War Diaries Part III
The War in Afghanistan | 99 Days

Chapter 4 : Anthrax Nation

It's my birthday. I'm enjoying a present to myself. It's this. Riding shotgun in the minivan as we drive the hell out of here. North. Out of Termez, Uzbekistan. Hapless, hopeless Termez. Twenty-five-hundred year old mud hut of a city. Poor, dry and ugly. Unlucky enough to share a border with Afghanistan. We spent only three days here, but it felt like a month. Going from point to point. Trying to get someone to talk to us. Trying to get a shot of the border. Trying to grab the thread of a story. Would American forces sweep south from the city, as the Soviets did in their Afghan war? Would the Taliban counterattack? Was the border population fearful, or were we all just looking too hard for a story in a nation that pretty much had the media face down in a full-nelson and slapping the mat? Today it doesn't matter. I want to stick my head out the window and bark. It's been a bad few days.

We are all cross-eyed tired and popping Imodium tablets like they're M&M's. Then we get news of the anthrax cases: Florida, Reno, New York. But it's New York that sucker punches us. Most of us know the building like a second home, we know the company, we know the floor, we know the victim, we know her job: 30 Rock, NBC News, third floor, Erin O'Connor, assistant to Tom Brokaw. Infected with anthrax by opening a letter. Opening a goddamned letter. I feel angry, helpless, violent. I know Erin personally. She just had a baby. When I was teaching at Cal Poly, it was Erin who helped us book Brokaw for the University's Centennial kickoff event last April. She's fine now, we're told. She's recovering nicely. The emotional recovery will take much longer. For everyone. Violated. It's indeed devious, sinister to turn the simple tasks of our lives, like opening mail, into fearful and elaborate rubber-gloved, bio-hazard costume drama. Repeatedly, we are told to be careful over here. I echo the same sentiments back, wondering who is really living on the front lines of this thing.

* * *

We've tracked down our camera. Our $50,000 Ikegami Betacam with a $20,000 lens. We found it. Finally. Lost somewhere in Frankfurt during our connection from Iran to Tashkent. A network news crew without a camera. Well, without a real camera. We have the Mini-DV camcorder. It works well, but not what you expect to see a crew of five using to cover the war on terrorism. It's tiny. Howard says when shooting with it he feels like a "news tourist". But for nearly a week it's all we have. We use it for dozens of pseudo-secret videophone lives shots from the enclosed courtyard of our Karshi house. Now we're happy to have the "big" camera back, but it might as well still be sitting in some dark, airport lost luggage closet for all the good it's doing us here. Most of Uzbekistan has become a blackout for TV journalists. The airbase in Karshi, the one we traveled so fast and furiously to shoot, the one now being used by the American military, is completely off limits. To top it off, we get word from Izra, our landlady, that officers from Uzbeki state security (successors of the KGB) have been looking for us. Asking where we're staying. They can't want us that badly. We're in a small town. Stick out at the local bazaar like Sumo wrestlers on Paris catwalk. Probably just want to scare us a bit. Show the arrogant western media who is still boss in Uzbekistan. Besides, Izra knows when when something good has come to town. Knows that the $120 a day we pay to rent her house is half a year's salary for most Uzbekis. She's not about to kill her golden goose by giving us up to the coppers. Still something needs to be done. We're getting cabin fever and our information is drying up. We want to shoot in the Uzbeki border town of Termez, four hours south of us. But first we need credentials. Press credentials from the Uzbeki Foreign Ministry, 280 kilometers north in Tashkent. The entire team wants to go to Tashkent. Cosmopolitan Tashkent. The comfort of the Sheraton Hotel. A good meal and a nice bed. But only our fixer Dimitri and I can make the trip. The others have to stay in case there are more live shot requests from the news desk.

We're flying in a Russian Yak 40. A small, ectomorph of a jet. All muscle and no brains. An airborne submarine. short on frills, but as dependable as a German housekeeper. Headed to Tashkent. For the credentials. We will get them. Rectangular slips of paper with our photos and official looking Uzbeki government stamps. Then we'll sit at a Tashkent cafe and eat, dried, salty anchovies and wash them down with a Russian beer. Pretend to be tourists. Nearby, sidewalk vendors sell Soviet chest medals and Hi-8 cameras. It's a break from managing the personalities, logistics and news gathering that have filled all of my other days so far. In the morning, it will begin again.

* * *

Our team has spent almost a month together. Traveling about 15,000 air miles and driving so many hours across barren, featureless landscapes that the only time we catch a glimpse of green is when we change money.

We are a good team; grumble little about middle of the night live shots, iffy food, bed bugs, endless wanderings and long separations from loved ones. There is, in fact, a real esprit de corps that emerges from these hardships of different people living and working at full throttle for so long. Small kindnesses. Jim, the Scottish engineer, setting up the sat phone late at night so we can call home. Or soundman Adam from South London, a culinary auteur, marshalling ingredients from a local market to make us all a pasta Bolognese for dinner, complete with a hard-found bottle of red wine. Welcome respite from greasy mutton and hair soup.

Tonight, back in Karshi, we are having dinner when the lights go out. Power failure I think. Then I see the candles. Thirty-nine of them atop, what looks to me like a wedding cake. But I know better. Our fixer, Dimitri, saw my passport when I handed it to a border guard at a checkpoint leaving Termez. He spends the rest of the afternoon looking for a cake. And now this. I'm humbled by the thoughtfulness. The camaraderie. All of our spirits are lifted a bit, despite our concerns, despite our fears. We can't complain. We're all too aware of this privilege, to once again witnesses history. Even take a bit with us. Share with our families when we're welcomed home some time in the future. We are firemen chasing flames across international borders, bound to end up at the source, eventually. Bound to end up in Afghanistan. I blow out my candles.

# # #