Going Home
NPR's Guy Raz spent 10 of the past 14 weeks in Iraq, and wrote this column describing his rocky journey home. It's the latest Reporter's Notebook, an occasional series of essays written for npr.org by NPR reporters and correspondents.
NPR Correspondent Guy Raz speeds across Kuwait trying to catch a plane.
Photo: Guy Raz, NPR News
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July 31, 2003 -- The road from Baghdad to Amman wasn't an option.
It was five days before I had to be in Amman to catch a flight home and I was reading through an e-mail assessing the latest security situation in Iraq. The note was sent by a company called Centurion. Many NPR correspondents have been sent to Centurion's "Hostile Environment Course" -- a one-week boot camp in England where reporters are taught, among other things, how to crawl out of a minefield using metal spikes. Centurion sends out regular e-mail updates to alumnae. One paragraph, in its latest report, freaked me out:
"The area of most concern remains the Ramadi-Fallujah road out to Jordan, where robbers are pretty content to open fire at vehicles to stop them. A large American TV network had an incident there last week where they had two vehicles approached by two robbers, one armed with an AK47 and the other with a 9mm pistol. The robber with the pistol fired two rounds through the windscreen of the crew's vehicle exactly where the driver's head would have been if he had not ducked. He then followed this up by firing a shot into the engine compartment."
There was something more than unsavory about ducking in the passenger seat as a high-velocity bullet penetrated the windshield.
So I opted for the Baghdad-to-Kuwait route. From Kuwait, I would fly to Amman to catch my flight home to Los Angeles.
Just as I was about to prepare for my departure, Uday and Qusay entered my life in a pretty intimate way. They died. I had to report it.
After that, I didn't have time to arrange a convoy to get me to Kuwait so I asked my trusted driver, Abu Ali, to pack me into his 1985 Toyota sedan and deliver me to the border. The other option was to hire a taxi.
The large white GMC Suburbans favored by long-haul taxi drivers in Iraq are also large white GMC targets for small bands of heavily armed thieves.
Abu Ali doesn't speak English but he does speak fear and the look in his eye seemed to suggest he was thinking: "This stupid American is NUTS."
My translator Vahram wouldn't let Abu Ali do the drive alone so he decided to hop into the car.
Driving to the Border
Vahram and Abu Ali pulled up in front of the hotel at six am the next morning. We were heading into Shiite country so Abu Ali taped portraits of Ali, the Prophet Muhammed's son-in-law, onto the front and back windows... just for good measure.
The previous weekend, I picked up a red-checked keffiyah and the round head piece that keeps it in place.
Abu Ali was a bit nervous about the ride so he insisted I wear it. He wanted me to blend in.
We set out south, through Baghdad and off to Kuwait.
The journey home commenced and all I could think about was biting into an In-and-Out Double Double.
Abu Ali decided to avoid the town of Amara. A few driver friends of his warned against that route. So we took the long way.
Vahram's wife packed a few sandwiches stuffed with canned chicken meat and cucumbers. All my bags were well hidden in the trunk.
The plan was to take me to the border town of Safwan. Neither Abu Ali nor Vahram have passports so they couldn’t drive me into Kuwait. At Safwan, we reckoned, we'd find a driver willing to drive me to the Kuwait airport.
For the last two hours of the drive, we hit a brutal sandstorm. It slowed us down to about 40 miles per hour. The visibility was about 15 inches on all sides.
The ride was otherwise uneventful. I packed my CDs in a suitcase and all I had inside my portable player was Björk's album Debut. Abu Ali and Vahram seemed content with the selection. We listened to it seven times on the drive to the border: Vahram in his dark shades, Abu Ali partially obscured by a portrait of the Prophet's son-in-law, and me in my red-checked keffiyah all bopping to "Human Behavior."
'No Kuwait. Go Iraq!'
At Safwan, we met a man called Muhammed driving a large Caprice and willing to take me to the Kuwait airport. Vahram explained that I had a flight in seven hours to Amman.
We loaded my baggage -- all 75 kilos -- the sat phone, the technical gear, my clothes, Iraqi dates, a framed image of the door of Mecca -- into the trunk of the car.
I kissed Abu Ali five times on alternating cheeks and gave Vahram a hug. They waved goodbye and Muhammed and I headed toward the border.
We drove past the Kuwaiti border police and stopped at a small bungalow marked "Arrivals."
I could almost taste that Double Double from here. Except that grains of sand kept blowing into my mouth.
I handed the immigration officer my passport. He glanced at my visa, handed it back, and pointed north. "No Kuwait. Go Iraq!" he barked.
"No Kuwait," I smiled. "I want to go to Kuwait."
"No Kuwait," he shouted.
"Yes, really, Kuwait," I replied.
At that moment, he began screaming at Muhammed -- the kind fellow who agreed to drive me to the Kuwait airport.
I wasn't sure what was going on. Muhammed then sighed and beckoned me to his car. I was fairly satisfied that Muhammed would sort it out. There had to be some sort of misunderstanding.
We got in the car and headed back towards the Iraq side of the border. Muhammed got out of the car, opened the trunk, and began removing my bags.
"Hey! Muhammed! What the hell are you doing?" I shouted.
"Visa, no good," he replied, and continued unloading my bags.
He got back in the car, rolled down the window and waved. And Muhammed drove off into the sunset as I stood in the middle of the Kuwait desert, my 75 kilos of baggage rapidly fading under the accumulating gusts of sand.
A Little Help from the English
I began to curse loudly. A few Iraqi Bedouin-types stared at me as if I'd gone mad. A camel was looking at me as if I'd gone mad.
I opened up my hand-held satellite phone to call NPR. I needed to get a contact number at the U.S. consulate in Kuwait City.
Dale Willman, working the overnight newcast shift, answered.
"Hey Dale, it’s Guy."
"Hey man, how’s Iraq?"
"Dale, I'm in the middle of the ****ing desert with 75 kilos of baggage, standing at the Iraq-Kuwait border. Can someone help me get the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait?"
I suddenly noticed a soldier standing behind me. "Excuse me," he asked in a refined British accent. "Where are you from?"
"I'm American, I have a valid visa, I have a flight to catch, and for some reason, the Kuwaitis aren't letting me in," I answered.
"OK," he said, "We'll sort this out."
The young English captain, attached to the Royal Scottish Dragoons, asked one of the grunts to watch my bags. He summoned his translator and the three of us started walking the half mile to the Kuwaiti immigration bungalow.
"Pardon me, sir?" asked the polite English officer. "This gentleman needs to catch a flight to Amman in five hours. His visa appears valid. Can we help you expedite his entry into Kuwait?”
The immigration official barked something back to the soldier's translator.
The diminutive Iraqi translator then began to explain that the Kuwaitis recently passed a law stating no one is allowed entry into Kuwait from Iraq if they didn’t enter Iraq from Kuwait. Even those, like me, with valid, multi-entry visas.
I entered from Jordan a month beforehand.
The immigration officer then barked something again.
The translator translated.
"Captain, he says we must remove this man from Kuwaiti soil immediately. His entry is denied."
"Sir," the British officer replied, "He is simply entering and exiting the country."
To no avail. The immigration official barked back and we walked out.
"Those ****s," the otherwise genteel officer muttered. "You'd think they’d show us some respect considering we helped kicked the Iraqis out of their country in '91."
"And what about the Hejaz and all those Arab revolts you Brits helped organize?" I enthusiastically chimed in.
"We did that too?" the officer asked. "Then they should doubly show us some respect!"
We walked back across the border to the Iraqi side.
The British officer had an idea. "Look, there's an American-manned border crossing a miles from here. We can drive you and your bags through but you'll still have to deal with the Kuwaiti immigration officers. It's the best I can do but at least you'll be in Kuwait... and a bit closer to the airport."
'You Stay Here'
The Land Rover dropped me off at the immigration bungalow, I pulled out my bags and hauled all 75 kilos into the office.
The stunned official looked at me, wondering what the hell I was doing there.
I handed him my passport and started dialing the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. A kind civil servant got on the case.
Back in the desert... the immigration officer smoked, drank glass after glass of tea, and occasionally looked at my tattered passport sitting next to his computer.
"Five minutes," he said.
Twenty minutes passed.
"Five minutes," he said again.
Forty-five minutes passed.
"Five minutes."
It went on for three hours until I finally made the fatal error one is never to make at a border crossing. I lost my mind.
"Listen you ****! I've been in Iraq for 10 ****ing weeks. I haven't seen my mom and dad in 11 months. I have no intention of staying in Kuwait for more than three hours. My plane leaves for Amman in three hours. If I miss it, I miss my flight home!"
The immigration officer casually summoned a rough-looking man with a uniform. Uniform man grabbed me by the arm and escorted me outside.
"You stay here," he said.
Outside, my satellite telephone stopped working. The batteries died.
I paced in the desert for an hour or so until I gathered the nerve to walk back in.
"Excuse me, sir," I begged in my most desperate voice. "Can you help me?"
The immigration officer opened my passport, stamped it, signed it, threw it at me and said, "Go! Go to Kuwait."
A Taste of Home
I pulled my bags out of the bungalow, walked to the highway, and stuck my thumb out.
A passing pick-up stopped. The driver was wearing a red-checked keffiyah and the traditional full-body gown Kuwaitis prefer.
I threw my bags in the back of the truck and we headed off.
Abdallah couldn't quite understand me but he didn’t seem to object as I cranked up the volume on my portable stereo and started blaring Björk.
An hour and a half later, we arrived to Kuwait International Airport.
All I could think of was that Double Double.
And from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a mirage: Burger King.
I raced to the checkout, knocking veiled women out of my way. "Two double Whoppers please."
As I sank my teeth into the burger, I knew I was going home.
Guy Raz is now on vacation at home in Los Angeles.
In Depth
 For more coverage about events in Iraq, vist NPR News Coverage: Beyond the War in Iraq
Find other NPR reports by Guy Raz
NPR's Liane Hansen talks to Christian Science Monitor reporter Phillip Smucker about getting into Iraq on his own.
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Watch a video of Raz's drive through Iraq.