WestMeetsEast

Being a business journalist can make you feel at times intrusive, sycophantic, smart, stupid, righteous, humbled. All these incongruous emotions can be exhausting and confusing. After the hundredth press conference of the latest “innovative cross-platformational customer-expanding experience,” you begin to be jealous of those journalists covering wars and famines.

But no matter how long one has been in the business, most journalists still retain at least a modicum of idealism. It’s usually what got them there in the first place. When that idealism dies out, I’m not sure. I guess it depends on the reporter and the circumstances. And then there are times when that idealism bubbles back to the surface, when you remember with perfect clarity why you do what you do, why you chose this silly profession.

These were my thoughts last month after I shared a Coke with a the head of an ad agency in Qatar, Lebanese national Baher Hayek.

I was in Doha, Qatar, for two days. I knew it wasn’t enough time to absorb much of the city of 300,000 or so, but at the same time, it’s Doha. If you think Dubai is in the middle of nowhere, try visiting Doha. It redefines dull. Long stretches of beige interupted here and there by a shiny tower. Beige sand, beige buildings, beige cars. Doha, ever in the shadow of glitzy Dubai, is trying hard to put its name on the map. With its substantial money it’s building many projects just like Dubai’s. Manmade islands and such. But one of its projects is unprecedented, or so reads the brochure. This was the reason I was in Doha, to interview the heads of 2,400-acre Education City where the likes of Cornell, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon and Virginia Commonwealth University have built full-fledged branch campuses. A worthwhile project, which should make for a decent story, once I write it.

After a full day of touring this mega campus and speaking to more Americans in one day than I did in two and half years in Egypt, I needed something different to do on Day 2. So, as part of my other magazine job, I went around chatting with the heads of local ad agencies, to determine the state of the advertising and marketing industries for a potential. This is when I met Baher.

It was hard to ignore the burn scars on his otherwise typically handsome Lebanese face. About halfway through the interview I stopped and told him I needed to take his photo. He was insistent that I photograph his unscarred, left side. He then casually mentioned that he was the victim of a terrorist attack that took the lives of his two young children. Taken aback a little I told him I how sorry I was and we went back to talking about the immaturity of Qatari companies when it comes to understanding the importance of branding.

At the end of the interview we exchanged cards and said goodbye. At my hotel I settled in at the rooftop bar and grill to kill the next five hours before my flight. In the middle of transcribing one of six tapes, my phone rings. It was Baher. I had left behind a CD of images from the company’s latest campaign. Instead of sending a driver (as is the usual practice), Baher himself shows up at the hotel 15 minutes later with the CD.

We order Cokes and within minutes he’s telling me his life story. I hadn’t asked really, but as is typical in these transient Gulf states, loneliness often goes hand in hand with a big job. Men like Baher, unable to make much money in their own countries, are often recruited to run businesses for the rich oil barons of the Gulf. These battle-bruised execs hail from the poorer and problematic countries like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. These are the smart Arabs that perhaps used to immigrate to the US or UK. Now they are businessmen in the Gulf. And they are usually here alone. It’s rare for them to bring their wives and children along unless the company foots the bill, which was the case when Baher was working in Saudi Arabia from about 1999 to 2004.

He had made some actual roots in Saudi. In a paid-for villa in a secure compound of course, but his house was a real home, full of pictures of his 5-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, furniture, decorations, the works. The compound was full of about 200 families just like his, young Lebanese and Egyptian families doing quite well for themselves. It was known as the compound of the expat Arabs. It also happened to be right in front of the main palace of one of Saudi’s ruling princes.

Around midnight on Nov. 8, 2004, his wife woke to the sound of gunshots. She climbed atop the roof of the two-story villa where she could see the compound’s gate. Here she saw about 20 gunmen shooting at the compound guards. In the midst of the shooting, a stolen police car was able to drive through the compound’s exit, which had been opened by mistake by someone inside trying to leave.

His wife alerted Baher who was downstairs, and then she ran into her children’s room. Within minutes, the car, which was filled with 1,000 kgs of explosives parked in front of the house and detonated.

Baher’s children were instantly crushed. His wife was thrown from the second floor into the air and landed in the garden. She was 4 months pregnant. Baher remembers her screaming out her children’s names. With a broken leg she managed to crawl to her husband whose unconscious body was lying in a heap of rubble. The rescuers who came 20 minutes later begged her to leave his side, he was dead they told her. She refused to leave saying she knew he was alive.

Sixteen surgeries and some 600 stitches later, Baher’s body is still full of shrapnel. When they rise to the surface he has them removed. He works out most days, which helps dislodge some of the pieces.

His pregnant wife gave birth five months after the attack to a healthy boy. A miracle, a divine intervention, he says.

A Christian before the attack, Baher now calls himself a “believer.” We have become believers. You have to. I have to believe that my children are with God. If I didn’t, it would be devastating.”

“One day,” he said, “you wake up and everything’s gone. Your home, your children, everything. What do you do? I don’t even have any photos of my kids.”

His need to talk about the “accident,” as he calls it, comes from his faith. It’s almost as if talking about it reassures him that God indeed had a hand in saving his wife and baby.

He sees his wife and son about once a month. “It’s better this way, believe me. What can we talk about?” With a faraway look in his eye, he explains that with her he must put on a happy face. “We pretend.”

His wife is convinced God has punished them for previous sins. When she was 18 years she caused a car wreck that killed a child. And when Baher was 22 and living in Maryland, he impregnated an American woman who kept the information from him until she was five months pregnant. After offering to raise the child himself, the woman refused and they agreed on adoption.

The child, now 15, was given to a Jewish couple. “They were lawyers. I knew they would always have money. I did what was best for my child.”

The “accident” dredged up these “sins” from the past, and they have irrevocably tainted the marriage.

Baher is the first survivor of a terrorist attack I’ve ever personally met. I think as journalists, we are supposed to ask what someone like Baher’s religion is, what political party does he belong to, how much does he hate Al Qaeda, what revenge does he want, and so on.

But all that seems so secondary in comparison to his obvious pain, so raw and palpable. Does it really matter how it happened, how the government responded? The man has no photographs of his children, as if they never existed. His wife is racked with guilt and shame. His marriage, his life, will never be the same.

For the record, 21 of the 22 perpetrators were caught. In all, 18 people died; about 100 were injured. The attackers were connected to Al Qaeda. The Arab expat compound was used as an example, a show of power. The terrorists’ aim was to show the prince how close they could get to him. The 18 shattered lives were an afterthought. Their nationalities, religion, all irrelevant to the attackers.