Critics of the reporting coming out of Iraq have long shown themselves unafraid of shouting from the highest rooftops when they see a story relating “bad” news. But not every story filed from Baghdad is full of blood and carnage.
Consider one story that ran in last Thursday’s New York Times. It tells of the Habayibna restaurant in the heart of the extremely volatile Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, in Baghdad. In spite of a string of attacks at or near the beloved establishment — including a car bomb in May 2005 that killed 19 customers and wounded 99 — Iraqis are, literally, willing to risk life and limb to eat the restaurant’s signature plate of chicken, okra and rice.
The article is as hopeful a story as we’re likely to get out of Mesopotamia these days — a sign of resilient people intent on living their lives, despite the mayhem. But as we found out the other day at a small talk given at the Committee to Protect Journalists by Dexter Filkins, until recently the Times‘ Baghdad bureau chief, there’s plenty more to the article than what appeared in newsprint.
Filkins had this to say about picking up the paper last Thursday and seeing the story:
“There was a story today in our paper that was actually, it was nice to read, it was a restaurant, a little scene in a restaurant, and I was just thinking because I’ve been there, how many days it took to set up that story. You know, they probably … I mean they had to find it for one thing, and they had to go there ahead of time. I’m sure they had to negotiate with the Mahdi army, which basically controls Sadr City. They probably had to put armed guards at each end of the street. They had to do it very carefully. You probably didn’t have a lot of time there, go in and get out, and they lived!”
In almost every way, Filkins’ musings paint quite a different picture than the one we get from the story of the conditions under which the journalists were working. The article contains a handful of quotes from customers, the staff, and a leisurely perusal of what is on everyone’s plate. It does not evoke the feeling of a journalist, covered by twitchy armed guards on a closed-off street, darting in for a few harried minutes, wrapped in a cumbersome flak jacket.
It’s a small reminder that even the most innocuous stories out of Iraq are incredibly dangerous and difficult to get. The work of journalists toiling under these conditions should not be taken for granted.
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.