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followed quickly by, “And what are you carrying?”
I hesitated, but just for an instant.
“Food,” I said. “Food for the children. And medicine, too.”
By the way, there was certainly some medicine on board, and a few cans
of tuna as well, so I wasn’t straight-out lying, but in life you have tough
decisions to make.
“Very well then,” the warship captain said. “Off you go, and be safe. It’ll
be dangerous.”
With that the warship gently drifted out of sight and into the night.
After that the rebels and crew were quite fond of Rick and me and didn’t
stop giving us cheers and hugs.
We kept going and in another five hours we could see the lights of
Misrata up ahead, and that is when we realized we were heading into a war.
We stood on deck and watched the shells exploding in the city and we
understood Gaddafi was bombing the hell out the place. Rick and I braced for
what was coming next, which, at that point, was completely unknown to us.
Once again we had no set plans, no real course of action once we landed in
Misrata. We were just going to reach shore and start moving inland. You
know, get in any car.
The rebels on the ship invited us to join them, and we were driven to a
rebel safe house somewhere in the bombed-out center of Misrata. There were
about a dozen or so other journalists there, including Marie Colvin, the
indefatigable American who’d lost an eye covering the Sri Lankan Civil War
and now went into war zones with a black eye patch and even more resolve.
To Rick and me she was a hero, one of the top stars of the business. When we
finally got the chance, we went over to chat and ask for any advice. Marie
was gruff but hugely generous.
“Stick with the rebels, move with them,” she told us. “And always have a
base to come back to.” It was half pep talk, half invaluable tips, and finding
Marie there in this perilous battle zone was exhilarating and inspirational. For
Rick and me, it was also an affirmation that we were where we needed to be.
Less than a year later, Marie Colvin was in the Baba Amr district of
Homs, Syria, covering a battle between the Syrian military and rebel forces
when she was killed by Syrian artillery fire. She and other journalists in
Homs believed they had been targeted, and were planning an exit strategy
just hours before Colvin and photojournalist Rémi Ochlik were killed.
One day not long after we got to Misrata, I met a Belgian freelance