Every Man in This Village Is a Liar_ An Education in War - Megan K. Stack [97]
We met in July, when trees sagged with heat and the landscape blurred into a shimmer by noon. The sun had teeth and a hard glare; every blade of grass glowed like a stalk of ice. An Egyptian diplomat had been freed by kidnappers that day, and Atwar would cover the story. By the time I reached the Egyptian embassy in Baghdad, she was inside. Dozens of sweating, jostling, cranky journalists, mostly Arabs looking for a scoop, pressed together in the framed gaze of Hosni Mubarak and the clammy embrace of broken air-conditioning.
Adorned with lipstick, eye shadow, blue head scarf, and huge turquoise ring, Atwar barely grazed a seat before bobbing to her feet again. She laughed from her stomach, looked men in the eye, and dropped whispers in ears.
The diplomat had been freed overnight. He stepped into the room and cameras snapped in a rain of shouted questions.
Who paid for your release? How much?
Do you think Arabs should leave Iraq?
Will this kidnapping be the last?
Was your family aware of what was going on?
Did they threaten to kill you?
A smug smile played on Atwar’s plump baby face.
“Don’t you have a producer?” I asked.
“I’m from Iraq,” she said coolly. “I don’t need a producer for this.”
The press conference was over, and Atwar hadn’t asked a single question. I looked at her, wary. She winked and pulled me into a back room. While the other journalists elbowed for camera positions outside, she had arranged a private interview with the ambassador. She sat with him at leisure, and he answered all of her questions.
Later that night, in the swampy darkness of the Al-Jazeera editing room, we talked about the corrosion of war reporting. I liked Atwar, I realized, and it surprised me a little. I had expected a musty, middle-aged man or a sallow-faced, veiled nationalist. But here was a woman my own age, tugged by ambition and emotion, trying to keep intact. Atwar had never taken a break, and the months were piling up on her. Now she had peeled herself out of her reporting persona and sat there pale and contemplative in the half dark.
“There are a lot of complaints about Al-Jazeera’s reporting,” I said. “The Americans criticize you, and so do the Iraqis. How do you respond?”
“I would like to say one thing.” Her voice was soft. “My generation has been in war ever since we were born. Before this war, we always felt left in the dark. The government would say one thing and we’d see something else. During that time, we got used to that kind of pressure. During this war, it is the same. The Iraqis say one thing, the Americans say something else. Since the war there is more freedom. It’s better since the war.”
Atwar’s job hadn’t come easy. Her bosses didn’t want to send a woman into combat, but she pestered and pleaded, took on the political beat and covered it relentlessly to prove herself. In the end, her bosses relented.
“She was very strong. People in Al-Jazeera always told her, ‘If you ever feel uncomfortable, come back,’” Ali Taleb, Atwar’s cousin and bodyguard, told me after she died. “But she never did.”
Darkness had begun to nudge against her that summer of 2004. She had driven over a roadside bomb on her way to work one day. Her car was ruined, but she stepped out in one piece. She had been arrested and questioned by American soldiers. She had covered combat in the holy city of Najaf, reporting with bullets and mortar rounds flying overhead. A corner of her character had been dipped in blood—its tinge was on her, but she still seemed whole. Glimpses of death had given her a new reverence before God, she said, and had inspired her to adopt the Muslim head scarf.
“When I go to hospitals and see children dying, I fight myself to be objective,” she admitted. “I’ve been affected mentally and psychologically, but if you’re not neutral around here, you can lose your job.”
She couldn’t afford to cry at work, and so she pushed through the hours, drove home, and collapsed in tears.
“I have seen death now.” But she said it lightly, by way of explanation. “I have been touched by it.”
When we said