| inbluevt | Date: Wednesday, 2013/10/09, 5:59 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
|
|
Private
Group: Blocked
Messages: 1024
|
Reporter Paul Conroy was beside the intrepid war correspondent when she was killed inside the Syrian city of Homs. In a new memoir, he recalls Marie’s final days—and their first meeting, years earlier, on Syria’s Iraqi border:
March 18, 2003, Qamishli, Syria The boat seemed ridiculously out of place in the tiny hotel room. I looked at the four large truck inner tubes lying on the floor, lashed together with bits of rope and wood. I'd even added luggage straps for my camera kit (gear). Now, after days spent slaving over it, my home-made raft was finally ready to be deflated and transported to its launch site—the west bank of Syria's Tigris river. The boat's mission: a one-way voyage from Syria to northern Iraq. I stared out of the window of the shabby hotel room and absorbed the empty vista—desert, miles of unbroken desert. I looked back at the boat. It seemed more incongruous than ever.
It was a boat born of desperation. As America and its allies prepared to invade Iraq, the world's press corps, sensing a televisual bonanza, began to gather at strategic crossing points along the Iraqi border. I had chosen to cross into Saddam Hussein's doomed state via northern Syria. Once inside, I planned to link up with a battle-hardened bunch of Kurdish rebels known as the Peshmerga and then follow them as they advanced south towards Baghdad from their mountainous stronghold in the north. There was, however, a slight hitch: I needed permission from the Syrian regime's ruthless intelligence service to cross the river border into Iraq. As the drum roll of the Iraq war intensified, Syria's secret police dug their heels in. Three weeks passed and still the Mukhabarat refused to give us permission to cross.
More
Message edited by inbluevt - Wednesday, 2013/10/09, 6:02 PM |
|
|
| |
Main 
