I sat in the middle of the rowboat, the strap of my portable Toshiba slung diagonally across my chest. It was the summer of 1991 on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Saddam Hussein's forces were fighting the Kurdish Peshmerga, and the Peshmerga were fighting each other. As the oars lapped the Tigris river, my greatest fear was that the boat would capsize; I'm a good swimmer, but I didn't want to lose my computer. I clutched the machine, determined to protect it from the green waters.
The Kurdish gunmen who met me on the Iraqi shore instinctively understood that the Toshiba is a journalist's lifeline. Gesturing at their own Kalashnikovs, which they wore in exactly the same fashion as I wore my computer, they laughed and called me a sahafi Peshmerga - a Peshmerga journalist.
Northern Iraq falls into the category of places with no functioning international telephone system. Unless you have your own satellite telephone, your only hope of filing copy by computer is to find a UN or international aid agency or television network willing to let you use theirs.
This was also the case the last time I visited Baghdad, Baku, Goma, Khartoum and Mogadishu. In a way it is a blessing to know that the local phone system is a dead loss. You don't waste precious hours dismantling hotel phones and splicing wires with crocodile clips, experimenting with pulse and tone transmissions and different speeds on the computer.
Damascus, Algiers and Tehran are in between; cities where somehow, eventually, through trial and error you will - often after hours - get through on the computer. One helpful hint: if you can't get through on your hotel room phone, try the fax line.
You often have to bribe the hotel receptionist to let you use it, especially after business hours. International fax lines are direct, whereas room phones have to make that extra little jump to get an outside line.
One of my worst computer experiences was in Mogadishu when the US Marines landed there in December 1993. Some kind colleague let me use a satellite phone on the roof of the hotel, and I didn't bother to shelter under a tarpaulin. After collecting my email I went downstairs to write, only to discover that the sunshine had destroyed the liquid crystal display on my computer screen. About two thirds of every letter was invisible, and I had a 2,000-word article to write. I muddled through somehow, but I will never expose a laptop screen to that sort of sun again.
The mobile telephone has transformed journalism. When the Israelis bombarded a UNIFIL battalion headquarters at Cana, southern Lebanon, killing 106 refugees in April 1996, journalists who arrived on the massacre site within minutes were able to get the story out in front of the Israeli version. Previously, the Israelis had had a near-monopoly on breaking news in southern Lebanon.
We still had to drive back to Beirut to write on our laptops and file, but in the meantime we talked to radio stations around the world. Since then it has become possible to send data over mobiles - and therefore for journalists to file copy. Shortly before leaving for Belgrade on March 24th last, I bought an Ericsson "mobile office" kit that would allow me to send text files over my mobile. The instruction booklet and diskettes looked daunting, and for my first two days under bombardment I dictated my articles over the telephone to Irish Times copy-takers in Dublin. On the Saturday morning I finally had time to ponder the instructions.
Technology is not my strong point, and I approached the task with a mixture of dread and determination. On the off chance that it might work without loading any disks into my laptop, I
swapped the voice chipcard in my mobile for a data one, swapped the landline modem in my laptop for the Ericsson mobile office card, hooked up the cables and called our Dublin computer. To my amazement and joy, it worked the first time. For most of the rest of the war, I was able to file through the mobile.
The NATO bombardments, however, made the mobile somewhat unreliable. When the system was working, the little screen on the phone said, "YUG MOBTEL"; the "mob" seeming humorously appropriate in a country blighted by mafia. But as the war went on, the screen often posted a disheartening "NO NETWORK", especially outside of Belgrade.
On the night of April 3rd, NATO destroyed a bridge in Novi Sad that carried all of the telephone lines to western Europe. Because the mobile stations are ultimately plugged into landlines, it was impossible to telephone Dublin. Finally we discovered that the lines to the east - to Russia, Greece and Cyprus - went through Romania and were not damaged. I was able to write my report on the laptop and dictate it to a journalist friend in Cyprus, who entered it on his own computer and sent it by email to The Irish Times.
The greatest moment of panic in the whole war occurred when a colleague accidentally locked the mobile. As a protective measure, the phone locks if the wrong PIN number is entered too many times. It sulks and demands a "PUK" (personal unblocking key) number before it will work again. My voice chip still worked, so I telephoned every France Telecom number I had, as the mobile subscriptions are French. After 45 minutes of desperate appeals to French technicians who weren't interested in helping - and nearing my deadline - one of my calls was forwarded to an office in Belfort, eastern France.
As darkness fell over Belgrade, a Monsieur Clerc patiently gave me the codes to unblock the chip. I am forever grateful.