Kidnapping
It was clear that Kamal had been kidnapped from near the post office in Al-Mansour.
He had gone to the engineers’ office near the post office. The office manager there said that Kamal had stayed for five minutes, and left without drinking his coffee.
The worker standing near the door said that he’d seen hooded men get out of a black minivan holding revolvers with silencers. Another person standing nearby had additional firepower.
Kamal Medhat went inside the post office and straight to the restroom. He left in a hurry and then went through the door next to the service office. From there he moved to a neglected part of the post office, walking through the back corridors and then to a hall at the back.
Did he sense that he was being pursued? Did he get the feeling that nobody would be able to help him?
Did he anticipate who those men were?
What is clear is that the armed gang wreaked havoc in their pursuit of him. A number of explosions destroyed the back area of the post office.
But Kamal Medhat continued walking through the wreckage and climbed to the telephone centre on the second floor. He opened a side door in order to go down the outside staircase. But he turned back as soon as he saw one of the masked men standing by the stairs. So he climbed down an internal staircase and from a back door he ran, with his feet aching, jumping over a garden fence, hoping to escape through an adjacent house. Three shots were fired at him, holding him up.
He reached a four-storey building, went in and headed to the lift. He decided to climb the stairs on foot because the lift was taking too long and he heard cars on the street. The moment he reached the second floor, the masked gang arrived with their guns and raced into the building.
He was on the move through a doctor’s clinic and noticed that the men pursuing him had entered the corridor. But then they vanished, probably having gone upstairs. While he was looking out of the window of the clinic, he saw the black cars on the street and the masked men carrying weapons.
He opened the door to the next room. He was worried they might attack him from the other end of the corridor. How could he shake them off and escape? He continued through the offices, but instead of going right and facing the masked men, he turned left towards the solitary office at the far end of the room. He wanted a car to help him get away.
He saw them behind him, so he entered another building. The lift was open, so he got in and went up. The lift door opened on the fourth floor. He looked right and found a flight of stairs. He went up. After the hot pursuit, he found himself on an open, flat roof. Looking down, he saw dozens of people had gathered near a rundown restaurant to watch the chase.
Perhaps he thought of jumping off the roof.
He was eighty. Feeling short of breath, he placed his hand on his heart. He tripped over a wire and almost fell. He was still panting and sat down. They led him down and took him to a freshly watered field that was full of wild bushes, leafy plants and some mature trees. They led him across the vast green area and put him in the back of a car, which sped away.
Information
All the information on this period was obtained from Mustafa Shaker. We met him in a faded building near Al-Saadoun Street about a week after our arrival in Baghdad. What was this meeting like?
I went to Al-Saadoun Street, where Faris was waiting for me in a grey, decaying building. This was a real Babel of languages and dialects, where journalists of all types and from all places co-existed and which they never left. The neighbourhood was completely sealed by concrete walls and guarded at certain points. Inside were laundries, shops and barbers, and bars filled with Americans and Africans. At the entrances of the buildings and on the street corners were soldiers and Filipino workers. Women sat on balconies and clothes were hung on lines that stretched from windowsills and balconies. Faris Hassan’s apartment was smaller than ours in the Green Zone, or so it seemed to me because the tiny living room was filled with clutter, chairs and tables. There was also a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom. Though small, the apartment was full of books and CDs. But it wasn’t really claustrophobic because its windows had a view of the street and allowed Baghdad’s vibrant light to enter. There was also a balcony where journalists could place a table and enjoy supper under Baghdad’s stars.
We shook hands with Mustafa Shaker.
He was considered to be the most important journalist in the Middle East. In his long career, he’d written great reports, managed several newspapers and travelled to more than thirty countries. His language was unbelievably eloquent and he was a gifted conversationalist, although he was often forgetful, sometimes even forgetting the names of his friends.
Mustafa Shaker was a short, stout man who was far from elegant. His feet were tiny and his shoes looked like a child’s, being ridiculously small. He had fuzzy grey hair and in the middle of his bald head were a few spiky tufts. Because he slept little, his eyes always looked tired. He worked like a machine and his movements were rapid. His hair was dishevelled and he shaved only once or twice a week, which gave his face the white stubble of an old man. Whenever he went to clubs, cafés, theatres, cinemas or galleries, as he frequently did, he was either taken for someone who worked there or as a nonentity. It’s impossible to convey how easy writing was for him or his legendary skill in generating ideas and elegant phrases. He was the best journalist I came across in my ‘hoopoe’ job, a description he would often use in reference to journalism and which he borrowed from the story of Prophet Solomon and his hoopoe. Everybody was aware of his talent, but most people ignored him out of jealousy and envy. None of his generation could stand him. As for our generation, we loved him in spite of his many failings, which included his excessive shyness and courtesy, his greed in monopolizing conversations, and his infantile attitude and competitiveness, which often made him coarse or foolish. But all his flaws were forgiven because of his ability to use language so beautifully and elegantly. He had a winning tone and it was great fun to listen to his anecdotes, political memories or journalistic adventures from various places of the world. I was fascinated by this genius with a mischievous personality and spent hours in discussions with him. I realized that he loved devious, evasive talk, a skill I had mastered, so he grew fond of me and whenever we had a business meeting, we’d stay together and chat for a long time.
Mustafa Shaker spent most of his life managing a magazine almost singlehandedly. After the downfall of Saddam’s regime, several newspapers and magazines as well as media institutions had competed for his services, but he wouldn’t accept a permanent position. He moved from one place to another until I saw him at the offices of a new newspaper near Faris’s apartment on Al-Saadoun Street. I was really happy to see him. We embraced and went into his office.
‘How’s the hoopoe work going?’ he asked in reference to my reporting assignments.
Mustafa Shaker talked to me about the general situation in Baghdad. His unusual expressions always amazed me. It was he who provided me with a letter to the forensic physician at the morgue, indicating that the dead man was my father and allowing me to bury him. He also provided us with the name of a person who possessed a complete set of security and intelligence files and who could provide information in return for a fee.