Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [152]
He was now free, and I mounted my attack. The path to him was straight and clear, obstructed only by the remains of the first course and Blair’s press secretary, Alistair Campbell, a former popular columnist of one of the London newspapers. Alistair, however, was eating his fish, and everything was in place.
The response of the Prime Minister of Great Britain to my inquiry regarding the nature of his affection for Putin was brief but comprehensive. He replied, “It’s my job as Prime Minister to like Mr Putin.” And that was that. What more was to be said? The chef’s job is to cook the fish; the doctor’s job is to remove an appendix; the job of one head of state is to demonstrate how much he likes another head of state. It’s as simple as that.
At 14.10 speeches by members of the Press Club began and continued until 14.45. Blair listened politely. At 14.50 he quietly left, as had been previously announced in the program. There were no standing ovations or elaborate farewells. It was all very understated and British.
At this point dessert was brought in: tea or coffee and a piece of chocolate praline gâteau with coffee-flavoured custard. The Prime Minister was leaving but turned to the tables one last time. He glanced sadly at the unattainable plates of gâteau which the waiters, seemingly oblivious to the head of their government, were carrying past.
Everybody has a job to do, and nobody should try to stop them. That really is the British attitude. If a waiter is bringing diners their gâteau you get out of his way, even if you are the Prime Minister.
WHO IN EUROPE WILL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR A WAR IN EUROPE?
August 16, 2001
Here we are, almost at the furthest end of the Old World. A very high bank over a brooding black Norwegian fjord, and a small township climbing up this fjord cliff. It is small, self-contained, wonderful, and feels rather carefree. It is called Molde. Molde does not trifle with lakes or seas; what dominates here is the mighty Atlantic Ocean itself. You could get in a boat and sail to America – the whole world is on your doorstep. Within the borders of Russia few people are aware of the existence of Molde.
Molde, however, is not entirely what it seems. There are people in this town whose whole lives were turned upside down by all that has been going on in Russia.
High above the fjord is the town cemetery, a neat, quiet, sorrowful place, and as unnerving as any cemetery where life meets death irrevocably, leaving only a gravestone in place of a once living, rebellious human soul. I heap red roses on the earth around a severe, grey Scandinavian stone which, at the cemetery’s very highest point, looks out towards the ocean. Facing the infinity of the Atlantic, the words chiselled into the stone read, “Død Tsjetsjenia. 17.12.1996.”
That means, “Died in Chechnya.” Ingeborg Foss, a 42-year-old Norwegian nurse who lived in Molde and left this quiet Atlantic coastal town on December 4, 1996, died together with five nurses and doctors, three of whom were Norwegian, in the Chechen village of Starye Atagi on December 17. She was ten days into her Red Cross mission, working in a hospital which had been set up there.
“Ingeborg rang me twice from Chechnya,” Sigrid Foss, Ingeborg’s 82-year-old mother tells me. “She said it was very frightening.”
“Did you ask her to come home? Did you try to persuade her? Did you insist, as a mother?”
“No,” Sigrid replies. “It was her destiny.”
Brief, to the point, betraying no sense of hurt, but what a scree of emotion there is in the heart of this woman, her face incised with wrinkles. Love of her daughter, grief at her passing, but also pride that Ingeborg proved so reckless for the sake of people she did not know but who were nevertheless ill. And, of course, the pain of irredeemable loss.
Long before Chechnya, Ingeborg had dedicated herself to working