220 AMERICAN SPYthe country afterward. The insurgency had not yet gotten underway on
the day we entered Iraq, but armed bandits roamed the desert along our
route from Jordan to Baghdad. Our four-vehicle convoy would drive at
high speed across the desert until we reached Baghdad. Like just about
every other Iraqi, civilian or military, our escorts were armed with AK-47s,
sometimes concealed under their dishdashas.
Our favorite armed escort was Abdul, a tall, athletic Iraqi who had pre-
viously worked as a bodyguard for Saddam’s psychotic son Uday. (Rumor
has it he also served as a body double.) Years earlier, Uday had sentenced
Abdul and other members of the Iraqi Olympic basketball team to serve
time in jail after they lost a game to another country. Abdul was lucky.
Uday was known to abuse, torture, and kill other Iraqi athletes who failed
to live up to his expectations, including an Iraqi table tennis player.^1
Our plans to race to Baghdad were rudely interrupted by the shamal
sandstorm that was beginning to hit its stride just as we crossed the border
into Iraq. On the Iraqi side of the border, all visitors were greeted by two
giant, dramatic Islamic arches and a portrait of Saddam that had not yet
been taken down. The ugly Iraqi border-crossing building on the north
side of the highway was crowded and chaotic, reminding me of Mace-
donia, but much to my surprise it was more or less functioning. A soli-
tary, dazed-looking American soldier sheltered against the storm as best
he could outside the building, but he did not have a border control role.
Imad’s colleagues took care of getting us processed through the border,
and we got back into the vehicles for the drive to Baghdad. A small refugee
camp set up just inside Iraq was reminiscent of the scene in Kosovo. It
occurred to me that besides the indiscriminate destruction and killing, all
wars seem to share lots of other, more mundane characteristics as well.
By the time we left the border area, visibility was greatly reduced to
about a hundred meters; this was not ideal, but it was still good enough to
drive relatively safely. A half an hour later, the storm had worsened and
had completely enveloped the entire region, turning day into night. Vis-
ibility dropped to zero with occasional gaps of ten feet or so. Winds were
howling, and we were engulfed in total darkness, the only light an eerie
dark orange glow. It was how I imagined a Martian landscape. The time of
day was around noon, but because of the total darkness, it looked like mid-
night. I felt as though we were skiing above the timberline during a snow-