Dining with al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East by Pope Hugh

Author:Pope, Hugh [Pope, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780312383138
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Elegant officials from the Wau government were our frequent visitors, to hear news of our negotiations with the SPLA, to enjoy some educated company, and to escape from the population’s incessant demands for food.

“A journalist, hmm?” commented one with grim satisfaction. “Well, at least you can now live out your story, not hear it from other people.”

In fact, I felt useless, a journalist without an outlet, yet knowing nothing else but to go out each day to pursue my trade, interviewing people, seeing things, trying to find ways to get the story out.

The ICRC allowed me to send one article out by the radio-telex that told the world about Wau’s hunger, life in our town under siege, and what had happened to the aborted aid effort. Thereafter their Swiss standards of neutrality kicked in and I was on my own. I scouted around town looking for alternatives. I discovered the Sudan News Agency, which occupied a few concrete huts in a corner of Governor Akol’s government compound. Luckily, a couple of men were there, with a radio. And a Morse code key.

A message made it through to Khartoum, care of the Acropole Hotel. The radio man carefully wrote out the acknowledgment that it had arrived. I was amazed.

“Can I send a whole story?”

“Sure,” the man agreed with a warm smile. “But we have no fuel for our generator.”

The next day I gave Manolis $15 for a half barrel of diesel and even handed over my last half packet of biscuits to the emaciated operator. He began beep-beeping away. Soon he plugged in earphones, but little did he know how familiar the strained expression on his face was to me. I had messed about with ham radio as a Royal Air Force cadet, spending long afternoons trying to talk to other school cadets on a valve transmitter salvaged from a First World War British battleship. Like the Wau machine, it often looked as if it was working, but it hardly ever really did. Still, at a painfully slow and imprecise rate, he virtuously dot-dashed my whole piece into the ether. As far as I know, my story duly disappeared off the face of the earth.

I had more luck later. I had been holed up in Wau for five weeks when my employers sent Cairo bureau chief John Rogers to Khartoum. I suggested in an ICRC message that he call me on the Nile Safaris radio. Manolis, however, insisted that anything we talked about should be cleared by the authorities. I went to see Governor Akol to seek his permission. When he read the first draft of my dispatch, he began with some old-fashioned editing.

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