The Economist February 26th 2022 Culture 81bytheliberalmediaandbyDemocrats,
who had double standards over dirty
tricks. Hedisparagestheincriminating
leaks from thefbi’s Mark Felt(better
knownas“DeepThroat”),and,hesuspects,
fromAlHaig,afuturesecretaryofstate.
Buttherealvillain,inthistelling,wasJohn
Dean, the White House counsel who
co-operated withthe prosecution and,
maintainsMrChapin,wasthetrue“can-
cer”onthepresidency.“Theconventional
assumptionthatRichardNixonrepresent-
edevilandJohnDeanhonourorintegrity
isunquestionablyamyth.”
AsforNixon,hisresignationwasan
“extraordinary unfairness”. Mr Chapin
describes a leader who was not onlynotoriously complexand broodingbut
alsodecent,sensitiveandcaring.Aspresi-
dent,MrChapinargues,heaccomplished
farmorethanhistorygiveshimcreditfor,
athomeaswellasabroad.Whatofthenas-
tinessexposedintheWhiteHousetapes?
Thoseremarksweretakenoutofcontext
andgaveafalseimpressionofthemanMr
Chapinknewsowell.
MrChapinwentontohaveacareerin
publicrelationsand consulting.But at
heart,itseems,hehasneverstoppedbeing
Nixon’sadvanceman.Heisstillpreparing
theground,attendingtoeverydetail,try-
ingtomakehisbosslookasgoodaspossi-
ble—thistimenotforacampaignstopor
foreignforay,butforposterity.RefugeesandreportageHis brother’s record-keeper
I
ntheautumnof 2016 twoyoungmen
were deposited in Moria refugee camp
(pictured), a notorious detention centre on
the Greek island of Lesbos. They had just
braved a dangerous crossing in a dinghy
from Turkey, on their way from Afghani-
stan to Europe. But the pair were not quite
what they seemed. One was Afghan; the
other was an undercover Canadian jour-
nalist, who was accompanying his friendonhisperilousjourneytoanew life.
Both were shocked by the squalor they
encountered, the result of a fire that had
gutted the camp the previous week. As well
as the grim conditions, the men had to
contend with souring attitudes towards
newcomers across Europe. More than a
million migrants and refugees reached the
continent by sea in 2015, but, a year on,
countries were increasingly putting up
fences and closing their borders. With
public hostility outstripping sympathy,
the road to asylum became more difficult,
as the swelling number of detainees at the
camp on Lesbos demonstrated.Matthieu Aikins, a journalist partly of
Japanese descent, had been working in
Afghanistan for seven years when he
agreed to make the trip with Omar, his
pseudonymous companion. They had
developed a close friendship during as-
signments on which Omar served as Mr
Aikins’s fixer-cum-driver. But they came
from drastically different worlds. As a
child, Mr Aikins played ice hockey in a
Canadian suburb; Omar grew up in exile in
Iran and Pakistan. From a young age he had
shined shoes, picked pistachios and taken
construction jobs in the Iranian city of Shi-
raz to support his parents. His family
moved back to Afghanistan soon after the
American invasion of 2001.
By the time Omar left Kabul with Mr
Aikins in 2016, his mother and father had
already fled their war-torn country for a
second time. Some of his siblings were
already living in Europe; the rest of his
close relatives were in Turkey, hoping to go
west. His own trip had been delayed after
he fell in love. He eventually sold his
prized car, a gold Corolla, and steeled him-
self for the trials ahead.
“The Naked Don’t Fear the Water”—the
title is a Dari proverb—is a chronicle of the
two men’s odysseys. Omar entrusts him-
self to smugglers and risks his life to cross
mountains and seas; Mr Aikins, who as-
sumes the name Habib as part of his
disguise, is his companion for some, but
not all, of the voyage. Unlike his friend, he
does not enter Turkey from Iran. Instead,
he attempts to fly in from Italy, but is de-
nied entry at a time of heightened tension
after an attempted coup. So Mr Aikins tra-
vels by bus to Bulgaria before illegally slip-
ping across the Turkish border.
The hazards they share mask the gulf in
their circumstances—up to a point. Mr Ai-
kins, who passes as Afghan because of his
“black hair” and “wiry beard”, knows that,
when push comes to shove, his friend
must rely only on his luck, while he can al-
ways fall back on his Western citizenship.
The question of who has the right to travel
across borders looms large in his coura-
geous reporting. So do the dangers some
people are obliged and willing to take
along the smuggler’s route into Europe.
Boys stow away in lorries, families board
unseaworthy inflatable boats, men and
women cross deserts. As they near their
destination, a border guard’s snap decision
can determine their future “in a heartbeat”.
Mr Aikins’s wanderings were underta-
ken as a journalist’s project. Omar’s were
not. The author confesses that he initially
treated the trip “like another assignment
where I was in charge”; but his sense of au-
thority quickly fades. His role turns pas-
sive, as he awaits his friend’s decisions and
documents their stories and those ofthe
folk they meet. The result is a devastatingly
intimate insight into the refugee crisis.A journalist accompanies his Afghan friend on an odyssey to EuropeThe Naked Don’t Fear the Water. By
Matthieu Aikins.Harper; 336 pages; $27.99.
Fitzcarraldo Editions; £12.99The long road to a better life