For Hoda Abdel-Hamid, who’s been in and out of Iraq for around 10 years, normality means indulging in small pleasures, such as smuggled Parma ham and Parmesan cheese, and having a pampering session when the gunfire is over: ‘I take face-masks, and even boys enjoy having them. We had parties in the war zone where I was doing facial scrubs and facials for big burly cameramen.’
The American Psychiatric Association defines trauma as the impact of ‘direct personal experience or the witnessing of an event involving actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to a person’s physical integrity; or learning about unexpected or violent death, serious harm, or threat of death or injury experienced by a family member or close associate’.
I arrived back in the UK on Bonfire Night and found the fireworks overwhelming. I sat under my table, telling myself how stupid I was being, but I had to stay there until the bangs stopped at three in the morning.
For years I couldn’t smell pork without thinking of the burnt bodies I had been sent to check every day in the morgue.
The week after I left Iraq my housekeeper was kidnapped by armed men who raided the house. It was my fault. I had known it was coming. A week before I left I had hailed a taxi as usual to get home, but before I could begin to pigeon my way through the directions, he said he already knew where I lived. He then told me how much he hated the British and that he supported the attack made on the army earlier that day. He had friends who didn’t like me either. Despite this hostility – and despite having a loving family and boyfriend back in England – all I wanted to do was go back to Iraq. I resented people at home for making me feel so guilty. I felt trapped in London.
Mine were pretty everyday experiences. But it took me years to admit them.
Others never really leave the war zone or disaster – it follows them for years, or becomes the only place they feel comfortable.
/COPING STARTS BEFORE YOU GO
Think about what you are about to do and calculate all the risks. Involve your family and friends in those thought processes and decisions. Know why you are going. As Dr Carl Hallam says: ‘War zones are terrifying. Bullets flying everywhere. Try to think about that – what it might be like – before you go. It will help you prepare your emotions.’
For those you leave at home it’s difficult too. Their imagination is going wild. They aren’t sleeping. They need your support as much as you need theirs.
• Make sure your friends and family know what you are doing and what you will be experiencing.
• Make sure you know how to contact them and they know how to contact you.
• Make sure the person who will be looking out for you in the war zone has their details and vice versa.
• Try to give them an end date – something to look forward to. But make sure it is realistic and doesn’t keep shifting.
Mothers, fathers, lovers and friends will be torn between wanting to be supportive, understanding why you want to go and feeling hurt and left out.
During my short stint in Iraq my mother, Vicki, was in touch with another Vicki, the mother of one of my friends out there, Sebastian Walker. They struck up a Dear Vicki, Love Vicki e-mail relationship that helped fill in the blanks when Seb and I weren’t able or willing to talk about things. I know it helped my family to hear about others in the same confusing place. My mother didn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time for all six months that I was away. But she didn’t tell me that until about four years later. Talking to friends and family back home, I know that they are often in the more difficult position. It is hard to know how to get it right, how to ‘be the mother of a war correspondent’. Seb’s mother, Vicki Woods, explains her own struggle:
‘My son had been at the Evening Standard for a year or so when he rang me from their offices on a May afternoon in 2003. “Turn on BBC2 now. Now!” We both watched George W. Bush give his swaggering speech – “Mission accomplished” – on our separate tellies, and when he’d finished I said this thing was not accomplished at all. My son said, “No. It’s still the biggest story of my generation and I’ve got to get out there.” I did not demur. Nor did his father. This is a journalists’ household; it’s how we make our living. If I’d been 25 in May 2003, I’d have wanted to write the biggest story of my generation too. Neither of us ever said, “Don’t go, don’t go, we love you so.”
‘When he made contact with a couple of “young British entrepreneurs” who were setting up an English-language newspaper in Baghdad [the Baghdad Bulletin], we were very admiring that he quit his job immediately. Girls were going out there to join it, for heaven’s sake. The author of this book was one of them, and much younger than Sebastian. When people said, “Iraq? Are you nuts?” we said bracing things like, “Well, at least the shooting war is over,” or “Well, that new guy Bremer is making the right noises about the reconstruction.” How insane that sounds now. Not only did I not demur, I cheered him on, almost to the extent where his father could have legitimately blamed me for the rest of our lives if he’d been killed. I just didn’t think he could be killed. I didn’t think he’d be in danger. I just thought he’d be hot, hungry, dusty, uncomfortable, driven mad by electricity shortages, erratic transport and iffy communications, and asking himself whether he should have stayed in the high cappuccino country of Kensington High Street.
‘We bought things that would be usefuclass="underline" Tubigrip, rehydration salts, water purification tablets. I kept issuing reminders: “Don’t forget paracetamol, toothpaste, batteries.” I wondered fleetingly if he should take a couple of pints of his own blood. My daughter grew very sardonic as I rolled socks and packed sunscreen. “Hmm, I wonder if John Simpson’s mummy does his packing for him?”
‘He flew to Amman, Jordan, in late June 2003 and sent a long, chatty e-mail headed “To Baghdad…!” I looked at a map for the first time and thought, bloody hell! That’s a long drive over the desert. I knew there wouldn’t be another e-mail for about 36 hours. When it came, it said: “Am in Baghdad. Am fine. Will e-mail later cos this place is v expensive.”
‘Iraq was the first Internet war. In the Gulf War of 1991 (only 12 years earlier) wives and mothers waited for airmail, not e-mail. Whether that made things harder for them is arguable, I think. The shrunken time-gap between seeing something hideous on the telly news and reading words from one’s loved one in real time is disconcerting. My son’s e-mails were sent from Baghdad’s Internet cafés, which I airily imagined would look a bit like the Greek Internet cafés I’d used on holiday, but fronded by date palms instead of olives. They read exactly like the ones he’d sent from his office: laconic, factual, properly spelt and punctuated, jokey, sometimes sarcastic. “Oops, getting close to curfew, better run,” he’d write. I would think, “Oh bugger, I wanted to tell you what your sister’s doing in Spain.” I didn’t think, “Oh Lord, keep him safe as he slips through nervy streets packed with a) gun-toting teenage American troops, b) Ba’athist bitter-enders and c) Shia militiamen.”
‘Looking back, I don’t understand my blithe Pollyanna-ism. I was skimming enough websites, watching enough news, reading enough online reports to understand what a war zone was, surely? Sometimes his e-mails actually beat the news. In late August of 2003 I didn’t get to my computer until after lunch, having spent the morning at the dentist. His first e-mail (received at 8 a.m., which was midday in Baghdad) was a brief moan about his broken laptop. The second (received at 2.30 p.m., i.e. 6.30 in Baghdad) said, “Don’t worry, I wasn’t at the press conference that was taking place just as the car bomb exploded at the UN building this afternoon…” I pinged back, “Bloody hell, was anybody else, d’you know?” – a response so unspeakably mindless that it makes my armpits prickle. Then I saw the horror on the evening news. Even so, I didn’t know until a year later that his colleagues had thought he was at that press conference. He’d set off in the office car, but was held up. They’d thought he was blown to pieces. That was his point; I might have too. That’s why he e-mailed.