My Life As... Aparisim "Bobby" Ghosh

By Michael Kelly
SBU J-School Reporter

Other Coverage

The lights dimmed in Stony Brook’s SAC auditorium and a video played showing a reporter traveling by car in a Baghdad neighborhood, in an area called the “Red Zone.” Shortly after the video begins, the reporter warns that the “longer we are here, the more we are exposed” and prone to an attack. He puts the camera down, saying that the camera could attract unwanted attention.

Seconds later, shots are fired near the car.

The video, entitled “Life in the Red Zone,” was made by Aparisim “Bobby” Ghosh, who served as Time magazine’s bureau chief in Baghdad for more than four years before recently becoming the magazine’s first non-American to hold the position of World editor. Ghosh used the video to start off his turn in an Oct. 25 installment of the School of Journalism’s series, “My Life As…”

Ghosh said that after spending so much time in Baghdad since the war started, he had concluded that the best way to judge the progress in Iraq is to watch the airports. Every day, he said, five or six planes leave Baghdad completely filled with Iraqi citizens.

“They’re taking everything they can carry and have no intention of coming back,” Ghosh said.

Ghosh detailed the difficulty in being a war correspondent in a situation as chaotic as the one in Baghdad. He said that each day began with his team and him detailing their plan for the day, where they would go to and how to keep safe. He explained how he would interview anyone who would talk to him and ask all sorts of questions because of his uncertainty whether the person would be alive at a later time to talk to again.

Ghosh said that there is a “systematic killing” by insurgents of Iraqis who help Americans in any way. “Any Iraqi working with foreigners is fair game,” he said.

He explained how reporters live in a “sense of denial” in Iraq, denial that they themselves will ever get hurt. He said that after spending time in Iraq, reporters come to grips with what goes on there. The families of war correspondents in Iraq have no such ability, he said.

“You adjust yourself to it,” Ghosh said. “Your family doesn’t have that luxury.”

Ghosh said that he would talk to his wife “eight or nine times a day,” and they would have a meal together once a day via webcam, albeit different webcams; Ghosh having lunch in Baghdad, and his wife having dinner in Singapore.

Ghosh also explained that because of the turbulent nature of Iraq, reporters now call home first, rather than calling their editors, when they are near an explosion. They need to let their families know “I may be near that, but I’m OK.” The advent of so many 24-hour news channels led to this change. Families could see horrible events on their televisions almost immediately and would worry for their family member’s safety.

But this is a double-edged sword, Ghosh noted. Sometimes, his family might see an explosion or another horrible event on the news, but he is not near it. In such a situation, he doesn’t call home, leaving his family worried for his safety.

“They’re helpless,” he said.

The constant carnage and turmoil in Baghdad forced Ghosh to make decisions about when he is a journalist who is there to observe and report and when he is a civilian and should help those in need. He outlined one situation in which he decided to try to help those around him, a situation that he admitted he still has nightmares about.

A car bomb had gone off, killing about 100 people. He explained how he just stood there for a few seconds, shocked, as almonds and walnuts rained down on him from a shop that had been near the explosion. Then he was splattered with blood.

“We were able to save one or two people,” he said, by pulling them from the wreckage. As they pulled out these people, he saw a small hand in the wreckage and swore he saw it move.

He remembered saying to those around him, “The hand is moving. The child is alive.” As they pulled the child out, a boy, they soon realized that the boy was already dead.

“At that moment, journalism could not be further from my mind,” he said.