Baghdad Journal

Crossing the border

"The rules have changed!" bellows the portly Jordanian guard, and now, it seems, we are not getting through the first checkpoint at the border. Our vehicle's papers are good for transit to Saudi Arabia, but not Baghdad. The rules changed today, and the guard can't believe how many people have arrived at the border without a clue. He gesticulates angerly, his bright green eyes flashing, as our driver, in supplication, follows him around and around our GMC Suburban. The guard is having none of it. He takes a look at us, foreigners sitting wide eyed in the back seat. Our driver tells him we are Germans, which doesn't make him any happier. He storms off, back to his kiosk.

Adam and I have the sinking feeling that we will have to go back to Amman. Ramem, our driver, gets on his cell phone to the office. The papers arrived today, but too late to take with him. This explanation further upsets the guard. But Ahmed, the other passenger in the GMC with us, has an idea. He asks for our passports. We oblige. As we discovered during the ride from Amman to the border, Ahmed used to play center for the Iraqi national basketball team and now, as an Iraqi exile in Lebanon, coaches for a regional team. Nearly 7 feet tall with massive shoulders, Ahmed approaches the green-eyed guard. And after a moment of discussion, the guard, Ahmed, the driver Ramem and a score of others, march back to the GMC. The guard then hands our passports back to us with a long, heated explanation in Arabic, which we duly record on Minidisc. All the while, we nod and say our Shokrans at the end even though we only understand a word or two. But we are very surprised to hear afterwards from Ahmed that our vehicle has been cleared to travel to Baghdad.
The guard apparently was telling us -- I'm not sure if he saw me holding the microphone or not -- that it was the driver's fault and not the Jordanian government's for the delay and that we should be sure and write about the fact it was the Jordanian Government that solved the matter forthwith.
What did you tell him? we ask Ahmed.
I said that first, you are in fact Americans and, it not need be said, allies to the Kingdom of Jordan. Not only that, but I told him you are important sahifien, journalists, who would hate to have to report that the Jordanian government obstructed you from doing your very critical work in Iraq.
Ahmed, who is also a devout Muslim as well as a basketball coach, tells us earlier that the laws of man are flawed. You have a man who makes the laws and he injects all his personality, character into it, Ahmed says from the front seat toying with his black worry beads. And then in 20 years another man comes and does the same again and again and again, all the way from the days of Hammurabi. This is why you must follow the laws of god, for they never change, because, unlike man, the personality of god is perfection.