Reporting from the frontlines

BULLETS AND BYLINES
From the Frontiers of Kabul, Delhi, Damascus and Beyond
Shyam Bhatia
Speaking Tiger
248 pages; Rs 599

A cold, nauseating bus journey from Kabul to Kandahar is suddenly interrupted by a group of mujahidins - armed and paid for by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and working under the command of student leader-turned-politician Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who would later go on to become the prime minister of Afghanistan, albeit briefly. One by one, 35 passengers of the bus are questioned and then clinically shot dead. Finally, the 36th passenger, the last one, is called out. Dressed in a shirt, tie, blazer and a jacket, he is different from the others. As the mujahidin hit him across his face, he shouts out: "British journalist."

Through this chilling beginning of his book, Bullets and Bylines: From the Frontiers of Kabul, Delhi, Damascus and Beyond, Shyam Bhatia, the 36th passenger of that ill-fated bus, establishes the dangers that are part of a war reporter's life. As he recounts this encounter that takes place in 1980 during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he also offers an insight into the mind of a conflict reporter even in the face of near-certain death. Would he get out of it alive, he wonders sitting in the bus as his fellow passengers are being killed. Would his body ever be found? If he does survive, what kind of a story would he write? What would the intro be?

Bullets and Bylines is a seldom-heard story of a story-teller. It is an account, spanning several decades, of a journalist diligently recording the first draft of history as it plays out in some of the most violent parts of the world during some of their most violent years. And he tries to do so without getting killed in the process, often coming out alive of situations either due to sheer presence of mind or because of sheer luck. In a certain sense, Bullets and Bylines is also a tribute to all those journalists who risk their lives for the sake of telling the story just as it happened.

Every chapter of the book takes the foreign correspondent to a new destination, to a new conflict: from the Russians invading Afghanistan to the aftermath of the assassination of Indira Gandhi, when Mr Bhatia rides a scooter through the burning streets of Delhi to meet Zail Singh, then the president of India; from Egypt, where its so-called ceasefire with Israel is only a thin veil to the deadly covert operations that are conducted below the surface, to the world of the nuclear black market in which A Q Khan is an important player; from Iraq, where his Indian roots come to his rescue and have the Iraqis singing old Bollywood songs, including those from the 1964 Raj Kapoor-Vyjayanthimala starrer Sangam, to the Marsh Arabs, the endangered ethnic Arab inhabitants of the wetland border regions of southern Iraq and Iran, who were waging an armed resistance movement against Saddam Hussein.

The book reads like a thriller, one written by a journalist who has reported from the thick of things and has a strong grip on the history and politics of the times.

Thought the war zones also emerge stories of resilience, pride and, at times, a nonchalant acceptance of the madness of the world. One such example is of the Coin Rouge restaurant in Christian Jezzin in South Lebanon. "As the battle raged in and around this resort the restaurant remained open, still serving its locally caught trout and chilled white wine," writes Mr Bhatia. One day, when Mr Bhatia asks the proprietor what he would do if the bloodied fighters - the Druze, Nasserite, Palestinian and Sunni militias - appeared at the restaurant's doorstep, the man replies: "Oh, I would serve them, just like anyone else, just so long as they could pay."

Bullets and Bylines is also, to some extent, Mr Bhatia's interpretation of the why the world he has reported from is where it is today. His theory is that the wars at the heart of all West Asian conflicts are not just about competing nationalism, as these nations would like the world to believe. They are about competing communities, competing religions being waged by and in countries that are "artificial creations carved out of the defeated Ottoman Empire."

During the course of his journalistic career, Mr Bhatia sees many word leaders, many of whom he once met and interviewed, being killed. He also speaks of the tricky balance a war reporter struggles to maintain between his dangerous profession and his family for whom he must stay alive. As the father of two sons, he is aware of the risks he is taking. But he is also aware of the reality that if he were to think of personal safety, he would never be able to give his job his whole. Every conflict reporter lives with this conflict.