Emails from the Edge Read Online Free Page A

network no one is there.
Staying still seemed the right thing to do long before it seemed the choiceless fate of a powerless pawn. But I vividly remember the turning points, when an extra weight was dropped on the scales and fleeing became desirable in the exact proportion as the possibility of it receded. One such turning point was a phone call from home about five days after the invasion. Usually, conversation with my parents was a mixture of family news and the odd snippet of Australian politics. This time there was no small talk. Dad informed me that the Victorian Premier, John Cain, had resigned; and handed the phone to Mum, who—understandably but unnervingly—urged me to leave, saying that, from the TV news every night, she could tell how much danger I was in.
To hear from home that things sounded as dire as they looked to others across the sub-editing table rocked my complacency that all would turn out well in the end. My sense of peril was heightened, but I felt able to cope for as long as I could thrive on the adrenaline boost. So long as I could think of myself as a journalist in the midst of an exciting story rather than as an individual caught up in events that could change his life irrevocably, I could hold my worst fears at bay and keep a grip on reality.
The first essential was to remain busy. At work this wasn’t a problem: there was no shortage of news and, with the censors now in-house, long-familiar procedures took twice as long. Outside, keeping my journalistic upper lip stiff, I saw a golden opportunity to maintain my standing with old contacts at Reuters and the Observer in London when I heard that the first survivors of the Kuwaiti invasion had made it overland to Bahrain and taken shelter in the Kuwaiti Embassy.
It must have been around 10 August, under a broiling summer sun, that I stood outside the embassy gates, eyeing a wary guard until the moment came when, taking refuge in close-packed numbers, I could enter the embassy reception room without arousing suspicions. At this of all times, you might be wondering how I could gain entry to such a sensitive area without being noticed by the guard and turned back. That was easy enough: I had taken care to dress myself in a traditional Kuwaiti outfit: red-and-white check kaffiyeh and snow-white dishdasha so that, in the confusion of milling Kuwaitis at the gates, desperate to meet their fellow nationals and, at least in some cases, missing relatives, all I had to do was keep my mouth shut.
Clutching my notebook and pen in the folds of the garment, I passed into a large, airy room where I saw three dozen or so Kuwaiti men—I noticed no women or children there—huddled together, conversing in agitated whispers. Seating myself at the end of a bench, I turned to the dignified gentleman on my right, asked whether he spoke English and, on receiving a nod, introduced myself as someone who could tell the world of his and others’ reaction to the invasion of their homeland. Tentatively at first, and then like an unstoppable wave, word spread of my role. Admiring the effectiveness of my disguise, and still seeking an outlet for horribly pent-up emotions, the world’s richest refugees spilled their stories with increasing lack of restraint, until in the end the only inhibition that clung to some was an unwillingness to let their names be quoted. With this I could not quibble: several told me their families remained behind, in houses where anonymity would be all that stood between them and murder by a troop of Iraqi soldiers.
The attitude of the Observer backbench when I filed the story the following Sunday showed how happy my sub-editing colleagues from the previous winter were with my feat. But, if they were happy, my superiors back at the News were incensed. Four months earlier I had clutched at a straw in the desert wind; now, the acting editor told me, this was the last straw. I was sacked.
This was not the only time I have been