Taking the Alternate Route

All efforts our group tried — from being smuggled in a potato truck to hiring a Turkish driver with political connections — were unsuccessful and ate up precious time in the face of fast-moving events.

Fearful of a rapid influx of Kurdish refugees, the Turks closed the border. I could see Iraq but getting there was becoming impossible. The only way to cross the border would be illegal, and on foot.

The direct route, across the Tigris River, was too heavily fortified by Turkish soldiers to be practical. We’d have to take an alternate route, through Syria, which meant we’d now have to cross the Tigris twice, as well as a couple more country borders.

It was either this or go home. But there was no way I was going to miss covering the biggest war in my lifetime.

Then I got a call from photojournalist Chris Hondros, who’d hired a couple of locals to get him across the Tigris directly into Northern Iraq. They’d left him in the river’s muddy banks at the first sign of trouble. With bad cell phone signals, I had no idea where he was. All I could do was erase his text in case I got questioned by Turkish authorities.

Eventually, the guys he hired fetched him back. He was unharmed, but so frustrated (and muddy) that he went to Kuwait to cover the war from there. Hondros would be killed covering the Libyan civil war in 2011.