The Wolf and the Watchman by Scott C. Johnson

Author:Scott C. Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Norton

CHAPTER 13

Southern Iraq, 2003

In early February of 2003, Newsweek sent me to the Middle East. War with Iraq was brewing. I spent a quick ten days in Baghdad before the bombs began falling, and left when my short-term visa expired. Then I traveled to Kuwait to follow the imminent ground invasion. I found Luc, the photographer with whom I had worked in Afghanistan, living in an abandoned house in the Kuwaiti desert. Luc knew a colonel in the Kuwaiti military who had promised to help us find a way across the border into Iraq. Until he called, we had nothing to do but wait.

The desert in Kuwait seemed such a wasteland. Goose farms near the Iraqi border yielded huge quantities of shit, which gathered along the sides of the roads and in the yard of the house where we were squatting. When the sandstorms blew, so did the shit, smearing the world with its stench. That patch of desert already felt abandoned to the war. There was no question that it would slide in of its own weight; it was just a question of when. The border—the constant pounding of tanks, the hovering helicopters, and the military police patrolling—was a trembling faultline.

A few days after I arrived, the colonel called. A huge convoy of Americans would soon be moving across the border, he said. He suggested we get ready. We arranged a meeting place and time. Luc and I each drove our own trucks, which we had rented in Kuwait City. We needed two to transport our gear, and also to have a backup in case one broke down.

On the appointed day, the colonel led us into the desert. The road quickly petered out and turned into soft, pliable sand that wound toward the west, through reeds and grass. He was following ancient roadways unused by all but a few shepherds. If we got separated, I would have no idea how to get back.

Eventually we arrived at a series of berms and loose fencing. The colonel stopped his car at a place where the fencing had come apart. The remains of a dirt road crossing into Iraq were visible. The colonel stepped up to the barrier and ripped the barbed wire away, tossing it aside with a flourish. He gestured into the void in invitation. “I stop here,” he said, and chuckled. His sunglasses were low on his nose, and he looked over their tops at us. “That is Iraq.”

He told us to follow the road, which ran parallel with the border, for another few miles, until we came to a larger berm and a bigger road. Within the hour, he said, an American convoy would come through there, and we could join it.

“Viens,” Luc said, and before I could even protest, he was through, skidding close to the fence and throwing up swirls of sand.

I could have left, but I didn’t. I could have walked away from him, and the assignment altogether. Instead, I followed him in.

It wasn’t long before we found the berm and the road.

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