'd forgotten what pleasure I get talking with her. Today she tells me how she met her husband whom she obviously adores. We talk about Karin, my ex-wife, who has always been very fond of Christiane (and vice versa), about my son Charlie and her son Darius, about our careers as journalists. She has a strong sense of purpose which I find very appealing.

Our conversation makes me realize how anxious I am about going home -- back to the hustle and bustle of New York, back to puzzling over what to do next in my life as I head into my 48th year. I'm anxious, too, about being a good father to Charlie, and about finding companionship, and about continuing to exercise my professional skills in ways that keep me engaged. This is clearly all too much to sort out today, but I can't stop thinking...

Over the last year, I have been trying to live one day at a time: to get up every morning and point myself in a constructive direction. Perhaps this war zone -- the close calls we have had, the ephemeral quality of life that I have witnessed, along with the many tragedies that are part of the palette of war -- has heightened my sense of mortality and quickened my resolve to live every day as if it were the last.

Working in a war zone provides a photojournalist with a sense of daily purpose. Other people's lives, dreams, and tragedies become so important; they keep everything in perspective. They spur us to underscore in our work the value of life, love, and family. I suppose what I fear most is to return to the banality of a lifestyle that provides all the modern amenities. Living that kind of life, I am at a loss to know how to contribute to this world -- for I am without the convenience of a quantifiable mission of serving others.

But enough reflection. I must embrace this moment with gratitude. Gratitude to Eason Jordan and CNN for having supported my work in the field and given me such a tremendous opportunity to learn and to have a voice. To my family and friends who have been so concerned for me. To my mates, Pete Hornett and Salar, and Jack Van Antwerp, who had worked with me in Syria and Turkey, who have been with me through thick and thin these last three months. Gratitude for the opportunity to see my brother Peter so vibrant and fulfilled in his work, and to renew and deepen my love and respect and friendship for him. And gratitude for the opportunity to share life with so many wonderfully passionate, sensitive photojournalists and journalists, who have given so much of themselves and remained true to their convictions in spite of enormous risks -- and even at the cost of their lives.

David Turnley
Baghdad

Later...

After writing those words, on this, my last night in Iraq and Baghdad, I go down to the hotel "restaurant" for a bite. I say restaurant in quotes because it has no electricity, and usually no food, either. Still, it has become a congregating place for journalists and soldiers who come in to get off the street and spend time in somewhat more peaceful and familiar surroundings.

The restaurant, lit by a gasoline-powered generator, is dim; the décor tattered and dreary. I talk to a young man who works for the Denver Post. I struggle to stay engaged, although I'm bone-weary -- and I'm also thinking about tomorrow, when I plan to leave Baghdad for Kuwait early in the morning.

Suddenly, I'm caught off guard by the sound of a piano. I don't know where that sound is coming from, but I do know that it is not the middle-eastern music I've been hearing for the last three months.

I turn around. A U. S Marine, a young Hispanic man, in his mud- and dirt- stained chocolate chip uniform, helmet, and flak jacket, his machine gun slung over his shoulder, sits in front of a piano. He stares dreamily ahead, his body language slowly changing from that of a stiff-backed soldier to that of a man losing himself in his soul and folding himself into his music. He starts to riff: first something light and tentative; then a little Motown; then, slowly, he's deep into the Blues.

I look around. We're all reacting the same way: people start drifting in to see where the music is coming from. All at once it's a full house, with everyone listening in silence, mesmerized by the rhythms and the spirit of the melodies. The notes sing of life, sadness, and the affirmation to keep moving on; of the spirit of the young man who taps out a soft and swaying and sometimes joyful ballad on a piano in a dark corner of a room in the heart of war-torn Iraq.

Within minutes, the piano is surrounded by soldiers, all with weapons draped over their shoulders: young men, some white, with dirt-smeared faces, some Hispanic, some Asian, some black... all young American men in a far away place, and yet, for a few moments back home... connected by song and the familiar beats of a music their ears and hearts have grown up with.

And then it is over. The young piano player gets up to go. As he passes my table, I thank him for his beautiful music. He tells me he is from South Central Los Angeles. He learned to play the piano in the church where his father is a Baptist minister. He seems surprised and a bit embarrassed by the impact his music has had on the crowd. He responds to my appreciation with a soft "Thank you, sir," puts on his helmet, and turns to go back out into the midnight streets of an uncertain Baghdad.

© David Turnley
dturnley@nyc.rr.com