War Diaries Part III
The War in Afghanistan | 99 Days

Chapter 2 : Enshallah

I’m wearing two watches. The one on my right wrist is New York time. The one on my left wrist is local time. There's a seven and a half hour difference between the two. In Tehran, Iran beneath a Persian moon,on the balcony of the Shohreh Hotel, it's 2:15 A.M. On the Jumbotron in Times Square, a five-story Tom Brokaw is halfway through his broadcast of Nightly News. Our videophone "live" shot is deep in the rundown. Fourth Block. 6:52 P.M. right wrist. Normally at this time I would have a phone in my ear. Normally at this time I would be talking to a line-producer in a control booth on the fourth floor of Rockefeller Center. Normally I would be standing by ready to cue the talent. Instead, I'm a human TelePrompter. My arms encircle the lens, while above it I hold the two sheets of legal paper from which NBC News Correspondent Jim Maceda will report the current situation in Iran. If I were performing Tai Chi my position would be called, "stroking the rooster tail." I have two flashlights mounted on my head (in case the batteries die) and I'm trying to shine them on the paper without directing them into the lens. It's getting windy. My hands are beginning to shake from the awkward position. I'm worried about them blowing away. With one minute left to go duct tape my fingers to the back of the papers. I hold them in place as Maceda begins to read.

* * *

In Tehran, I'm nearly 8,000 miles from home, but still 500 miles from center stage in this news event. We have half a dozen teams to the east, in Islamabad, Pakistan. A couple in the north in the former Soviet Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. With us to the west, Afghanistan is surrounded--by television cameras. By NBC correspondents, producers, shooters, sound techs and engineers. We are traveling heavy. Flush with equipment and cash. We landed in Iran with 57 cases of equipment. Paid nearly $10,000 in excess baggage charges alone. But on the eve of war, the purse strings are wide open.

Team Iran has a mission and a strategy. First, we take Iran's temperature. Find out if America's long-time nemesis (see 1979, the American Hostage Crisis, also Ayatollah Khomeini, also America the Great Satan) is willing to jump on board for the big win in the war on terrorism and it's repressive Afghani hosts, the Taliban. After all, Iran has it's own domestic terror problems with a bomb-happy Marxist Islamic group known as the MKO. And besides, the Taliban has given them nothing but headaches since taking power -- exporting tons of opium as well as nearly three-million refugees across Iran's eastern border. The refugees and drugs will become our second-tier stories, while we position ourselves for a backdoor entry into Afghanistan, if and when the shooting starts.

We're competitive. We all want to be first. First to Afghanistan. Once inside we'll raise the flag--a briefcase-sized satellite transmitter and send back pictures over a phone line. The images, herky-jerky, look like they're originating from the space shuttle. But this is emerging technology. More portable than a full-fledged uplink. This is the first time all the networks are using videophones so widely. They are for proof as well as perception. "We are here," they say. "We are in enemy territory." This did, after all, begin with, as NPR commentator Bob Garfield said, deftly playing off the Roosevelt line,"a day that will live in imagery.".

This is perhaps the biggest story of our careers -- and certainly the most disturbing. Many of us have learned to at least partially anaesthetize ourselves to the suffering we cover. Get the job done. Process it later. This time it's not possible. All of us connected by six degrees of separation to the attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Most of us by less. This event, we know, has not only changed America, but the world. A monkey on all our backs. There's adrenaline here, but no joy in this. A story with no quick ending. Difficult to tell. Devastating to hear.

* * *

At the Shohreh Hotel we are using the penthouse suite as our office. It has everything we need, including a balcony overlooking the city. Perfect for live shots. Our shooter Howard and I sometimes goof, pretending to make missile noises and explosions in the background, before Maceda goes on the air. Funny because at the moment, it seems absurd, this place so far and yet also not so far from the potential conflict. Our Tehran headquarters is wildly spacious, but inexpensive. We're beneficiaries of an exchange rate that gets us 7,900 rials to the dollar. Changing a hundred gets you a wad the size of a brick. At this moment, I'm sitting in the living room of our suite, negotiating with two Iranians, Ahmed and Mohamed, for a picture. A photo they claim, of Ahmed's back - after he was flogged. Eighty lashes for drinking alcohol. He says he fainted from the pain. This is the contradiction in modern Iran. A nation with freeways and luxury high-rise apartments. But also a nation which practices an ancient type of Islamic law known as sharia. It's enforced by the much-feared religious police. The Komite. Short for Islamic Revolutionary Committee. Minor transgressions, holding hands with the opposite sex, drinking, a bare-skinned leg under a woman's chador (a body cover, which literally means tent) are met with public lashings, usually administered everyday from 2-5 PM. Iranians committing what are considered more serious offenses -- blasphemy, adultery, or homosexuality -- may be put to death.

Ahmed is a carpet salesman. He works at a shop in the 200 year old Tehran Bazaar. It's a historical maze of vendors selling copper teapots, toys, clothing, dates, carpets and caviar. There, pungent curries and saffron battle with the musty smell of history and urine. Ahmed is nervous. He's smoking and punctuating his Farsi with broad hand gestures. He speaks some English, but has brought his best friend Mohamed just in case. I first heard his story that afternoon when were shooting video footage near his shop. He tells me he thinks our Iranian fixer is a government spy. Something not uncommon in this part of the world. He's worried that if he gives me the picture, the Komite will arrest him. They are young. Both in their mid-twenties. Mohamed tells me they've had parties here, secret parties with Ecstasy and booze, that would rival anything in America. They want a more western-style Iran. Greater freedom. Or at least more humane forms of punishment. But they're pessimistic. Iran is a theocracy. It's elected parliament and a reform-minded President, Khatemi, are checked by conservative Muslim clerics at every step. The clerics control the courts as well as the police and the military.

The Iranians tell me they don't want money. All they want is a letter of reference that will help get Ahmed out of the country. I tell them it was difficult for us to get visas to even get into Iran. Getting someone out wasn't on my agenda. Besides, I still hadn't seen the picture. They say they didn't bring it with them. Still on the film roll in the camera they say. I ask to see Ahmed's back. He lifts his shirt, but shakes his head. It was two months ago, Mohamed tells me, the marks are gone already. There are only a couple of small discolorations on his ribcage. They say they will produce the picture tomorrow, by noon. By 2 PM the next day, I still haven't heard from them. This is a place, I've learned given fully to the vagaries of fate. Uncertainty the only certainty.

Enshallah, the refrain to my all my inquiries.

God willing.

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