motorcyclistonline.com | 77The tatter of automatic gun fire was
more frequent than not, punctuated by
large explosions from US-led airstrikes
and jihadi car bombs. Some of the blasts
were so powerful that large hunks of
concrete and pavement landed on roof-
tops several stories high. Every close
explosion rattled in your chest.
One day, Nish and I shadowed sepa-
rate squads of soldiers. Almost immedi-
ately, his unit was targeted by a suicide
car bomber. When the vehicle exploded
in a massive fireball, Nish was slammed
into a wall, the blast sending the engine
block sailing past him, killing one soldier
and wounding three.
Meanwhile, I witnessed a group of
women and small children fleeing a neigh-
borhood just liberated from the Islamic
State amid the block-to-block fighting.
Thousands of civilians were fleeing the
city with little more than what they could
carry. Some were clad in only tattered
clothing and were visibly malnourished.
One woman bore deep gashes on her
face from an explosion moments earlier.
Trailing behind her was a young girl
holding a baby, no older than my infant
daughter. The child was slack in her
arms and unresponsive.
I’ve been covering conflict for a long
time and have witnessed numerous
horrors humanity has to offer. What’s
happening in Mosul are some of the
worst things I’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately, this story gets too
little attention back home. Frustrated
by this, Nish and I decided we’d try a
new approach to storytelling that would
combine events unfolding in Mosul and
our passion for riding. As crazy as the
concept sounded, even to us, we pursued it
doggedly hoping to reach a new audience
and show them the gravity of the situation.To pull off this unusual feat, we needed
to find and buy a bike like the one Nish
had seen months earlier. Sangar managed
to track down one of the few Mosul-area
Urals in civilian hands. After a short
negotiation, the bike was ours for $400.
That was the easy part. Getting the
motorcycle out of Mosul was going to
be both a logistical challenge and down-
right dangerous due to the continued
fighting in the city, irregular road condi-
tions, and military checkpoints.
During the strategy session on the
eve of our “Mosul Ural Mission,” Sanger
drew a map illustrating an alternative
route from the war zone to Erbil that
would allow us to avoid some of the
numerous checkpoints along the way.
Considering we’d purchased the bike
on a handshake agreement and with
no tags, avoiding the authorities also
seemed ideal at first.
“We’re going to have to be a little bit
like smugglers,” he said with a devil-
ishness that would have previously
appealed to my mischievous side.
The new father in me, however,
raised red flags about eluding those who
controlled the main road. I didn’t want
to get shot—by the Islamic State or Iraqi
forces—over a motorcycle. A few years
back, I was injured in Afghanistan and it
cost me the vision in my right eye. Before
leaving for this latest trip, my wife half-
jokingly warned me that if I got hurt
riding a motorcycle in Iraq, it’d be best
that I didn’t come back.
Before hitting the road, we needed to
get the bike fixed. For a long time, it had
sat motionless in the walled-off court-
yard of its owner, a home that had been
commandeered by Islamic State fighters
until recently when they were run out of
that part of the city.MCY1017_MOSUL.indd 77 7/25/17 2:01 PM