Really a shame that we had to go to Aqaba to interview "Q" (not his real name), an important figure from the Iran-Iraq war and Gulf War I days. Aqaba lies on the Red Sea coast. The King has a palace here. It's beautiful and about 40 degrees C on the beach. (we are cooking but it's not as hot as Baghdad will be)
On Friday afternoon, after a 4-hour busride through mostly barren desert, I meet "P" -- a close relative of Q -- at the bar of the Movenpick, currently the only five-star hotel in town. The Saudis have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the tourist industry here. Soon the town will be extended deep into the desert valley beyond.
P says that Q is under the weather and needs to rest today. Then we talk casually for an hour or so. P tells me about meeting Uday Hussein before the first Gulf War. Uday was a truly dim-witted man whose head became so full of blandishments and praise from those around him that he started thinking he was invincible. "In Iraq he was but put him in a bar room brawl anywhere else and he'd be on the floor in a second, begging for mercy."
Halfway through our conversation, P waves to a man in a dark blue suit and sunglasses who has just entered the hotel. "Palace security," he says. "Someone from the palace must be here. Either that or this guy's on vacation." I was told by the barkeep -- Issa or "Jesus" -- that about 20 percent of those staying in the hotel were secret police.
After awhile P has to go, but not before he's told me enough stories about his visits to Iraq with Q to make my head spin.
"Call tonight. Perhaps you can see Q tomorrow," he says. That's OK. We need to catch up on sleep. Only we have checked into the Radisson Sas which is hosting a huge techno-dance party on the beach below which shakes the building until the wee hours. Q's driver comes for us at 10 a.m. Saturday and takes us to a newly built apartment complex, built for the engineers in Q's new business. Q looks tired but welcomes us warmly from his chair. P is there too. We talk about !@#$ and ##!$# and #!@#% and other things not blogable -- Q has lived many lifetimes in one -- and then he orders shwarmas. He tells us he knows where the Weapons of Mass Destruction are in Iraq. "He had them alright, but they were all destroyed in this place @#@ kilometers @#$# of Baghdad." We ask where exactly, in which place. "Ohh," he signs. "You journalists, always wanting something, always using this." He taps his nose. Soon he is fast asleep in his chair, like Old Brown the wise owl in Squirrel Nutkin. So we watch Larry King Live with P. Larry is interviewing Victoria Gotti, in her first interview since her father's death. We leave titilated but with nothing solid, except for the shwarmas swirling in our maadooteht.
We've missed the last bus to Amman. Another night in Aqaba. That means it's beach time. The water has a weighty silkiness to it that feels like a thermal bath treatment. It lulls me into a happy stupor as I bob in the water. Then I look up to see huge cargo ships and oil tankers which loom in the harbor not more than 150 yards away. Then I wonder if the water has something extra in it to give it such silky body... Jordan, by the way, had been 100% dependant on Saddam for its oil supply before the war -- in April the Saudis and Kuwaitis offered to supply the Kingdom with enough oil for three months and the port of Aqaba became much busier, since all the Iraqi oil had been trucked in. At night we can see the not-so-distant lights of Eilat, the Israeli port. And in the morning the streets are lined with unusually cheerful soldiers toting submachine guns -- supposedly because a palace VIP is due to drive by. We catch the earliest bus back to Amman.