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November 06, 2003
"I was like a zombie"
I took the opportunity to meet the BBC reporter here today. Jim Muir set up the
office here 4 years ago. The BBC had been kicked out in 1980 and hadn't been allowed back in since then.
Mr. Muir, who was a reporter in Beirut in the 70s and who most recently was assigned to Cairo, is an unassuming man with a dry wit and workaholic tendencies. One gets that way living here because the "weekends," as they fall on Thursdays and Fridays, don't correspond with the weekends in the West, so one is always working. Besides, there's so much news here it's hard not to follow up on stories.
The BBC is housed in a non-descript building in the far northeast of the city, on a tree lined quiet street. It takes up a whole floor of what was once someone's apartment, it looks like. In the office also work Miranda Eeles, a freelance radio journalist and Dan De Luce of the Guardian newspaper, who is actually an American. Mr. Muir also has an assistant. But as he told me, he's always exhausted because he's essentially a one-man band, filing both TV, radio and web reports. And those foreign officials have a nasty habit of dropping into Tehran at 3 AM. Muir says he will probably go back to freelancing because it gets so tiring running the office by himself.
There is also a cameraman, although he's relatively new. All over the office are pictures of Mr. Muir's former cameraman, who was killed in April when he stepped on a land mine getting out of a car in Iraq. Muir was driving--he had a young guide who had said it was OK to drive off the main road to get to a nearby castle they were filming. As Muir's producer stepped out of the car, there was an explosion. Muir and his cameraman thought they were under mortar attack, so they lept out of the car. But it hadn't been mortar fire. The cameraman was instantly killed by multiple mines. The producer had already lost his foot.
I was riveted listening to Muir describe his feelings as he had to not only get his cameraman, who had all his lower extremities blown away, back into the car, and then drive backwards down the road with his producer, who would eventually have his foot amputated. The guide, meanwhile, had run away.
"It was a nightmare," said Muir. "I was like a zombie." He still hasn't gotten over losing his partner, but says he tries not to think too much about the experience, "or I would go mad." Still, when the Rory Peck award was announced recently (for best international cameraperson) and another BBC cameraman who was in Iraq won it, Muir said he thought of his friend and how he easily could have won the award as well, but he was dead. He, too, realizes it was just the luck of the draw that when he dropped to the ground he didn't fall on any mines.
He went into the mine field to retrieve his cameraman because "I didn't have any choice; I wasn't just going to leave him there." I know that Mr. Muir has two children living in Cyprus, where he moved many years ago when he was threatened in Lebanon. I couldn't help but wonder how they felt upon learning of his near miss.
We talked about my fellowship and other fellowships, and it was apparent that Muir could never do such a thing--take off time from his job. Reporting is in his blood, even it that means literally. It was a pleasure to meet him, as the fraternity/sorority of reporters here is quite small.
Posted by MJF at November 6, 2003 07:46 PM