MISFITS, MERCENARIES &
MISSIONARIES
One
Mans Journey into Northern Iraq
by
Peter McLaren
Smashwords Edition
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Published on Smashwords by:
Peter McLaren
Misfits, Mercenaries & Missionaries
Copyright 2011 by Peter
McLaren
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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Dedications
I dedicate this book to my niece and nephew, because my sister said I had to, so to Mel and Tom, “this Bud’s for you”.
Special Thanks
Writing is a lonely existence, and in my experience, a writer is only as good as their editor. So to Catherine Hammond, the woman who stuck with me for all those long years as a bunch of handwritten messy notes became a book, my thanks are eternal.
I also asked a number of friends to read small sections at different times to give me some feedback, to all those, I thank you also. You have no idea how much you have helped me. In particular, to Brad and Diane, who allowed me to live in their shed for nine months after I got retrenched, your help was critical in giving me the time to get my thoughts together and allow me to focus solely on writing. Many thanks to the both of you, and to your dog polo, who took me on nice long walks.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Exploring Baghdad; Episode Of The Dead Catfish.
Events Leading Up To The Killing Of Crocodile
Pink Palace, Dirty Housekeeper And Mr Dana
Bombing Of Handicap International
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The weather was hot, humid and particularly oppressive in the way that Brisbane summers seem to be. It was late 1992. I was visiting some old friends after returning from a two-month backpacking odyssey in the jungles of Indonesia. My friends were a married couple I had known for around six years. The husband, Brad, was my original army “Kapooka” roommate, whom I had met in October 1986. Through him I met his wife, Diane.
Brad and I had become good friends after our initial meeting. When we first laid eyes on each other, I was a 20-year-old accounts clerk from Perth WA, while he was a 29-year-old patch-wearing member of a motorcycle gang. You couldn’t have found two people on the planet more different than the pair of us. Surprisingly, despite our different backgrounds, we hit it off quite well. Our initial meeting was fairly inauspicious. I was sitting on my army-issue bed, bowed head supported by my hands, elbows on my lap, contemplating my future. The pleasant army corporals we had met on the bus at Wagga Wagga had turned decidedly nasty when we arrived at Kapooka. Within seconds of disembarking, they were all yelling at us, using what can only be described as “colourful” language.
We were herded into our barracks, where we were directed to specially marked doors. Each recruit had his name written on a piece of cardboard taped to the room’s entrance. Four men shared each room, which was divided down the middle with a partition to accommodate two beds either side of it. I had met the other two guys on the other side of the partition. They looked as bewildered as I felt but seemed harmless enough. I returned to my side of the partition and sat on my bed and waited with nervous anticipation.
Above the din made by the small men with big moustaches, I heard the distinctive tones of cowboy boots clicking Clint Eastwood style. The clicking boots stopped about one foot away from where I sat. I had noticed that the bed opposite me lay vacant, so I assumed the boots belonged to the person who would be my roommate for the next three months. I looked up with that “what the fuck have I done?” look that all recruits have and saw this man with a shaved head staring at me.
I observed what appeared to be a vision from hell. He was wearing a navy blue shirt with the collar cut off, a studded belt inlaid with iron skulls, and tight black Levi pants. It was quite a fetching ensemble, and was capped off with black cowboy-style boots inlaid with more skulls. I think it was the rattling of the skulls that I had heard.. As he opened his mouth to speak, I observed that he had no teeth. He looked like an axe murderer!
“G’day, mate,” said the man. “The name’s Brad. Pleased to meet you.”
The axe murderer offered his hand and I shook it and told him my name was Pete. He seemed to have an aura of menace about him. I was quite intimidated by him and resolved to be as polite as possible when in his presence. Brad, despite his appearance, was highly intelligent and most amusing. He had a very subtle and witty sense of humour. We finished our basic training together and he was posted to the Corps of Engineers and I was posted to the Infantry. On completion of our respective “Initial Employment Training” we both ended up getting posted to Enoggera Army Barracks in Brisbane. I was a grunt, he was a Ginger Beer.
I spent nearly 6 years in the Infantry but by 1992 I had decided I was tired of people yelling at me for no apparent reason. I resigned from the army and went on an intrepid adventure backpacking through Borneo. On my return to Australia I went back to Perth for a few weeks to catch up with some of my old surfing buddies and then decided to head back to Brisbane to catch up with Brad and a few other of my old army mates. I didn’t drop in to see my family since I recently had had a bit of a falling out with my father, but more about that later.
Brad and Diane had in some ways become like a second family to me. I had been best man at their wedding, which was an honour. It was one of those weddings people never forget and tend to talk about for years to come. This great event included incidents like, a.) me forgetting the ring, b.) me jumping into the hotel pool from the 3rd floor balcony, c.) me catching the bride’s bouquet, drinking the booze and eating most of the food — I was never a big fan of weddings to be honest, but all things considered theirs was pretty good.
I have to admit it’s not really that common for the best man to catch the bride’s bouquet at an Australian wedding. It all happened by accident. I was standing at the back of the crowd behind all the girls with my back to the action. I was drinking beer and talking man stuff with the men when Diane flung her bouquet into the sky. Its skyward trajectory caught the corner of my eye.
For some inexplicable reason, memories of playing on the halfback flank for the Wanneroo under-19s Aussie Rules team came flashing into my mind… I handed my beer to a colleague, took two steps and leapt into the sky, hands spread outward , eyes on the prize. My knee made contact with the shoulders of some unfortunate lass, which gave me that highly desirable “sit”, where the player hovers for a fraction of a second in mid-flight before tumbling back to earth with the ball… or in this case, the “bouquet”, in his hands. I landed on both feet, looked at the carnage wreaked before me, held up the bouquet and cried,
“You f—ing beauty!”
As I saw the tangled array of fallen beauty queens lying at my feet, it occurred to me that taking a screamer and stealing the bouquet at my best mate’s wedding may not have been the best way to endear myself to his new wife but, fortunately, everyone was laughing too much to really care about the faux pas I had just made. The only people not laughing were Diane’s parents, but I think they eventually got over it.
Anyway, I digress. When I arrived unannounced on his doorstep in late 1992, Brad was still in the Corps of Engineers and was about to be promoted to full corporal and posted to Duntroon to train officer cadets. His career was really starting to take off. I had been happy with my decision to leave the Infantry, but hearing of his new promotion and posting had made me a bit envious. I wasn’t really regretting my choice to explore the big bad world, but the reality was that I was unemployed and flat broke.
Then came the phone call that would change my life. There was nothing worth watching on TV and I was a bit hung-over from having a few drinks the night before. The phone rang, Diane answered it and said it was for me:
“Your father’s on the phone, Pete.”
This wasn’t as good news as you might think, because prior to leaving on my Borneo trip, I had had a blazing row with my father over something quite stupid. He had been angry that I put my new car registration sticker on the wrong place on the windshield. I had told him that it was my car and it was none of his business where I put the sticker. My father was one of those guys who could never end an argument until he had won it, so he had gone to get some Road Traffic Authority pamphlet to prove he was right. At that point I had told him to go and “f—” himself and walked out.
I had left for Borneo the next day and hadn’t spoken to him since.
“Hello…,” I said.
“Hi, Pete. What are you doing on Wednesday?” asked my father.
“Ah, does getting drunk and snorting lines of cocaine with teenage hookers sound okay?”
I was still angry at him for the way he had treated me a few months earlier. Dad paused. He was a former Baptist minister and had dedicated his life to serving Christ. Answers like that always upset him.
“How does a job in Iraq sound?”
I nearly gagged. Now he was taking the piss out of me.
“Sure, why not?” Quick pause and reflection: “Will I get paid?”
I had been unemployed for four months now. I had $200 in the bank, having blown my military pay-out in my travels. In five days a direct debit was due on my account to pay off a housing loan I had taken out, and I didn’t have the funds to cover it. I was on the verge of bankruptcy. Money was my only motivation at that point.
“I think so. Phone this number.”
I thought about the argument we had had six months back. Obviously, Dad wasn’t going to hold a grudge, which was pretty decent of him.
‘Yeah, Dad, that’s really great. I appreciate your help. Can you just quickly let me know what is going on?”
“I’ve just done an audit for CARE Australia, and I’ve heard that they are sending a team to Iraq on Wednesday. A couple of people have pulled out at the last minute. I told them that my son is 25, has been in the army and would be happy to go. They said you sound great and told me to get you to ring this number…”
Dad was a public servant working in the child welfare department back in Perth, but he had studied bookkeeping at night school many years ago. He had begun to do the accounts for the local cricket club and a small charity that Ian, an old friend from Bible school, had set up. This small charity had morphed into an organisation called CARE. It turns out that this organisation was slightly bigger than Dad had let on. In fact, it was one of the biggest charities in Australia. Dad also had never mentioned that he was on its board.
I wrote down the details he gave me, said thanks and made a reference to our last meeting by saying, “I know we’ve had our disagreements, but…”
“Ah, don’t worry about it, mate. That’s what families are for. They give you grief one minute and the next, they’re giving you a helping hand.”
It was strange hearing him talk like that. Here I was, 25 years of age, and could barely remember having an adult conversation with him. This was probably the first time since we had had our “immaculate conception” moment 10 years earlier. My father had been a Church preacher for most of his life and even after he became a public servant, he continued to hold morning prayers and devotions with his young family. At about the age of 15, over our morning prayers, I innocently informed him that I didn’t believe in The Virgin Birth, Jonah and the Whale and a bunch of other stories in which I had been indoctrinated while growing up.
He didn’t look too happy at my revelation, and my mum told me to shut up and put the bibles away. I guess it’s never pleasant for a preacher to learn that his son is a heretic. Curiously, that was the first and last time I ever attempted to have an adult conversation with my father. The only upside of the episode was that my parents didn’t force me to go to church or attend morning devotions any more.
I reflected on his phone call. So Dad wasn’t pulling my leg. He was really offering me the chance to go to Iraq. I phoned the number, and Jan, Ian’s wife, answered the phone. Ian and Jan, as I mentioned, were good friends of my parents. I had known them as a child, but hadn’t spoken to them for many years. My main memory of them was playing cricket in their back yard with their kids and watching the FA cup final each year in what had become an annual ritual. I hadn’t really seen or spoken to them as an adult, from what I could recall. The number dad gave me was the home number of Ian and Jan down in Canberra, that’s where CARE’s headquarters were located.
“Hello! Janet speaking.”
I put on my best voice and resolved to sound professional. “Hi, Janet. It’s Pete McLaren here. Dad just phoned me and told me you are looking for some staff to go to Iraq.”
“Yes! I’m so glad you called. A couple of people pulled out a few days ago and we are desperate to get some people in there. So it would be a godsend if you agreed to go.”
She continued, “I know it’s terribly rushed, but if you’re interested, here’s the plan. I’ll book a ticket for you to fly down on Tuesday morning; you’ll be interviewed by our Human Resources people when you arrive, and then, if you’re successful, you’ll fly out with the team on Wednesday evening.”
This was both good and bad news — good news because they were desperate for people, bad news because an interview implied that I still had to convince someone else that I was the right person for the job. My ducks had not completely lined up just yet!!!
“Okay, Jan, that sounds great. Oh, just one last question: will I get paid?”
I was quite nervous about asking this question, but I was desperate for money. I’ve heard employers in Perth brag about how they refused to hire people because they dared to ask about the salary. The golden rule in the old days was: don’t ask! But my financial predicament precluded my normal reticence about discussing the matter.
“Oh, yes, but it’s not much — only about $2000 a month, plus expenses. Okay?”
$2000 a month okay? I only earned $1400 a month in the army. Not bad, I thought to myself.
“It looks like you’ve found your man, Janet,” I said in my deepest, most serious-sounding voice.
“I’m so glad. See you on Tuesday.”
I put the phone down and yelled, “You beauty!”
I was off the hook. I wasn’t going to be declared bankrupt. I wasn’t going to have my house repossessed. Maybe God had come through for me after all.
“I really should pray more or something,” I thought.
The relief I felt was palpable, like a death row inmate being granted a stay of execution.
I had taken a big gamble by going backpacking through Borneo after leaving the army. Logic suggested that I should save my cash and look for a new job. Logic sometimes isn’t very exciting. It’s not every day you get the opportunity to go travelling to wild and exotic locations. I had figured it would take me six months to run out of money. I had underestimated, it seems; everything was twice as expensive as stated in the “Lonely Planet” travel guide. There seemed to be two prices for everything: one for the locals and one for the foreigners. The guide only quoted prices paid by the locals.
I turned to my mate Brad. “Dude, I’m going to Iraq on Wednesday.”
“Great, man! Where’s that?”
“Aaah… I think it’s near Iran,” I replied.
“What will you be doing there?” enquired Diane.
“Oh, buggered if I know, now that you mention it.” was my sheepish reply.
Iraq was, of course, the country the Western world had bombed back to the stone age about a year earlier, due to its invasion of Kuwait. It hadn’t been in the news of late and I couldn’t really think of any reason why I would be going there other than that if I was working for a charity, I would probably be feeding people. That was what charities did, right? .
Brad had had some interesting stories to tell about his time in his motorcycle club back in New Zealand, and a few other people in my life had done some interesting things, but now it looked as if it might be my turn to have a few adventures of my own. I was very excited. Brad and Di cracked open a few cold beers for us to celebrate my good fortune. Diane put my washing on, so that I would have some clean clothes to wear when I arrived in Canberra where CARE’s head office was located. After we had celebrated for a number of hours, Brad and Di decided to belt a pond dweller, or hit the frog and toad (go to bed). I figured that I wouldn’t see too many attractive single young ladies in Iraq, so I was determined to make the most of my last night in Australia. I was going to have a good old-fashioned knees-up and see if I could get laid prior to leaving. The thought of doing some research on Iraq or CARE Australia to prepare for my interview didn’t even occur to me.
I tried to change their minds, but Brad and Diane, the happily married couple with work obligations the next day, declined my generous invitation to accompany me to the night spots of Brisbane. The following 12 hours are only vague recollections. I remember getting very drunk at an old watering hole where I used to drink with my army buddies a few years earlier. None of the old faces were around any more. I didn’t catch up with any of the boys. In fact, none of them were at any of the local dives. Most of the pubs had become bistros, and none of them were festooned with muscled and tattooed dirty-singlet-wearing AJs (army jerks, as the civvies used to call us).
I spent most of my last $200 on booze and fancied my chances with a couple of off-duty strippers named Mystique and Aura whom I had met at a dodgy club in Fortitude Valley. Surprisingly, they declined my kind offer of a night of raucous 2-on-1 rutting like wild animals on the Serengeti when I proposed it to them. I finally got home as the sun was coming up. Aura and Mystique were distant memories as I staggered up the stairs. All I could think of was having a nice cup of coffee, some bacon and eggs for brekky, and a nice long sleep.
As I stumbled into the lounge room Brad and Di were sitting on their sofa watching one of the morning breakfast shows on TV. Diane sat me on the couch and gave me some nice black coffee. They didn’t lecture me or tell me how disappointed in me they were for being drunk and coming home at an ungodly hour. They didn’t freak out, like my parents would have. I leaned back on the couch and began to drink my hot black coffee. The phone rang and Diane got up to answer it.
“Pete, it’s for you,” she cried.
I picked up the phone. It was Janet telling me there had been a change of plan and the ticket had been booked for that morning instead of the next day. She went on to say that I had to be at the airport for check-in at 8 am. I looked at Brad and he looked at me. I looked at the clock. It was just after 7am. I had an hour to pack my bags, shower, shave, and get to the airport. The airport was a 45-minute drive away on a good day, but the morning rush hour was soon to start. Me at the airport checking in ….in 45 minutes? Wasn’t going to happen. I gave the phone to my friend Brad and told him to tell her that I couldn’t make it. He put me back on the line and she yelled, “Get yourself together, boy! You’re going to northern Iraq!”
I turned to my friends and said that I needed to lie down. Could they wake me in half an hour? I put my head down and they woke me up almost immediately.
“So I’m not dreaming — this is really happening?”
“Yep,”
I packed my bag, a big military-style Bergen that I had just spent two months carrying across Borneo, hopped in the car and went to sleep while Diane and Brad drove me to the airport. I arrived 15 minutes after the plane should have taken off , but as fate would have it, it had been delayed with mechanical trouble for a couple of hours at least. I said my good-byes and checked in. I flew down to Sydney and then had an hour in the transit lounge before I got the connecting flight to Canberra. In that time I started to sober up. One realisation became particularly disconcerting: I wasn’t wearing any shoes. I had somehow lost them on the plane.
This realisation led to the next one, i.e., that I had really fucked up. I was going for a job interview wearing a white singlet with a mural of a crocodile eating a fisherman, which I had bought in Cairns, and board shorts with a big picture of Bill Marley on them, which I had scored in Bali. I was also reeking of alcohol, hadn’t shaved since the previous afternoon and was obviously barefoot.
I began to get a queasy feeling in my stomach, not all of it attributable to the beer I had consumed the previous night. Memories of a good friend who had got on the piss the night before a big presentation to the board of an ASX-listed company for a new workplace safety training campaign began to creep into my mind. Rather than getting a big promotion and kudos, he had got a kick up the arse and the sack for turning up drunk and mumbling incoherently for 15 minutes. He was now peddling paint thinner door to door. I always felt a bit guilty about that since I was one of the guys he was partying with when he got hammered the night before…cest la vie.
I resolved to explain the situation as soon as I arrived: I had been told a flight would be ready for Tuesday, not Monday, so I had gone out to celebrate with friends, and the last-minute change hadn’t allowed me time to get ready. All of this was true. After landing in Canberra I caught a cab to the CARE office. I turned up to the reception desk with my backpack, singlet, Bill Marley shorts and no shoes. I was really sick by this stage. The receptionist didn’t seem surprised to see me, and my appearance didn’t seem to shock her. I noticed a couple of hobos walking down the corridors. I found out later that they were part of my team for Iraq.
I was told to sit in a room, and the receptionist ordered a cup of coffee for me. In walked a man called Philippe. He looked like a Filipino Clark Kent, but it turned out he was Colombian. He asked me about my mum and dad and asked if I got on with my sister. I was really hung-over and was trying to be as congenial as possible, but all I wanted to do was explain my situation and go to bed. Philippe got up and left and the coffee girl came in.
“Congratulations on your interview! You’ve been hired!”
I knew I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk.
“Ah, I don’t think I’ve had it yet,” I said, scratching my head.
“Oh yes. That was it, with Philippe.”
“What? Could you send him back in, please?” The ensuing conversation went something like:
“Where are you sending me again?”
“Iraq.”
“Um-m-m, what’s it like?”
“I think it’s cold.”
“Well then, I’d better pack a cardigan.” Said only half jokingly.
“Ha!” he laughed. “I’ve got to go now.” And off he went.
My mind started racing. I think I’ve gotten myself in the shit here. The guy hiring me knew less about the job than I did. It didn’t portend well for the future. I had never had a briefing like that before. In the military you have a systematic briefing that follows a standard format at all levels, and at the end of it, everyone knows the what, where and why of your mission. I had never met anyone hiring someone who was so unfamiliar with the job that person would be doing. The receptionist gave me the address of a hotel I had been booked into, and I checked in at around 11 am. I went to sleep and woke up at 7 am the next day. I woke up thinking I had had this really weird dream which saw me catching airplanes and travelling all over the countryside.
Then I realised that I didn’t recognise where I was. It soon dawned on me that the dream had really happened. It was Tuesday morning, I was in Canberra and in about 24 hours I would be departing for Iraq.
I wrote down the wheres, whys and hows I needed answered. I didn’t know what I would be doing when I arrived or even why I was going. Why was anyone going to Iraq? The region had fallen out of the news since the end of the Gulf War, as I have said, and I had no idea what a team would be doing over there. The phone rang and Ian said he would pick me up in an hour. I got ready, or at least started to, when I looked inside my trusty Bergen and realised that as well as no shoes, I also didn’t have any clothes. Diane had done my washing for me on the Sunday afternoon and my stuff was still on the clothesline back in Brisbane. No shoes, no clothes — and no idea of what I was supposed to be doing. This had disaster written all over it.
I had a spare T-shirt and boardies at the bottom of my backpack. They were no less lairy than the pair I had been wearing, but they didn’t smell as bad. I put on my clean T-shirt and clean shorts and then found a pair of slippers in the closet that looked wearable. When Ian arrived, I told him that I was broke and could I get an advance so I could buy some gear for the trip? He agreed.
With Janet in the car, we chatted about what I had been doing since the last time we had spoken, probably five years earlier, about my mum and dad, and other stuff. I mentioned Iraq, and Ian suggested I ask the other team members, as they had had a briefing and had answers to all my questions. We reached the office and someone took me on a tour to show me around. The tour finished and I ended up back with Ian again when someone interrupted us to brief him on his upcoming radio interview on the ABC. Somalia was just hitting the news, and CARE had a big ad campaign going. A girl gave him a draft speech, and he asked how much a certain government agency gave to CARE.
“Around two million,” the girl replied.
Ian wrinkled his forehead, and muttered, “Fuck, is that all?
The girl nodded.
“Better make it four mill for the radio show, eh?”
The girl made an alteration with a pen, and Ian said he’d get the speech from her later.
Ian excused himself and went off to his office leaving me to my own devices. I tried finding someone in the office who could brief me on Iraq. No-one I asked knew anything about it — some people didn’t even know CARE was sending a team there. I received a cheque to cash and was getting ready to go to a nearby camping store when I heard a guy in reception talking about Iraq. He was a very big man, about 50 years of age, and looked like an ex-rugby second-rower. I introduced myself and asked him if he knew anything about Iraq, saying I had heard it was cold.
His raised eyebrow indicated he wasn’t too thrilled to be wasting his time with my queries, but he told me his name. Eventually he would be nicknamed “Rommel” by the rest of the team, so for the purposes of the story, we will stick with that nome de guerre. He said, “Damn right it’s cold! Iraq has brutal winters. You’ll need thermal underwear, thick and thin.”
He mentioned another type of winter clothing which I didn’t catch. He talked about a ‘300 version’, but said it was better to get a 100 and a 200, so that you could take one off if you got too hot. He rattled off a whole bunch of other stuff that it was essential for me to have. I wrote it all down. He lived nearby and offered to take me to the airport the next day. We had to fly to Sydney first before leaving for Amman, Jordan. I agreed to help him carry a number of personal computers, nearly 20, which were to be taken along with us on the mission. Rommel at this early stage was very helpful in his briefing, and I found out he was an ex-army Colonel who had only recently retired. I thought it interesting that I, an ex-private, would now be working shoulder to shoulder with an ex-Colonel.
The next 24 hours were spent buying equipment and preparing for the trip. I bumped into a couple of other team members at camping stores or at the CARE office. They were all equally as fashion-challenged and young as me, and none of them really knew what we were going to be doing. Everyone said that we would get a briefing in Amman. Checking in was more eventful than it needed to be. Rommel thought we should all meet as a group before checking in. So there we were together, with this huge pile of laptop computers. Rommel was wearing a CARE cap and T-shirt, which brought a couple of curious onlookers over to us, but no other CARE staff.
At this point I didn’t even know how many people were on the team.
Rommel and I finally got on board the flight to Sydney. Somehow we identified a few CARE people also on the flight and managed to offload some of the laptops onto them. We arrived in Sydney and headed to our connecting flight with Royal Jordanian Air. I still had half a dozen laptops over my shoulders and eventually the customs people believed my story that yes, they were for personal use and no, they weren’t all mine. After getting onto the Amman-bound flight I went straight to sleep. I was desperately tired and still a little hung over. I was awakened during the flight by a bubbly bloke who was called Sicilian Joe. He was sitting down the back of the plane with the rest of the team. That was when I started to realise that there were a lot of us on this trip. It transpired that we actually numbered 25, all sitting in different sections of the plane.
We mingled, each of us trying to meet as many of the others as possible, and discovered that we were a great cross-section of people. There were a couple of Army Colonels and Majors, a whole bunch of university students, most of whom hadn’t finished their studies, and some other people with various private industry qualifications. Most of the team came from Canberra, but there were a couple from Melbourne — and in all only five women. I was the only ex-private. Everyone had different skills, we were all different ages, and we all seemed to get on great.
We stopped over in Singapore for a few hours and, surprisingly, no-one hit the bars during the few free hours we had — me, because I was still hung-over, and everyone else, because they knew we were travelling to an Islamic country and they didn’t want to get arrested on arrival. When we arrived in Amman, we were greeted by an Egyptian named Farouk. He took us to the taxi stand so that we could all pile into a couple of cabs. Then he briefed the drivers on where to take us. All of the taxis were brand new Mercedes Benz cars. I pondered the standards of living in a country where all the taxis were Mercedes Benzes. It turned out that only the airport taxis were Mercs; the usual Mazdas and Toyotas made up the rest when you were actually in the city itself.
The drive from the airport to our hotel was great. The airport in Amman is about 30 ks or so outside the city, so you get a nice high-speed drive through the desert before you hit the town. I tried talking to the driver, who looked like the quintessential Bedouin, complete with robes and distinctive Arabic headdress. He didn’t speak much English and I spoke even less Arabic, but he seemed keen to have a bit of a chat, and I enjoyed the drive immensely. .
We arrived at one of two different hotels which had been booked for us. One hotel was called the “Sandrock”, while my hotel was called….. something else…. The group staying at the Sandrock weren’t very happy with it, and there was a litany of complaints. I thought my hotel was fine. It was nicely air-conditioned and had a room with cable TV and a small bar fridge. I was surprised, to be honest, at the complaints about the hotels, which began almost immediately. A couple of other people were also surprised that there had been griping about the standards of accommodation. There was a view that we should have been staying at a hotel like the Sheraton or the Hilton. To me that seemed a little extreme until — we discovered that the room rate for our two little hotels wasn’t much lower than what was being charged by one of the bigger luxury chains.
After we had checked in at the hotels, we were told to report to the CARE office, which was around the corner. Farouk the Egyptian gave us some very specific directions to the office and a helpful map, which most people reviewed studiously prior to leaving. We sucked in the brisk fresh air, affected an air of joie de vivre and strode forth confidently into the streets of Amman.
Before long, we realised we were lost. Farouk’s clear instructions didn’t seem to be so clear after all. Several prominent landmarks that existed on Farouk’s map didn’t exist in reality… and other quite noticeable ones were not on his map. We all arrived late, which led Farouk to chastise the whole group in front of the local CARE staff. From that moment on, whenever Farouk’s name was mentioned, it was always preceded by an adjective referring to the act of sexual intercourse beginning with “f” .
I found several things about Amman quite surprising: firstly, that it was so cold (we had arrived at the beginning of the snowy season) and secondly, that it was quite hilly. It was definitely a city we found very easy to get lost in. Even at this early stage in our adventure, it was obvious that there were some interesting personalities and dynamics amongst the group. Rommel at this stage was doing all the talking for everybody, but a couple of subversives within the group had decided to actively undermine his authority. They obviously thought Rommel was a bit of a dill and weren’t shy letting him know about it.
As for me, a recently discharged private, I was still slightly in awe of Rommel and the other ex-Army Officers. It was going to be interesting having a bunch of civilians working alongside a number of recently retired mid-level army officers. During the taxi trip to the hotel and the walk to the office, we had become experts on Arabic culture(!) and it seemed obvious that there were going to be some differences between the locals and a few of our group. I got the feeling that some of the latter might have graduated from the “Sir Les Paterson school of cultural understanding and etiquette”.
To the Australians, the locals seemed to talk in riddles. Whenever they answered a question, they would start by telling you a story, one that began with, “Before such and such…”. The storyteller would then meander around the recent events of his life, his family and their camel before answering your question. While charming in many ways, this custom could be highly annoying, particularly when the question required a simple yes or no answer… For example: