Home at Last - a reporter's life

I’m starting to get emails from people wondering where I am, so it must be time for my quarterly update.

I’ve arrived back in Santa Fe after one of the more amazing summers of my life. I still haven’t finished my book, but there’s more time for that later. So now I’m replanting myself back at home – at least until springtime when the winds will carry me… well, somewhere else.

This summer and since I’ve returned home I’ve been in contact with several friends I met in Iraq. Some of them have since finished their tours; some are on their way out. All are alive and doing well. I was so happy to get notes and calls and perhaps wasn’t aware of the weight I carried knowing they were still in a dangerous place, while I was able to fly away.

The most exciting updates are about my dear, wonderful Iraqi friends:
First, babe squad member and translator NADEEM finally made it to England!!!! Yes, he and the band are practicing daily and getting used to a Western lifestyle they’ve been dreaming of for years.

HUSSEIN was released from his Iraqi kidnappers after 157 days in captivity. I met him and his family in a Paris suburb where we shared food, stories and tears. He was a shell of his strong, former self. “They beat me and wouldn’t even let me pray,” he said of his captors. “They are not Muslim, they are criminals,” he said. Hussein was fortunate to get amnesty and a job, but he still yearned for Iraq. Sura, my Iraqi sister and Hussein’s wife, was thrilled. “I never want to go back. Never.” The family is doing well in their new western home. Much love to you all.

So now for a little story about life as a journalist.

During my goodbye party on the Pont des Arts on the Seine I got a call from one of my bosses in the US: would I be willing to go directly to Texas, instead of New Mexico, to help report on Hurricane Rita which was destined to come ashore within two days?
Er, suuurre, I’d love to. I spent the rest of the evening and well into the early hours of the morning trying by phone to divert my flight home, but to no avail. I’d try again in the morning, I told myself.
In Chicago I learned the Houston airport had already closed down but managed to cram myself onto a San Antonio flight I’d learned about from a French hand surgeon I sat next to on the flight out of Paris. San Antonio was overwhelmed with evacuees from Houston and at 11 pm I was assured there was nowhere to stay – “not even one of those rooms you rent by the hour,” one woman cackled to me.
My new French friend came to my rescue and, in exchange for my help on the speech he was to give the next day on some obscure surgical procedure, he offered me half his hotel room. I had little choice but to sheepishly agree. Merci, Stephane!

The next day I waited far too long in my San Antonio hotel room, hoping, somehow, to find a means of venturing into the eye of the storm under some military or otherwise protection. But by 1pm with little response and a boss wanting me at the eye of the storm, I knew I had to move. I had the state of Texas to cross to get to Beaumont and a hurricane scheduled to come ashore around midnight. Oh my. I swung up to Austin to get a satellite phone (my French line was dead) and tore across Texas to meet my fate. The freeway to Houston and then the city itself was completely empty. It was abandoned. There was nothing. No gas, no food, no cute coffee stops. As night fell and the winds began picking up in earnest I took a deep breath and followed the signs east for Beaumont. Watching Houston disappear in my rear view mirror, I wondered if this would be one of the worst decisions I ever made, irreversible and soon to be out of my control. We journalists are so stupid sometimes, I said to myself slamming my hand into the steering wheel. We’re so driven by sensationalism – and, ok, adventure. I had joked with my boss that I wasn’t going to strap myself to a tree but suddenly this seemed a close second.

The rains began pouring down and my small Nissan swept from one side of the highway to the other as I raced toward the storm. I looked for any possible spots to take shelter in the event I could not, or would not, go on. Minutes later with my heart racing I pulled my car over and took some deep breaths. I could barely see anything through the windshield and I wondered just how bad this was about to get. By now I couldn’t really turn around because I knew Houston even less than Beaumont and at least in Beaumont I had a hotel room reserved. Then I saw a cop car pass me. Followed by a coast guard truck pulling a rescue boat. Without thinking I pounded the gas and raced after them. I flashed my lights and made the cop pull over. “Are you going to Beaumont?” I screamed through the wind and rain. “Yup.” “Can I follow you? And will you make sure you don’t lose me?” “Sure, lets go.”
Suddenly everything was ok. Even if all three cars were swept up into a tornado I felt better about it, less alone. I hate working alone, I decided that night. It’s really old. So we caravanned into the town of Beaumont, occasionally stopping to wait for the boat that was practically blown off the highway. My Nissan was amazing. Just get me to shelter and I’ll do an advertisement for the company, I said.
Thank God I followed these two. I had no idea where I would have pulled off, my sat phone didn’t work and the wind was getting dangerously strong. They led me to a towering white building and told me to run inside. I staggered through the wind and just barely made it into the shelter --tho didn’t have enough time to get my round of Camembert and the bottle of wine I had been trailing since Paris. It turns out the central information center was where - shock and awe - every other journalist was staying, including several I had met in Baghdad. Ah, the reunion. Did I mention my Camembert was still fermenting in the trunk of my car. Very sad.
After making the rounds and planning the morning attack with the photographer I was to meet up somewhere, somehow, I made myself a bed from a pile of donated clothes for hurricane victims and tried to go to sleep. At 3 am someone was yelling for us to move toward the center of the building. The windows of the supposedly hurricane-proof building were snapping in and shattering onto the ground below. I made my way to the window to see that my car was still in the parking lot – and thankfully it still was, waving in the wind between two big SUVs. It was the best I could do, having missed all the high ground parking spaces.

I met the photographer the next day and we set to work looking for barricaded civilians and stories of rescue. We toured various sites, always aware of the lack of gas, the lack of food and the warnings of danger. He was careful to hide his extra gas tanks: they can be confiscated in the name of a national emergency, he told me ominously.

Hurricane Rita was considered a non-event to most media, despite the fact that entire towns, such as Cameron, LA, were essentially wiped off the map. Still, I pushed, spending my days interviewing survivors, including one amazing couple that had also survived Hurricane Audrey in 1957 (They also put me up and fed me! because there were no hotels. Thank you both). If for no other reason, Rita, like Katrina, was an eye opener of what it feels like to run out of resources in a country that thinks the well will never run dry. It was terrifying. But also a reminder of the kindness of strangers.

Then I made my way to New Orleans where I would take a day to assess the situation before flying home. One month after Katrina – I repeat: 30 days later – I couldn’t believe my eyes. And the smell… That’s what doesn’t come across in photos or on TV. I joined an EMT squad, which joined a humane society caravan, which called on an FBI team, and together we spent our day tearing down doors and breaking windows to save terrified and starving dogs left by their owners to die. We saw the animals by chance – a face peering through a window in an upper level apartment, bark, a neighbor. The animals were then taken to a huge compound overflowing with more than 2500 animals. But I couldn’t go there. It would make me cry – or worse, I’d go home with four dogs.

I drove into the French Quarter, which was eerily like the Green Zone, packed with contractors and soldiers marauding around like gangs, frequenting the few bars and strip joints that had just opened. The Quarter was generally off limits to citizens, even those willing to pay the exorbitant $300 hotel fees (how do you sayyy price gauging?). One of my interviewees said I could stay in an extra condo he had nearby. Being me, I agreed. He led me to a beautiful, furnished apartment, pointed out the TV, washing machine and fluffy linens, then gave me the key and left. This time, in this setting, it was too odd. I was so paranoid, I couldn’t sleep a wink. Good going, Z. The next day I left.

By the time I got on the plane I had already heard the hurricane story was killed. It wasn’t big enough, devastating enough, Katrina-like enough. And plus, Demi Moore had just gotten married.

Speaking of things that make you crazy, there’s one more thing I have to add:

There have been so many people who helped me and Laurent with the Baghdad Project. And there are a few I never sufficiently recognized. It was a stress thing. It happened at one of the Baghdad Project readings. The lights switched on and I began to speak to a crowded auditorium, and suddenly I went blank. I looked at my wonderful friends and volunteer readers for the night and I felt myself getting nervous. Then I was so terrified of forgetting a name – a friend’s name, due to my shameful alzheimers – that I didn’t mention a single one. I regret it to this day. I’m so sorry. And while it’s quite late I want to thank you all now.

Thank you Bill Depuy from KSFR radio, Santa Fe’s independent radio station for your fabulous support and stellar, booming voice. www.ksfr.org

Thank you Jenny and Matt Laessig from El Paradero Bed and Breakfast. Jen is an actress in her own right and one of my long time friends. www.elparadero.com

Thank you Max Friedenberg of High Mayhem Emerging Arts, a not-for-profit emerging arts facility, record label and multimedia production collective based in Santa Fe. www.highmayhem.org

And thanks to Tomas Rivera, a local artist who didn’t even know me but came and participated on short notice because he believed in what I was doing and wanted The Baghdad Project to succeed.

THANK YOU ALL!!