SPEAKING
FREELY Remembering Atwar
Bahjat By Ramzy Baroud
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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A few weeks ago, I
learned that a journalist and colleague had been
kidnapped and then, five days later, released
unharmed with his driver in Baghdad. I was
shocked, then relieved, yet somehow managed to
find some, dare I say, humor in the
not-so-humorous event.
Prior to his Iraqi
trip, my colleague, a young British reporter, had
asked me if he "could use my name" -
Arabic-sounding and all -
as a
reference should he be kidnapped. Despite the fact
I was unsure how my name, little known in the
Iraqi press, would be of any help, I agreed.
I thought that if such a distanced
possibility in fact occurred - where I would
receive a telephone call from the kidnappers - I
could try to persuade them in Arabic that this
journalist doesn't deserve such a fate, no
journalist does, especially those coming to Iraq
truthfully to depict and convey its tragic fate to
the world; I thought, I could appeal to them in
the name of Palestine, being a Palestinian, or, if
nothing else seemed to work, I would offer to be
swapped with the young journalist, being a US
citizen.
I never received that fateful
telephone call, however. My colleague, whose life
seemed nearing its end on more than one occasion
during the five-day ordeal, never communicated my
name to the kidnappers. What good would it have
done anyway? I still wonder. The dark humor in
this, however, is that he apologized, and promised
to "drop my name" in the event of another
kidnapping.
This is what has become of the
fate of journalists in occupied Iraq: readily
victimized by all parties involved, by a
frustrated military trying to hide the facts,
desperate militants, seeking ransom or attention
or both, and shadowy agents of chaos whose only
mission is to fuel the fire and exacerbate the
confusion, using whatever means necessary.
According to Reporters Without Borders, a
total of 82 journalists and media assistants have
been killed since the start of the US war on and
occupation of Iraq in March 2003. Seven of those
were killed this year alone. One of the seven is
Al-Arabiya correspondent Atwar Bahjat, a young
Iraqi journalist and most certainly one of the
best.
Her body, riddled with bullets, was
found along with those of two other Iraqi
journalists - Adnan Khairullah and Khalid Mahmoud
- near Samarra. The three were kidnapped shortly
after Bahjat concluded her last live report,
conveying the drama that followed the insidious
bombing of the revered Askari Shi'ite shrine in
Samarra on February 22.
The daughter of a
Sunni father and a Shi'ite mother, Bahjat
negotiated her way as a journalist and as an Iraqi
to win the respect and the admiration of many.
Throughout her career, however short, she managed
to redefine the role of Arab women in the field of
journalism, introducing a new breed:
unapologetically modest yet utterly courageous.
Rightly, a great deal has been said about
Atwar Bahjat by friends, colleagues and outsiders.
Few dared censure her journalistic integrity,
being pro-Iraq to the core and unabashedly so. But
the ingrained memory I have of Atwar is our
constant battle over chairs in the Al-Jazeera
newsroom. Let me explain.
Before moving to
Al-Arabiya television, Atwar worked for
Al-Jazeera, first as a reporter in Iraq, then as a
newsroom journalist in the station's headquarters
in Doha, after the pro-US Iraqi government's
decision to shut down the station's offices in her
country.
Atwar was clearly unhappy with
that arrangement. Her strength lay in her ability
to convey the overlooked emotions of ordinary
Iraqis, from hospital morgues, to street vendors
to schoolkids and housewives. Something seemed to
be missing in her life.
Before I decided
to leave Al-Jazeera myself last July, I spent a
few months in the station's newsroom. It was there
where my path crossed with Atwar's. One of the few
Al-Jazeera women wearing a headscarf, Atwar's
presence insistently broke the ominous, redundant
routine of the newsroom. Tireless in her pursuit
to locate exclusive interviews, her
distinguishably loud yet warm Iraqi accent always
echoed throughout. "Yes, my dear, my eyes, stay on
the line for a minute, anything for you" - this
was Atwar's trademark; her kindness was indeed
unmatched.
Though we did different jobs, I
managed to pass on to her many press releases,
names and contacts of anti-war American activists
and intellectuals who I felt were underrepresented
in the station's news reporting. Things worked
well, until a chair crisis ensued in Al-Jazeera's
old newsroom, which left her and me battling,
almost daily, over a haggard chair, missing one of
its three wheels. She insisted that it was hers,
and of course I always conceded.
Last time
I saw her was a few days before I left Qatar. She
stood in Al-Jazeera's parking lot as I was
leaving, waiting for a taxi on a rare rainy
afternoon in Doha. She peeked into my car and
exchanged a few endearing words with my children,
who were instantly mesmerized by Atwar's colorful
and chic attire. I try, without avail, to replace
her happy image on that day for the dreadful one -
that of a lifeless body riddled with bullets.
"Whether you are Sunni or Shi'ite, Arab or
Kurd, there is no difference between Iraqis,
united in fear for this nation," she said in her
last report, hours before she was murdered.
Surely, those who wanted to perpetuate this sense
of fear and jeopardize the nation's unity believed
that her voice must be silenced, and it
was.
I don't know what other lesson is to
be learned from her death, aside from the fact
that it's another episode in this senseless war
and occupation. How many other precious lives will
be lost this way before we take a collective moral
stand to declare: Mr President, Mr Prime Minister,
enough is enough.
Ramzy Baroud
teaches mass communication at Curtin University of
Technology and is the author of The Second
Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's
Struggle (forthcoming, Pluto Press, London). He
is also the editor-in-chief of
PalestineChronicle.com.
(Copyright
2006 Ramzy Baroud.)
Speaking Freely
is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
