‘One of the mythologies about Iraq is that if the Americans left tomorrow everything would be fine. But one of the first things you realise when you get here is that if the Americans pulled out tomorrow, Iraq would not be fine. It is almost a certainty that if the US were to withdraw now, civil war would intensify.
‘There is a real problem in Iraq of an insurgency out of control and a sectarian violence unleashed. Both the Iraqis and the Americans feel that, in the time they have left, they have to do what they can to fix what the demonic forces have unleashed here, and are sincerely working towards trying to achieve that.’
She really did speak at that length, and with that fluency and intensity. She said, ‘This is history. If you’re a journalist, you want to witness history being made. If it’s a branch of journalism you’re interested in – and for me it’s been the only one I’ve really ever been compulsively interested in – then you have to come here. You know, you really do get fed up reading blogs written by people who’ve never been to Iraq. Blogs really irritate.’
And then she said, ‘You never know when the chance to do the things you really want to do may not be there. So you have to seize every moment like it’s your last. Even a long life is so short. There’s so much to learn and so much to explain. Sleep’s for pussies.’
I asked her whether she was still experiencing trauma from last year, when Palestinians kidnapped her husband, cameraman Olaf Wiig, and held him captive for two weeks in a secret location. She said, ‘Who knows? I don’t have time to go and talk to anybody about that. Your guess is as good as mine.’
Had she not wanted to think about it? ‘I haven’t wanted to stay still. The after-effect for me was a tremendous restlessness. The questions I always had in the back of my mind became really clamorous. And the need to find answers to them became overwhelming. So here I am.’
Her fluency had left her. I wondered out loud that even though Wiig had been released a year ago, the whole trauma of it would have been damaging. This was the closest I got to asking her about rumours that her marriage had collapsed. She said, ‘The achievement of the freedom was wonderful. I probably lack the words to express how good that day was. But an experience like that marks and changes and touches everyone. None of us are the same.’
Was her husband the same? She said, ‘You’d have to ask him.’
Anita, I asked, how are you? ‘I feel engaged. Very engaged. I feel well-deployed. I feel I’m doing what I should be doing, and doing what I always wanted to do.’ She said, ‘It’s a privilege.’
[August 26]
13 Garth McVicar
Fatal Shore
Friday in Napier was the kind of day – warm as toast, the sky as blue as the sea – that made you suspect all of Hawke’s Bay is the winterless east. August was posing as February. There were palm trees and pied stilts; there was the smell of fresh paint and the promise of a drink at sunset. It made you feel good to be alive. I spent the morning with Garth McVicar, and talked about death.
A short man, fifty-six, fit, merry, with a pleasant smile and a relaxed walk, McVicar was gearing up for the Advancing Victims’ Rights conference at the War Memorial Centre. Victim workshops; panels with judges and police; opening and closing addresses by McVicar as head of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, that vocal, scornful lobby group that has sometimes caught and often shaped the public mood. The conference marks another opportunity for the trust to set out its popular stall: get tough on crime, recognise the suffering and rights of victims.
Napier, the crime-fighting capital of New Zealand? It’s where the trust has its headquarters, working from offices that include a four-legged tub in the bathroom. McVicar claimed he was signing up fifty new members every day. He never puts a figure on membership; he said on Friday, ‘It’s in the thousands.’ Who are they? He said, ‘Generation Y are busy, busy people. So to be honest the majority of our members would be the grey brigade.’ He said he had one hundred and ten speaking engagements on his books. Where are they? ‘The RSA, Lions, Rotary, Grey Power …’
He gets through to the media (‘I was driving into Tauranga when I first heard about the abuse of Nia Glassie, so I immediately rang ZB and Radio Live and put out our comments’); he ‘drives public awareness’. McVicar recently returned from Arizona with a vision. He travelled there to inspect the state’s famous tent prisons – inmates sleeping in tents, working on chain-gangs, denied coffee, salt, cigarettes and mustard.
It pained him to compare these tents with the luxury accommodation provided by New Zealand prisons. ‘I just can’t understand why we haven’t got more people lining up to get in. Why wouldn’t you? If you want your tattoos removed, go to prison. You want your teeth done, go to prison.’ Tent prisons were basic. Even better, they were cheap. He said: ‘It’s what New Zealand needs. You’ve got to look at the cost. To build a prison to hold 650 inmates is about $52 million. You could probably build a tent prison for $250,000.’
Where would you chuck it? ‘Middle of the Desert Road where it’s a long way to walk if you want to escape.’
And put inmates to hard labour? ‘Hard work,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked hard. I had calluses on my hands before I started the trust. That’s what makes you an honest, contributing member
