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Letter from Chittagong

How to be a Foreign Correspondent

by S. Bari
A few more cameras slung around the neck. A 111 tie more five o'clock shadow Ixss makeup tin fact, no make up). Shoddier shoes. One or two additional layers of dirt on the T-shirt. Tougher language A copy of a Graham Greene novel, well-thumbed. A large dose of determination (OK. stubbornness) and curiosity (all right, nosiness). Give or lake a few items, get the right proportions, and the foreign corre spondent has hit the ideal image.
That eternally curious nomadic creature is the source of most of our best, attention grabbing news, from the Second Work! War to our modern Cambodias and Gulf wars, from summit talks to volcanoes and earthquakes, the first people to get there and "tell us all about if are tire foreign correspondents. With a nose for disaster and death, they converge on a place like locusts (one hesitates to say vultures' for fear of libel suits). But without them, we would get little first hand reporting from the Nevada del Rutz eruption or the Tet offensive. They hold a power worshipped from primeval time : the power of communication. They are our link with a world we cannot being to grasp on our own. They picture themselves risking their lives for a story, for a photograph. We imagine them risking their Ilves for the truth.
That death-defying daredevil glamour is carefully cultivated by the foreign correspondent. Recently, hordes of Australians. Japanese. Frenchmen. Americans and Englishmen descended on Dhaka and Chittagong to cover the biggest front-page news that week.
They offered a glimpse of the show
and bluster that makes them correspondent material. While scrambling about trying to shoot ftxitage of the devastation, they simultaneously held a running fashion pageant of bizarre taste. Criteria were as follows : to win. you must be the foreign correspondent who has gone for the longest period without washing your clothes. If you arc a woman, your hair must be the messiest. If you arc a man. your beard growth must be at least three days old. You must have a foul mouth, a quick temper, the tenacity of a donkey, and a Swiss Army knife at least 15 years old.
Sexism is another skill which must be perfected. For a lesson from an expert, read on. Walk into the hotel lobby in Cox's Bazar. Sling your bag and cameras down on the sofa with a nonchalant glance at the mud you have tracked in At the desk, eye the woman standing with a large canvas shoulder bag. a camera, notebook and pen. notice her slept-tn clothes and clip-on ID card. Consider the fact that a killer cyclone has battered the area, and that you are both surrounded by a broken wasteland. Then ask slowly. "Are you here on holiday?"
Any self-respecting male corespondent must use this technique to lessen the female threat. If you balk at this method, try the light flirtation routine (example: "You want a ride back to town? Of course I would be thrilled to take a pretty woman with me").
Any woman correspondent is instructed to bristle with feminist outrage (unless it s midnight and there are no cars, trains, ox-carts or helicopters going that way and this is your only offer of a ride).
For the woman, the lesson Is in repartee. "1 bet you won't get a boat out to the islands." says the man. having spent the entire day try ing unsuccessfully to reach the worst-hit areas Traipse off and stick to some senior govern ment official till he will do anything to get ride of you. even land you a boat. When your male colleague loses his bet. his stand will be . "You know why he agreed to give you a boat? Because you're pretty and charming and I'm not." This is your cue to say. "No. it's because I'm a damn good Journalist and you're not."
Search for gore. "No point staying in Chittagong, there are no more bodies left." is the motto. The intrepid foreign correspondent will wade thigh-deep in soft mud to get a shot of a bloated corpse, if ho one else has been there, he or she will wade two kilometres for the shot. If the woman who has lost seven children won’t cry. the correspondent gets upset. News demands melodrama, and breast-beating grief makes better copy than silent, suf-
feeing dignity. When the story is filed, one's first question is. "Is it still front page?" Reader attention on death and misery in any one place is shortlived. If the cyclone is no longer hot. move on. Leave behind the Agrabad Hotel and its tomato soup and ridiculous prices. Fly on to Kurdistan. Flaunt your credentials ("I was in Bagh dad all through": "I went to Bangladeshi Islands where they hadn't seen a living soul for days').
Look down your nose at newcomers. The reader imagines jetting around the glob, multilingual talents, colourful leads, ana spreading the message of the downtrodden to all of those people at the breakfast table with the mdrnfng paper. Never mind the long hours waiting in the fishnet-decorated cafe of the Sayemon Hotel. Never mind die boredom, the hunger pangs, the heat, the relentless sight of pain and devastation. Get the cameras, the leaking pens, the glassy-eyed look right. Remember. the world Is watching you. If you're not dirty enough, they won't believe you nearly drowned In the Bay of Bengal.