IRAQ: Missing a meeting with Miss Whatever
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We had an interview with a beauty queen. Or so we thought. Arranging an interview in Baghdad usually requires some logistical gymnastics, but this one should have been easy. After all, Miss Hunting Club, AKA Miss Iraq, AKA Miss Baghdad — it all depends on which news report you read — may be a big cheese at the Baghdad social club that hosted the contest, but she’s not exactly the Queen Mum. Still, last year’s winner had given up the title in fear after receiving threats from militants who branded her an infidel. So this year’s winner, crowned last week in an event that received little or no publicity, was understandably wary about meeting with a foreign journalist and an Iraqi interpreter.
The young woman, Zainab, first proposed that we meet at her home in northwest Baghdad. Then, her parents decided it was not a good idea for a foreigner to visit them. And the foreigner’s staff thought it might not be safe for a non-Iraqi to travel in the neighborhood. Negotiations continued. A venue was chosen: a hotel in central Baghdad, often used by foreigners to meet Iraqi contacts.
The father said they would be there at noon. We headed to the hotel at the appropriate time, only to see police and military vehicles blocking the road in front of it. A government conference was taking place, and security was tighter than normal, the police explained to us. There was no way to drive down the street into the hotel parking lot. After stopping at a police checkpoint on the corner and pleading our case, the officer let our car drop us in front of the hotel’s parking area.
From there, we phoned Zainab’s father. They were around the corner, in their car, afraid to get out and walk down the street. In any other city, this handsome family would have simply parked their white sedan, walked 300 feet or so down the sidewalk to the parking lot, and headed into the coffee shop with us. No go, the father informed us. He added that he had his gun for protection. A Times staffer trotted around the corner and persuaded the nervous dad to at least drive to the front of the hotel where we were standing. From there, we would try to persuade the police to let the vehicle enter the parking lot.
The car drove up. I leaned into the open window, smiled, apologized for the trouble and chatted briefly with the English-speaking father as one of our Iraqi staff tried to persuade the police to let the car into the parking lot. The police refused. We offered to have the family come to our residence in a safe, quiet neighborhood nearby, or meet us at a cafe down the street. By then, the father had become edgy and angry. I don’t know you people, he replied. If you want to talk to us, come to our neighborhood. With that, he put his foot on the gas and sped away.
But all was not lost. We walked across the street to a bakery that we had done a story on a couple of weeks earlier. The baker was happily slapping dough around and turning out steaming slabs of fresh bread. She gave us some, hot out of the oven. We got in the car and happily tore into it as we drove home, our notebooks empty but our stomachs full.
— Tina Susman in Baghdad
