February 06, 2005

Wrong side of the fence

As I mentioned in the last entry I've been meeting a local hire at one of the checkpoints. We realized the other day that the 14th of July Bridge checkpoint is both closer to our camp and to his house so we figured we'd try it instead.

At the first checkpoint, the procedure is that I walk out the side marked "exit" and about 3/4ths the way (~75 yards) through the checkpoint I meet Mohammed and walk him back in the side marked "entrance".

So I pull up to the new bridge/checkpoint, ask the guard what the procedure is, and he says to park my car here, on the right side of the bridge, and walk across, just follow the signs. No problem. I park the car and start walking across the bridge, on the right hand side, though I can't help feel pretty exposed walking across the Tigris. The signs say "do not leave sidewalk". Pretty much every sign here is followed with "deadly force authorized" so I follow them much more than back home.

I get to the other side of the bridge, walk past a 15' tall guard/gun tower with two guards in it, and past a barricade, and ... I'm in the Red Zone. Shit. I'm outside the GZ. I turn to go back in and the sign says "do not enter or you will be shot" in English and Arabic. K... I'm standing in downtown Baghdad, cars whizzing by, sticking out like a sore thumb.

I look for the entrance, it's on the other side of the traffic circle and there is a barrier running down the median so I have to walk *farther* into the RZ to get to it. Shit. No PSD's. No car. On foot. In downtown Baghdad. There has to be a better way. I look back at the guard tower with the machine guns sticking out of it, and thankfully a soldier inside waves me back. I approach, with my hands in plain view, past the sign that says I will be shot, and tell him the situation. He says to walk behind his tower to the opposite side of the bridge. I do, jogging across a dirt field, this takes me to another tower, again, hands out, explain the situation, told to walk behind his tower too ... and I'm back in the GZ.

What happened was I walked over on the right hand side of the bridge, the side on which I parked, and then the signs said do not leave sidewalk so I never thought of crossing to the left. I should have walked over on the left side of the bridge and this wouldn't have happened. Well, military zones aren't exactly idiot proof and there was no way I could have known which side to walk on ahead of time, so I took the one that I parked on. Also, at each checkpoint, you are intentionally in a maze of barriers that you can't see far past, so no one can see far in, so it's not like you can see the whole thing ahead of time. Quite the morning adrenaline rush.

Anyway, I met my guy and we walked back. All's well that ends well. I leave tomorrow; I'm seriously considering not going outside between now and then.

Posted by rick at February 6, 2005 02:11 AM